Le Culture shock...
Boom. Boom.Boom. It’s 8:00pm and I‘ve got a throbbing headache which won’t go away. I’ve had it all afternoon. I turn off the apartment lights and decide to turn in and let nature fix it instead of taking any tablets.
8:30pm. I’ve tried relaxation, lying on my left side, my right side, imagining tranquil ocean waves, heck I’ve even tried picturing blissful images of Flipper cavorting in the big blue. Nada. Now I just feel like some stupid hippie with a migraine.
9:00pm. Boom. Boom. Boom. Nope it’s still there…Darn. Oh well, get up and get some aspirin – you’ve done your best. Aghhhh!! No aspirin! Rummage everywhere and not a single capsule to be found. OMG! Man my head hurts…
Get up and get dressed and decide to walk into the town and find somewhere that sells Neurofen or Tylenol but this is where the fun begins! Here in France/Switzerland everything is closed after 7:00pm. And I mean everything.
Ah-hah! Brainwave! The local hospital is only a few hundred metres away – they are bound to have an all-night chemist next door to the casualty department. They do in Oz and the U.K. So off I trudge. Boom. Boom.Boom. Ay carumba my head hurts…
Get to casualty and their pharmacy is closed. A night-security person tells me that they can open it, but only if they wake the owner and he must be accompanied by a local Gendarme. Yup, I sure do look like some wild-eyed, gun-toting deranged druggie. All I want is aspirin.
So trudge over in tunnel-visioned ‘douleur’ to casualty. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ ‘Ah non’. You must see someone first… ‘Fine, whatever..’
So I wait and wait…and wait. I look around. How come I’m the only person in here but they all manage to somehow ignore me and try (?) to look busy.
Someone finally comes over. ‘Can I have two aspirin please? I’m new in town, have a splitting headache and all the shops are closed’. Ah non’. ‘C’est pas permis’! ‘What’s your name and address?’ Ten minutes filling forms and showing my passport… ‘Wait in here’.
A half hour passes in some waiting room trying to read children’s books (all there was) to kill time and take my mind off the heavy-metal drum-solo going on in my head. Boom. Boom. Boom. At last - someone enters. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town, have a headache etc, etc.’ (I have the speech memorised by now.) ‘Ah non. C’est pas permis’. ‘Can I take your blood pressure?’ They call it pouls, which is pronounced ’poo’ in French. Even though my head hurts like heck I resist lots of ‘poo’ jokes that she probably won’t get anyway.
Nurse Cruella de Ville eventually discovers the blindlingly obvious – I’m healthy, sober and just have a really bad headache. ’I just want two aspirin…’ ‘Wait here’, and off she trots to studiously ignore some other patients.
Another half hour. ‘Is this worth it?’ Boom, boom, boom. ‘Yup! I’ve got this far…hang in there’.
Finally a female doctor comes. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town etc, etc.’ ‘Ah non’ ‘Cest pas ….’ etc, etc’. Sigh….
I explain to her that in every other Anglo-phone country in the world I could have gotten aspirin at the local shop, all-night chemist, the supermarket or even the local gas-station and been home by now. ‘Ah non. In France only pharmacists can dispense ‘medicine’’. Man this is exasperating. It’s just aspirin for Krissake! Not medical grade morphine.
Near 11:00 pm and she finally stops prodding and probing and asking questions and then suggests I get an appointment for a cat-scan of my head! Yikes! ‘A’ I can do without the mega-medical bill, ‘B’ I have a whopping headache now, not Tuesday next week at 9:15AM, and ‘C’ I don’t want some quack injecting me with a horse-needle full of that nausea-inducing low-level isotope they use to make your blood vessels light up like the 4th of July on the monitor! Been there and done that umpteen years ago as a kid for some unrelated matter and I’m in no hurry to do it again! Man, I spent twenty minutes in a claustrophobia inducing, coffin-like tube trying heroically to resist the overwhelming urge to hurl for all I was worth (brought on by the injection), all whilst being told to ‘hold perfectly still dear’.
A couple of minutes of convincing her its not a brain-tumour and just a simple bad headache and she finally relents and says she has them too and gives me some headache powders and a glass of water. BOOM. Boom.Boom. Boom. Aahhhh…..
Midnight I finally make it home and sleep the sleep of the pain-free and victorious.
Turns out that in Europe the Pharmacists guilds all got together some years ago and indulged in a bit of job–protection scheming and got the Government to make it law that only they could sell even the most basic stuff (‘Cough syrup is very, very dangerous you know - only we can be trusted’).
So my advice to anyone visiting Europe? Buy plenty of Tylenol before you get here. I now have several packets at the office, at home and in my travel kit. Like the American Express card – don’t leave home without it!
Boom. Boom.Boom. It’s 8:00pm and I‘ve got a throbbing headache which won’t go away. I’ve had it all afternoon. I turn off the apartment lights and decide to turn in and let nature fix it instead of taking any tablets.
8:30pm. I’ve tried relaxation, lying on my left side, my right side, imagining tranquil ocean waves, heck I’ve even tried picturing blissful images of Flipper cavorting in the big blue. Nada. Now I just feel like some stupid hippie with a migraine.
9:00pm. Boom. Boom. Boom. Nope it’s still there…Darn. Oh well, get up and get some aspirin – you’ve done your best. Aghhhh!! No aspirin! Rummage everywhere and not a single capsule to be found. OMG! Man my head hurts…
Get up and get dressed and decide to walk into the town and find somewhere that sells Neurofen or Tylenol but this is where the fun begins! Here in France/Switzerland everything is closed after 7:00pm. And I mean everything.
Ah-hah! Brainwave! The local hospital is only a few hundred metres away – they are bound to have an all-night chemist next door to the casualty department. They do in Oz and the U.K. So off I trudge. Boom. Boom.Boom. Ay carumba my head hurts…
Get to casualty and their pharmacy is closed. A night-security person tells me that they can open it, but only if they wake the owner and he must be accompanied by a local Gendarme. Yup, I sure do look like some wild-eyed, gun-toting deranged druggie. All I want is aspirin.
So trudge over in tunnel-visioned ‘douleur’ to casualty. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ ‘Ah non’. You must see someone first… ‘Fine, whatever..’
So I wait and wait…and wait. I look around. How come I’m the only person in here but they all manage to somehow ignore me and try (?) to look busy.
Someone finally comes over. ‘Can I have two aspirin please? I’m new in town, have a splitting headache and all the shops are closed’. Ah non’. ‘C’est pas permis’! ‘What’s your name and address?’ Ten minutes filling forms and showing my passport… ‘Wait in here’.
A half hour passes in some waiting room trying to read children’s books (all there was) to kill time and take my mind off the heavy-metal drum-solo going on in my head. Boom. Boom. Boom. At last - someone enters. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town, have a headache etc, etc.’ (I have the speech memorised by now.) ‘Ah non. C’est pas permis’. ‘Can I take your blood pressure?’ They call it pouls, which is pronounced ’poo’ in French. Even though my head hurts like heck I resist lots of ‘poo’ jokes that she probably won’t get anyway.
Nurse Cruella de Ville eventually discovers the blindlingly obvious – I’m healthy, sober and just have a really bad headache. ’I just want two aspirin…’ ‘Wait here’, and off she trots to studiously ignore some other patients.
Another half hour. ‘Is this worth it?’ Boom, boom, boom. ‘Yup! I’ve got this far…hang in there’.
Finally a female doctor comes. ‘Can I have two aspirin please?’ I’m new in town etc, etc.’ ‘Ah non’ ‘Cest pas ….’ etc, etc’. Sigh….
I explain to her that in every other Anglo-phone country in the world I could have gotten aspirin at the local shop, all-night chemist, the supermarket or even the local gas-station and been home by now. ‘Ah non. In France only pharmacists can dispense ‘medicine’’. Man this is exasperating. It’s just aspirin for Krissake! Not medical grade morphine.
Near 11:00 pm and she finally stops prodding and probing and asking questions and then suggests I get an appointment for a cat-scan of my head! Yikes! ‘A’ I can do without the mega-medical bill, ‘B’ I have a whopping headache now, not Tuesday next week at 9:15AM, and ‘C’ I don’t want some quack injecting me with a horse-needle full of that nausea-inducing low-level isotope they use to make your blood vessels light up like the 4th of July on the monitor! Been there and done that umpteen years ago as a kid for some unrelated matter and I’m in no hurry to do it again! Man, I spent twenty minutes in a claustrophobia inducing, coffin-like tube trying heroically to resist the overwhelming urge to hurl for all I was worth (brought on by the injection), all whilst being told to ‘hold perfectly still dear’.
A couple of minutes of convincing her its not a brain-tumour and just a simple bad headache and she finally relents and says she has them too and gives me some headache powders and a glass of water. BOOM. Boom.Boom. Boom. Aahhhh…..
Midnight I finally make it home and sleep the sleep of the pain-free and victorious.
Turns out that in Europe the Pharmacists guilds all got together some years ago and indulged in a bit of job–protection scheming and got the Government to make it law that only they could sell even the most basic stuff (‘Cough syrup is very, very dangerous you know - only we can be trusted’).
So my advice to anyone visiting Europe? Buy plenty of Tylenol before you get here. I now have several packets at the office, at home and in my travel kit. Like the American Express card – don’t leave home without it!
posted by Captain Nemo at 5:12 pm
1 Comments:
That is just the opposite of Dubai and Kuwait. Here you can get anything just short of heroin if you have the money and can pronounce it. I had my own run in here. Read my blog post "The War on Drugs"
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