Things that Shocked Me When I Moved to France

A View from the Citadel Hill in Bitche, Moselle, France in October 2019

NOTHING

That’s out of the way, then. That’s right, nothing shocked me when I moved to France last May. What? Am I saying that France is just like America? Nope, pardner, I ain’t a gonna try to tell you that! (Read it in a stereotypical Western Movie accent.) That’s because I did do my homework prior to setting out from Reid Airport that morning. In fact, the first time I visited France was in 1976. We took a Laker charter (you may remember them if you’re as old as dirt like me) to London, then a night train/ferry from London to Paris. Got off the boat in Calais and discovered that the French railroad workers were on strike until 6 am. It was now 4:30 am. I was desperate for coffee and hungry. Luckily there was a counter where one could buy food. We had some Francs. Then, SHOCK! Those people selling the food spoke FRENCH! YOIKS! Luckily for me, the person I was with had taken French. Unluckily, they were afraid to use the language because they might do it wrong? Might? If you weren’t born in Paris, that’s a guarantee! But I asked them how to pronounce various menu items, and ordered and received coffee and some sort of food. Lesson one: French people speak French!

In a few hours we got off the train at Gare Du Nord in Paris. We needed more francs. I trotted over to a change booth and started asking to cash a traveler’s check. SHOCK! The soman in the booth did speak English, and she was extremely nice to me in explaining that it was imperative to use a polite form of address in France, and she explained about Bonjour, Au revoir, S’il vous plait, and merci. (Even in French, those words don’t necessarily sound the way the look like they would.) I’ve followed her instructions with every person I’ve interacted with in France since that morning, and boy howdy, people here are almost unfailingly polite, helpful, and friendly. Lesson two: If you’re polite in the French manner, you get treated well in France.

Those were the biggies. Besides them I came to expect that many businesses close for lunch from roughly noon to 2 pm, many more businesses simply close on Sunday, and traditionally and still today, many businesses that are open Sunday (restaurants and such like) are closed on Monday. Lesson three: be adaptable to local customs.

There are a few more unfamiliar things. Buying gas (essence) by the liter, lotsa roundabouts everywhere, a couple of odd traffic rules, but nothing else that I found shocking, even when I first encountered them. France is, amazingly enough if you know the history of the place, a free country, with the biggest difference being that everyone is expected to consider neighbors and others before acting on one’s own behalf. That, and this has caused me problems a few times, is how my mother raised me to act, although I never really started doing it before that morning in Gare du Nord.

So that’s cool, huh? And my advice from this post, wrapped up nicely? If you’re thinking of moving to France, forget all those wonderful notions of France as a hotbed of culture and refinement. France has culture and refinement, but in the end, what you bring with you is what you’ll notice, at least in terms of interpersonal relations. France is a place. A nice place, not without its problems, but then so is every state in the US, when you get right down to it. Visit a lot, get to know the country and the people and their “French” ways. That way you can get all of your shocks out of the way and settle right into living your life in your new home. Hey, worked out for me so far!