Things that are Different in France: Part Pens and Kebab

Things that are different in France (than in the United States)
Part One

Pens

Okay, it's possible that this is European, or one of those "everywhere else" things like the metric system and soccer, but I have seen a heck of a lot of fountain pens here. It's not that everyone has them, but...I can't think of anytime I've seen a normal college student using a fancy-schmancy pen like that in class. That's right, they use them for taking notes; if I had one - which I don't think I would, since it doesn't quite seem practical enough to be worth the effort, though what do I know? - I'd probably take it out for special occasions like my non-existant calligraphy work and never leave home with it. Go figure.

Kebab

I'm pretty sure this is European (not just in France), but there are kebab stands everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of getting a hot meat sandwich for cheap at 2 in the morning, though the quality of kebab varies widely. It's just still weird. When I think about it for a while - which happens more than it should for a relatively sane person - I guess that it takes the place of our open-til-3 pizza joints (though I think they have those here, too). I miss getting some good American pizza, not any of this somewhere-between-an-Italy-and-a-California-style pizza crap. Seriously, goat cheese on pizza is a travesty. But I digress. What I have trouble understanding is how they can have 3 kebab places right next to each other, or across the street. There can be 5 in a 50 meter radius (that was me trying to be more European). How do they all stay in business? How do you decide between them? How are there that many people of Turkish or whatever origin to open up that many kebab places? At least in the U.S., pizza isn't really ethnic anymore, and we have our fair share of Italians anyway. But the whole Turkish kebab thing seems too ethnically specific for me to write it off as the answer to pizza joints.

But hey, I'm just an ignorant American.