In Paris, you generally meet your neighbour when their removal van arrives. You finally get to exchange words and sometimes even whole sentences with someone you have lived next to, and occasionally bumped into for years. You find out their name, where they are from, and where they are heading off to. Joyous cries of “bonne continuation!” (good luck) ring in the air as your circumvent the boxes on the stairs.
Neighbours who sell generally don’t tell anyone in the building of their plans--probably because they are ashamed of the exorbitant amount that they are asking for their apartment. Or dead scared that you might fill in prospective buyers about the all night parties, the metro that causes the building to shake, or the fact that the roof needs replacing. Their departure does cause occasional comments and speculation of the price between the remaining neighbours—after all, the weather has its limits. Everyone is keen to see the new neighbour: someone who was foolish enough to vastly overpay for an apartment full of defects.
And then, when your new neighbour starts a never-ending noisy building project, you really start to miss your old neighbour. Neighbours are like pigeons—you never really notice them individually but they are always there, somewhere in the background. They can do quite a lot of damage too, particularly a lot of them together.
Paris is not a city in which you pop over to the neighbours for the proverbial cup of sugar—and its not only because the sugar here is in cubes…the formal vous should be used with them at all times. It’s very unusual to leave your keys with them. After several years of co-inhabiting the most daring amongst them might timidly ask you to feed their animals or water their plants in their absence. (You have to be over 40 for this: neighbourly respectability increases with age). They explain, somewhat embarrassed, that their cousin, who has had to make the journey from across town for years, every summer, while you languish in your pad a few metres away, has taken ill. Accept this honour graciously, as if this was an everyday occurrence—they will be tortured enough as it is with the thought of you being able to rifle through their underwear draw. Resist the temptation to peek in their bedroom; it’s probably full of old wedding photographs anyway.
And then occasionally, just like four leaf clovers and five legged sheep, these rules get broken. You meet and make friends (ironically referred to as “sympathiser” in French) with your neighbours, who over time become best friends. When their moving vans arrive it’s truly heartbreaking. Your building, your street, your life and your neighbourhood café will never be the same without them. (Isn’t that so Andi and Carmela?)
