In that regard, they are stuck in the 19th century.

Did you get to Dublin? I’m going there in mid-October.

I mean really! Why would anyone not want to drink cold water when it was hot outside?

The other think that I have trouble getting used to, the almost impossiblity of buying coffee to go. When I want to have a cup of coffee while I am walking and I tell the waiter I would like it to go I sometimes get the oddest looks. Like I had asked him to just pour the coffee into my cupped hands.

Here you go. I wrote this with my friends back home in mind, most of which are also graduate students in the history program:

It was the late summer of 2008 and I was in Paris. I lived in an apartment near the river in the Latin Quarter. It was late in August and the weather was good. Men would walk outside in the evening wearing jackets and talk with friends. Women and men drank wine outside and it was a good time to be in Paris. I would say hello and good evening to the workers at the café near my apartment and they would smile and say hello and good evening to me.

In the morning I would take a train to a small town outside Paris and work in an archive. The work was not satisfying and the town was not lovely, and when I returned to Paris in the early evening I would be glad to see the cafes and men and women walking on the sidewalks. I was to teach a class in Kansas on wartime literature in the spring and was reading "A Farewell to Arms" by Ernest Hemingway. I had heard of Americans in Paris reading books by Ernest Hemingway and now I was one. I would sit outside as it grew dark and drink wine and read and watch the people and smell the air and it was good.

Frederick, Rebecca and I sat outside the Sorbonne and talked one night. The café was in front of a fountain and the square was full of people taking pictures and sitting and resting. Frederick was a French maker of documentary films and a great friend that night.

"How do you like Paris?"
"It is a splendid city."
"Do you really think so?"
"Yes."
"I am glad."
"It is a splendid place."
"What do you like about Paris?"
"It is the food and the women and the streets and the buildings."
"Yes, that is Paris."

Rebecca was a historian from the United States. She drank her wine and told us she was tired.

"I detest working in Fountainbleau. The train leaves Paris much too early in the morning."
"Yes, it is a terrible situation."
Frederick said he must catch his train home soon. "Drink your wine so we can walk. How is the wine?"
"Marvelous. This is marvelous wine."
"Drink it so we can walk."
I finished my wine and felt that it was a good wine. Rebecca finished her wine as well.
"Will you walk with us back to the train?"
"Yes. I am very tired."
"Let’s walk. It is a perfect night and the wine is good here. We should have diner here on Friday."
"Yes, we should. Do we have to keep on talking like this?"
"Like this?"
"Like God Damn Ernest Hemingway? Do we have to talk like this?"
Frederick opened his eyes and was surprised. "Is this not how all Americans talk?"

but with, again, soccer sized goals and also a field goal element (as far as I can tell)