Category Archives: French customs

French customs, Paris

Buses in Paris

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Real Parisians don’t take the metro. They take the bus. Also, they don’t go out of their arrondissement unless they’re just going to the next one over. And they think the suburbs are the end of the earth. I have a friend who was born in the 17th, went to school in the 17th, went to uni in the 16th (there isn’t one in the 17th), bought a flat in the 17th and set up her business in the 17th. She moved recently – to another street in the 17th. One day, I talked her into coming to the 1st for lunch and she was surprised she survived the journey!  Now she comes more often …

Ile-de-la-Cité with Notre Dame: am I looking upstream or downstream?

You are only Parisian, of course, if you live inside the ring road that contains all the arrondissements, which, as you may have noticed, are arranged in a clockwise spiral, starting with 1 at Palais Royal and ending with 20 over near Père Lachaise cemetery. What you may not know is that the street numbers always start at the Seine. Take rue du Louvre, for instance, which runs perpendicular to the Seine. N° 1 is next to the river and the numbers climb as you move north. Now what happens, you may ask, if the street is parallel to the Seine? Ah, ha! It’s in the direction of the current no less.  If I stand on the Pont des Arts, Notre Dame is upstream and the Eiffel Tower is downstream. On Quai de la Mégisserie (you know, the street on the Right Bank where all the pet shops and plant shops are), the higher numbers are at Pont Neuf and the lower numbers at Châtelet. I won’t even pretend that I remember that. I have to get Relationnel to explain it to me all over again each time.

There’s a logic behind the bus numbers too would you believe. In most cases, if they start with 2, they go to Gare Saint Lazare, if they start with 3, they go to Gare de l’Est and if they start with 4 they go to Gare du Nord. Most of the 6’s go to Gare de Lyon, the 7’s go to Hôtel de Ville and the 9’s go to Gare Montparnasse. Guess why I prefer to use my RATP iPhone app? Now that I have it, I can be a real Parisian too. In the metro, everyone ignores everyone else, whereas in the bus, you’re allowed to make comments to your neighbours, particularly when it’s not rush hour, without being considered a freak. It’s even encouraged.

The 27 bus outside the Louvre

The articulated buses are fun and can obviously contain more people. We take one from Palais Royal (27) that goes past the Glass Pyramid at the Louvre (great view with the Louvre on one side and the Tuileries Gardens and Arc of Triumph on the other) and across Pont Neuf into the Latin Quarter. I can take the 72 in front of the Louvre and go down to Place de la Concorde, then right along the river to the Eiffel Tower, for example. Sometimes, though, when there’s not much traffic, the drivers go tearing along at the most incredible pace and everyone holds on for dear life. It’s a wonder they don’t hit someone.

Leonardo, who’s now been in Sydney for 3 weeks, is NOT impressed with the public transport there. Apart from its chronic unreliability, he says that the bus seats are too close together and that he can’t actually fit his legs in front of him. He’s fairly tall – 1 m 86 – but so are a lot of other Australians! I asked our Aussie exchange student about it (he’s tall too) and he said it’s because there is a lot more standing room in Parisian buses and not so many seats so they can give you more room for your legs!

The biggest advantage of buses compared with the metro of course is that you get to see where you’re going and I think I could safely say that Paris has one of the highest numbers of monuments per square kilometers in the world. The downside is that despite the many bus lanes you’re never sure you’ll be on time because of the traffic, not to mention an (occasional) demonstration that sends the bus on an unexpected route!

French customs

Battling with French Administration

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I just hot-footed it over to the tax office to file a new declaration because my accounting software made a mistake with my depreciation expenses (well, I might have had something to do with it). The tax office closes at 4 of course. I arrived with 3 minutes to spare only to discover it’s moved. Now why haven’t I been told about this? I file VAT (GST) every month, over the internet admittedly, but I reckon I should have been told anyway. 

French administration is very annoying and complicated. They also write letters and instructions in incomprehensible French. None of this plain language for them. I couldn’t believe it when I filled in my last Australian passport form. It’s obviously written for dummies. I approve of that. At least you know what to do. A few years ago, when my office was in Nogent sur Marne, I had an Algerian neighbour. I was always helping her to fill in forms and write letters. She spread the word and I was soon helping another Algerian and a family from Mali.

After participating in a lobby to have the Australian constitution changed so that Australians living oversees could have dual citizenship, I applied for French nationality a few years ago. I went along to the Court to get all the forms and sent in my application. One of the things you always need in France is a birth certificate (well, an extract) less than 3 months old. This is because your life history is written on your birth certificate here  – naturalisation, change of name, marriage, divorce, legal decisions relating to legal incompetence and death. So I explained in my covering letter that Australian birth certificates don’t give that sort of information (I didn’t want to have to get another certificate plus have it translated officially at great expense).  Relationnel was convinced that they’d ask for more papers (they always do).

However, all went well and after a few months, I was contacted by a police officer who came to visit me at my office to make sure that I was really living in the country and spoke French. Another few months went by and I had to go to the local police station with my diplomas. The man who interviewed me had no idea what he was doing. He admitted he’d never done it before! I also had to prove I was well integrated into the community. Then exactly one year from the date of application, on 2nd December 2002, I was declared to have French nationality. On 29th March 2004, I received a FRENCH BIRTH CERTIFICATE . Isn’t that too much ?

Now I have two passports – French and Australian!

French customs

Summer Time and French Time

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Sunset over the Volga

I really love the long summer days in Europe when it doesn’t get dark until 11 pm. Of course the midnight sun is even better. We went to Saint Petersburg a few years ago in July and it was quite magic to actually watch the sun set at midnight. The problem is that on the last Saturday of October, we have to put our clocks back again and it’s so hard to have night suddenly fall at 6 pm even if it’s lighter in the morning. It completely upsets my biological clock and I’m tired for days on end.

Talking about time, that reminds me of another difference between France and Australia. When I was first invited to dinner here, I used to turn up on the dot in good Australian style. However, I soon realised that no one ever seemed ready when I arrived – they even seemed quite surprised to see me – and they certainly didn’t ever turn up on time when I invited them.  It has now been explained to me that if you’re invited at 8, you must get there at 8.20 at the earliest and 8.40 at the latest!

Imprecise versus precise

My own relationship to time is somewhat rigid I must confess. I was brought up by a father who was always on time and a mother who was chronically late – she would have done very well in France.  Relationnel is exactly the same. He doesn’t even wear a watch on weekends. I know why people are late of course. I’ve had time to study it over the years. They always think they can do one more thing before they go, such as shine their shoes or send an email (typing with just two fingers of course), take the rubbish out (not that I really mind, that is one job I am allergic to), while people who are on time know they can’t. It used to exasperate me terribly with Relationnel because there are some things where you need to be on time such as movies and planes.  One day he told me “Je ne suis pas à une heure près” which roughly translates as “give or take an hour”. Five minutes, OK, even ten minutes, but an HOUR? After that I realised that I would have to change my way of thinking altogether.

Among English speakers, we always check when giving a time, “Do you mean French time or English time ?” It’s safer !

Food, French customs

Halloween and Pumpkins in France

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I can remember being in Troyes one year at Halloween and was surprised to find a restaurant decked out in black and orange because although Leonardo was born on 31st October, I had never seen any sign of Halloween in France. Then I heard the explanation on France Info. I love that radio because it keeps repeating the same news all day. If you get distracted by something else (and I always do), you know you’ll hear it again a little while later. It has lots of lifestyle and other interesting tidbits as well. I get a lot of my scattered knowledge from there. Far better than watching the 8 o’clock news with one of those annoying news readers who wear tons of make-up and carry on like film stars. Also, you don’t get the horrific pictures that you do on TV. I have still not seen any videos of 7/11. I’d be having nightmares if I did.

So, back to Halloween. In 1992, a costume company called Cézar bought out an American firm and found itself with a huge number of Halloween costumes. It opened a mask museum in Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent near Saumur in the Loire and did an amazing publicity campaign and that was the beginning of Halloween in France. It boomed in the late nineties before gradually fizzing out, probably because it lacks tradition here.

On Sunday, I heard an English woman at the market asking if there were any appropriately sized pumpkins but no one seemed to know what she was talking about. Speaking of pumpkins, they are excessively disappointing in this country. Usually big and tasteless. I bought a butternut in Romorantin last week – didn’t think you could go wrong with a butternut – but it was just like a bland squash. They only make soup with pumpkins here, but I’m not into soup. Some places have started selling what they call “potimarron”. I looked it up in the dictionary and it says « red hubbard squash, red kuri squash », not that I’ve ever heard of it. It’s not bad, but nothing like the Queensland blue. I still have a scar on one of my fingers from cutting up a pumpkin.

They do sell these neat little inedible squashes though. I found some in the Loire at 0.30 euros a piece. A real bargain. They’ll probably last a couple of months and are great decoration next to my forest floor with its autumn leaves, holly, pine cones and acorns. I even brought some moss home.

One of the first things I’m going to do in my new vegetable garden is plant some Australian pumpkins. That and raspberries.