Surprises and "Draguer"

To my great surprise and pleasure, I received a message this week from an old friend, Kita, who was in Paris with her sister. It'd been about six years since we'd seen eachother, and probably longer than that that we had actually spent time together. She's someone I've known since I was ten years old, and we have a history, and this is something I miss with my friends here in France.

After making every rookie train mistake possible, I landed in Bercy. We got back on the train and headed towards Chatelet, where Kita's sister, Ashley, bought a new coat. Following the beaten tourist track and we wandered towards Notre Dame and Saint Michel. We ducked in for a drink, and after an hour or so, we decided to head up to the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, bottles of wine in tow.

Although touristy, I love the Sacre Coeur. It's big, blindingly white, and sits at the edge of Paris, overlooking it's city. At night, it looks rather lovely with the lights of the city twinkling to the South. We continued our chat about past relationships, past jobs, and past problems between the two us.

After not too long, however, two mecs approached us. I made the mistake of speaking in French, and they decided to stick around. Kita doesn't speak French, Ashley took four years, in highschool. Trying to be polite as possible, I explained to them that while it was very kind to talk to us, we wanted to talk amongst ourselves. They didn't get it, the first time, or the tenth. We finally moved, and they refound us.

It was absurd. I don't understand how someone can just stick around, even though we were completely ignoring them, and I specifically said "I don't want to talk to you." I told them we all had boyfriends, I told them that my friends didn't speak French, so how could we communicate? It was like they were playing this stupid game, and only they got to make the rules. It's not flattering, it's obnoxious, and made them look pathetic. In French, the word for hit on, is draguer, which also means literally, to drag. I can only assume that these morons must have interpretted this literally, and intended to drag us kicking and screaming out of Montmarte and out on a date.