These obnoxious (French) tourists!

After a long 9 hours drive we arrived last night Lake Tahoe's Nevada side. Luckily we had reserved a great hotel by the shore and immediately after checking-in, went to the beach; there, we sat at a small restaurant patio for a beer and to see what was for dinner. The location was wonderful and from the lake's south shore we watched the sun go down over the Sierra, observed folks on the beach and relaxed while we were having dinner. At a table next two us, two French couples arrived for dinner; one of the two guys loudly capitalized the conversation around that table; he evidently had done it all, seen everything and held an opinion on the entire world.

He had no idea that we could hear and understand every word coming out of his mouth and we were in that priviledged position in which you are part of conversation without having to enter it. A form of auditive voyeurism, if there could be such a thing... This was a bit embarassing too, being also French to hear this countryman of ours make a fool of himself and comment wildly on our American life. Once more, this odd situation reminded me of a famous quote by Alfred Capus, that goes about like this: “the kind man listens smiling about things he knows, told by someone who ignore them..”