Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]
PARIS (AP) — [1]Usain Bolt’s sprint world records were never in danger.
Then again, even the world’s fastest-ever human likely wouldn’t have
been so quick while balancing a tray with a croissant, a coffee cup and
a glass of water through the streets of Paris, and without spilling it
everywhere.
France’s capital resurrected a 110-year-old race for its waiters and
waitresses Sunday. The dash through central Paris celebrated the
dexterous and, yes, by their own admittance, sometimes famously moody
men and women without whom France wouldn’t be France.
Why? Because they make France’s cafés and restaurants tick. Without
them, where would the French gather to put the world to rights over
drinks and food? Where would they quarrel and fall in (and out of)
love? And where else could they simply sit and let their minds wander?
They have penned songs and poems about their “bistrots,” so attached
are they to their unpretentious watering holes that for generations
have nourished their bodies and souls.
“That is where you will find the population’s fine flowers,” sang
songwriter-poet Georges Brassens, but also “all the miserable, the down
on their luck.”
So drum roll, please, for Pauline Van Wymeersch and Samy Lamrous —
Paris’ newly crowned fastest waitress and waiter and, as such,
ambassadors for an essential French profession.
And one which has a big job ahead: Taking the food orders and quenching
the thirsts of millions of visitors who will flock to the Paris
Olympics this July.
The resurrection of the waitering race after a 13-year hiatus is part
of Paris’ efforts to bask in the Olympic spotlight and put its best
foot forward for its first Summer Games in 100 years.
The first waiters’ race was run in 1914. This time, a couple of hundred
of waiters and waitresses dressed up in their uniforms — with the
finest sporting bow ties — and loaded up their trays with the
regulation pastry, small (but empty) coffee cup and full glass of water
for the 2-kilometer (1 1/4-mile) loop starting and finishing at City
Hall.
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter's run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter’s run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Van Wymeersch, the runaway winner in the women’s category in 14
minutes, 12 seconds, started waitering at age 16, is now 34 and said
she cannot envisage any other life for herself.
“I love it as much as I hate it. It’s in my skin. I cannot leave it,”
she said of the profession. “It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It’s
demanding. It’s 12 hours per day. It’s no weekends. It’s no
Christmases.”
But “it’s part of my DNA. I grew up in a way with a tray in my hand,”
she added. “I have been shaped, in life and in the job, by the bosses
who trained me and the customers, all of the people, I have met.”
Van Wymeersch works at the Le Petit Pont café and restaurant facing
[2]Notre Dame cathedral. Lamrous, who won the men’s race in a time of
13:30, waits at La Contrescarpe, in Paris’ 5th district. Their prizes
were medals, two tickets each for the July 26 Olympic opening ceremony
along [3]the River Seine and a night out at a Paris hotel.
Although all smiles on this occasion, competitors acknowledged that’s
not always the case when they are rushed off their feet at work. The
customer may always be right in other countries, but the waiter or
waitress has the final word in France, feeding their reputation for
being abrupt, moody and even rude at times.
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter's run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter's run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter's run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Waiters carry trays with a cup of coffee, a croissant and a glass of
water as they take part in a waiter's run through the streets of Paris,
Sunday, March 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
“French pride means that in little professions like this, they don’t
want to be trampled on,” said Thierry Petit, 60, who is retiring in
April after 40 years of waiting tables.
“It’s not lack of respect, rather it’s more a state of mind,” he said.
Switching to English, he added: “It’s very Frenchie.”
The capital’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said cafés and restaurants are
“really the soul of Paris.”
“The bistrot is where we go to meet people, where we go for our little
coffee, our little drink, where we also go to argue, to love and
embrace each other,” she said.
“The café and the bistrot are life.”
___
AP coverage of Paris Olympics:
[4]
https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
References
1.
https://apnews.com/hub/games
2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2mwa-K-0ds
3.
https://apnews.com/article/paris-olympics-swimming-paralympics-seine-a7b2aa83ba12c2d6d709479253c4e39d
4.
https://apnews.com/hub/games
