As soon as I think I’m getting Paris, something happens to disorient me completely. Just now I pulled out my phone on the street to look for a cafe on Yelp. The French are famously uncomfortable around strangers, and tend not to approach them. So, I was quite surprised when an old man, clearly totally français de souche (of French origin), approached me. Are you taking pictures of the entire world?, he asked me. I search a cafe, I answered. Which cafe?, he wanted to know. Some…any…um…, I stumbled. Go down that way. There are several. Sure enough, right down the street I found Le boin coin, a popular neighborhood place right across the street from the used book market that I had forgotten about. And so goes my understanding of Paris and the French–two steps forward, one step back.
Zipf's Law 