Paris – the smoking city

I have received messages from a few friendly readers asking for details on my summer break. So for the next few posts I’ll summarize what I did, and my crazy observations. My first week of the break was spent in Paris, France (not to be confused with Paris, Texas or the Paris hotel in Las Vegas). This was my first time to Europe, so of course I was expecting accordion musicians everywhere and barrettes on every goateed man. But alas all I encountered in the airport were usual airport-folk. The only exception was that many of them were smoking. I was quite surprised by the amount of smoking that I saw in France. Nearly everyone smokes … including old people without teeth (I guess they don’t have much to lose by smoking), young people (while on their skateboards), and refuse collectors (while hanging onto the back of the truck). But I suppose it really is to the advantage of smokers to be able to smoke anywhere. Think of all the money saved on cigarettes when you can just take advantage of all the second hand smoke!