My first day in Paris I bought a beer at the grocery store, to celebrate coming here (and the normalcy to buy alcoholic beverages in regular shops, not at the state owned alcohol store..).

Super excited I opened the bottle and had a sip of the nastiest beer I’ve ever tried. It was sans alcool, non-alcoholic. I hadn’t noticed at all.

The other day I went to the grocery store again and bought some random items. I bought some dried sausages, ah you know, the kind you get on a wine and cheese platter. Fortunately for me I didn’t try them as soon as I got home, I probably would’ve just devoured them all without further checks.

Thing is, a day or so later I was rearranging stuff in my fridge and saw that one of the types in the sausage box was avec noix - coincidentally this means “With nuts”. So, a big no no for me. Oops.

Anyway, the latest straw was drawn tonight (not the last, I mean, I’ll keep forgiving myself for these mistakes of course). On my way home from my improv class I was so thirsty. Being Sunday, most grocery stores are closed so I went to one of the local middle eastern kiosks my neighborhood also has plenty of (with all the African and Caribbean grocery stores). They had a random collection of sodas, so I decided to pick something lighter than a Coke or Fanta - and went for Schweppes with lime.

On the way home, I open it (and honestly this is not something that upset me, even though my writing up to now might imply that it had) and I taste it and it’s the best damn tonic water I’ve ever had.

Then, oh, wait, it’s not really tonic water. It’s some sort of “Virgin Mojito” soda.

Super great, and fortunately for me anyway it wasn’t some lime-and-peanut drink, because that could’ve ended badly….