elevator rescue

it was a lazy day. we got up late and hung out. jj decided she wanted to make crepes so she searched the internet for a recipe and made them! they were really good. we were very impressed. afterwards, p and i went to a nearby street antiques fair and then it was evening.


jj had a birthday party to go to near the “etoile” and the arch de triomphe.
it was her twin’s party. we all walked across town to drop her at the metro stop where she was meeting the others. as we approached the metro stop, the 3 korean girls from jj's class emerged from below. jj at this point “shooed” us away. we left without having any other info, not the parents’ address or phone number, not the restaurant they were going to, nor a time that it would end. we assumed it would be fine, but as we walked i got more and more stressed at how we had not properly prepared. since we were going off to another part of town, they might be finished much earlier than us. p told me to lighten up, that it would all be fine. we went to the opera neighborhood. first we had drink in a pub. very enjoyable. it was part of a hotel and they had paintings on the wall of classical renaissance portraits, but with current political leader faces, bush, putin, etc. similar to my “p. van gogh” idea. afterwards we went to eat in the japanese area, full of sushi restaurants. interestingly, sushi is the cheap meal now, possible to eat for about 10-15 euros – so lots of students and other youth filled the streets.
then we headed back to meet jj. great timing, we got a call that she was coming down and would meet us at metro stop. then she called to tell us she was stuck in the elevator. 15 minutes went by and another call came, a bit more panicky. we got the address to the apartment and went over. 5 fourteen year old asian girls jammed into a little glass elevator stuck between floors. jj was nervous that it might fall. i could talk to her through the glass and assured her that there was technology to prevent that. they had tried the emergency button - which only rang a bell in the deserted lobby downstairs. not very helpful. then they tried the phone button which called the elevator company and got a recorded message in french, saying something like: " thank you for your patience, your call is important to us, an operator will be with you shortly" which continued to play for 15 mins. the birthday girl's mom was also on the phone trying to get through to the elevator company. but it was saturday night. p called the "pompier" - the firemen. (confusingly, there is not one emergency number like 911 – there are 3. one for fire, one for life threatening emergencies, one for less threatening emergencies – you have to know which number to call). anyway, very promptly, 3-4 young, handsome, clean-cut french firemen arrived. one opened the outer elevator doors. the others went below and determined that the “parachute” (i assume that means the “brake”) had been triggered which had stopped the elevator. (later i got the full story – one of the girls, to be funny had jumped in the elevator. i HATE when people do that. anyway, that was probably what caused this.) the elevator was between floors, and the brake would prevent it from going down much. however, to pull passengers out of a stuck elevator, you need to have a good amount of space just in case it does slip down a bit (remember this for future reference). so the firemen actually pulled the elevator up by the cable, high enough to enable the girls to climb out (quickly and one at a time). jj was a bit freaked out about the whole thing. the other girls hugged her and we all went home. (this just gives jj one more thing to be afraid of. she's also afraid of flying because, at the end of the last school year, the kids had some extra time and - i don’t know WHY they did this, but - they played an episode of “LOST” with the scene of the plane crash.) Print this post