One of my occasional correspondents has been reading my blog (good, hopefully more will follow). From this individual came the question what had happened to this series. We had been to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, and that is it?
Not exactly, I had forgotten, or appropriately for today's entry - je l'avais oublié.
OK, bof - en route. La France.
Sorry I have to remember that my readership, as cosmopolitan as it is (the article I wrote on Denmark is one of my most read pieces, so I suspect that there are some Danes out there reading this - welcome, I hope everything's fine and the Tuborg tastes good tonight) will not speak much French.
Stereotypes on France. You mean that they all smell of garlic, eat frog's legs and snails, wear striped jumpers, run all the world's fashion shows, their unions are always on strike, their women all buy the latest styles from Dior, and they are thoroughly disorganised and volatile and ridiculously excitable? And if you are American you also don't have a very high opinion of their military prowess (the country that produced Napoleon Bonaparte - huh?).
I did eat snails there a couple of times when I was there as a student 40-odd years ago, frog's legs I never encountered (nor did I ever see anyone wearing a striped jersey as per "tradition" either).
The rest may have some truth (the strikes can be infuriating), but most of Frenchwomen that I ever knew (including another wonderful lady from my "scurrilous years" - she will be frighteningly some 46 years old now; "Ah Sophie, chérie, je t'aime encore!") would never have been able to afford designer clothes. And the people with whom I worked seemed the calm, intellectual, hardly volatile type. A few years ago France produced the highest percentage of IT graduates in Europe - yes higher than Germany! - and IT is definitely a thinker's discipline, as I will tell you from experience.
I did not mention French cuisine (except the for the frivolous elements) above. Another stereotype of course is the quality of the food - a deserved reputation where I am concerned, and I have never managed to go to anywhere too expensive. And then there are the excellent wines, Cognac, various liqueurs, I was for years a great fan of Pernod and Ricard.
So at times the cap (or should that be the beret?) fits. But not always and not in every respect. As the recent election indicates though, diversity is one of the undercurrents that is both delightful and frustrating about the country. From the excellent railway service to the awful people who vote neo-Fascist in frightening numbers .... Predictability? Less here than most anywhere else I could name.
And the ladies of the night? Back in the 30s when it was legal this was a thriving industry. De Gaulle made sure that it did not stay that way, and it has existed in the shadows ever since, unofficially raising its ugly head occasionally in incidents such as that involving the soccer player Franck Ribéry a couple of years back.
Most major cities have their dubious "quartiers" though. In Paris the area round the Place Pigalle still is infamous for it - getting round the rules by simply charging for drinks for entertainment while the girls work apparently on a freelance basis. Nicolas Sarkozy did threaten to close the industry down. It is a bit difficult to do so when the "putains" are not employed in the bars where they work.
And then there are those in the more up-market areas like the ones on the Champs-Elysées (see Franck Ribéry again). I recall when working in Paris in 1993 meeting a very attractive young woman who informed me that she was making some ridiculous sum of money in those establishments to pay for her studies at the Sorbonne!
A weird mix, and she could not understand my "Anglo-Saxon reserve" on the subject, and my tut-tutting her for doing so. It did seem a sad waste, but then I did not understand the mentality - maybe. Money has to come from somewhere, Paris is an amazing city but expensive to say the least, and the education costs for students have gone through the roof in recent years.
Paris is not France (or the whole of France) of course, and my encounters with the French provinces in recent years have not been that numerous (Toulouse in 1991 I think was the last example). Attitudes there tend to be different, often less liberal, often less understanding and more "traditional", not always in the best sense of the word. This contrast between Paris and the provinces is as marked as that between London and the provinces in the UK (where my sympathies lie in the reverse direction - pro-province anti-capital city!), so you have to be ready for the differences in attitudes and expectations.
It remains though a country that has IMHO something that will always be a bit special, and I can always imagine it rising phoenix like from the occasional ashes. With flair and style and savoir-faire and .... what were the other stereotypes?
Dedicated with affection (but no great relevance) to François Cavanna, Georges Wolinski, Professeur Choron and all the others associated with Hara-Kiri magazine which I used to read in my student days in Corrèze. Not always happy days, but I learned so much for which I am still very appreciative.
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