Category: Culture

Categories
Culture France

Fête du travail

Our official Departmental (county) emblem. Vienne is the name.

It’s May Day in France, and all over the world (more or less). In France that also makes it Labor day, or Fête du Travail. This is the one day all year that an employer may not force anyone to work, except for hospitals and emergency workers, police, EMTs, that sort of employee. Other than those folks, everyone has the day off. (I guess if one offered employees enough cash one could go ahead and open the store, but I imagine that it would take a lot of cash.) It is a paid holiday. This year it’s on a Wednesday, so many people faire le pont (make the bridge,) take a couple more days off and have a five-day paid weekend. Next week there are two holidays, but one can force employees to work (by paying them overtime) every day but today, but there will be a lot of bridge building next week as well.

And that segues nicely into discussing the different attitudes toward work in the United States and France. In the US, many people live to work. We distrust anyone who isn’t regularly employed. Welfare moms are a common subject of scorn. We are, by reputation at least, the grasshopper in the old (French, by the way) tale of the grasshopper and the (ant, cricket, pick your lazy insect.) In France, workers are certainly not lazy. In fact, France has the most productive economy in the European Union, but workers are entitled to thirty days of paid vacation per year, in addition to paid holidays. Thirty Days?!? Yes, in fact. There are a couple of consequences of all that free time that American enterprise never seems to consider.

First, employees who feel more in control of their lives tend to be happier and more productive. Even good old Canada has a nicer work climate than the US, in spite of being frozen stiff for most of the year.

Second, French workers generally work while they are working, are expected to, and do, avoid wasting time at water coolers or break rooms. From noon to two they take lunch. In a store they will typically work from nine to six, er, eighteen hours as they track the day here. That’s a seven hour work day broken up by a two hour lunch. Seven hours? Well, yes, the law says that a work week is 35 hours long. Plenty of people work more than 35 hours per week, but they receive compensatory time off. Yes, even more vacation. And, an employee is expected to take the time. Because, as stated above, the French Work to Live. Yep, they do what they must to ensure that they can enjoy a leisurely lunch, three weeks on a Portuguese beach, some time off when their kids have a school break. Working your ass off so that you can finally retire is not something people from around here understand. Why not, they will ask, enjoy life as you live it?

Different strokes, right? I’m not saying one way is better or worse than the other. That depends on your personal outlook on life, I suppose. But it does show how different approaches to the same problem can both yield good results, which is a valuable lesson to learn in and of itself.

Categories
Culture History

Musée Gallo-Romain Perigueux

This is what remains of a 1900-year-old Roman noble’s house

Yesterday we visited the Musée Gallo-Romain in Perigueux. This is the main indoor display area as seen from the upper level gallery. The city was named Vesunna at that time, although late in the empire its name was changed into what has morphed into “Perigueux” (try Para Goo to get close). Whoever built the place was very rich. The under-floor heating was handled by slaves. (No political comments, please.) Here is a picture of the kitchen:

If you read French, the sign has a lot more information.

Of course, next to the kitchen is a small dining room:

The murals are original.

Those aren’t the only painted walls on the house:

That’s 1900-year-old paint. We should all look so good at that age, huh?

Comfort was provided by under-floor heating, which involved pots of fire beneath the floor. These pots could be moved around (by slaves, of course) if the family and guests moved to a different room. The slave owner had an excellent insurance policy. If somebody murdered the master of the house, all the slaves were killed, which provided the master with a sort of personal Pretorian Guard. I didn’t get a picture of a heating space, but if you visit, you’ll see several.

There are things outside in a courtyard, including a 2000-year-old tower that was incorporated into the town wall in the fourth century. (Prior to that there was no need for a town wall. No wonder people looked back on Rome with a sigh, I guess.) But a truly impressive storm came up and it would have been difficult to see what we were looking at due to wind and rain. But, I did get a few more photos, to wit:

A capital from a column with, I dunno, an amphora full of biscuits? Rocks? Whatever, carved into it.

An inscribed bit of stone, but from what I couldn’t say. I can read a 21st century vulgate version of Latin, but not the original. I think there’s a translation on one of the small labels.

A part of a column. I’d say “NO BULL!” but, well, you know . . .

A row of back rooms of the house. Could be bedrooms, storerooms, slave quarters, nobody knows, really. Originally the house fronted the river (Dordogne) but after numerous modifications, and especially after the city wall was built, that access was cut off. In fact, sometime in the third century somebody filled in the courtyard and raised the floor. Like all good things, this place deteriorated in the end, and was under a mess of landfill until rediscovered by canal diggers in, I think it was, 1859? Sometime around there.

A really interesting aspect of this old town and house is that the owners, and their slaves, probably still have descendants living in the area. Unlike the US, where the only ancient town I’ve been to is a village in Arizona, in Hopi, that’s even a bit older than Vessuna. That is, I’m actually related to the indigenous people of France, kind of distantly, but more closely than I am to any Native Americans. My grandfather was born in a village in Moselle, a long way from Perigueux, but still in France. And, in fact, most of the inhabitants of Vessuna were local Celts, not imports from Rome. A bit odd to contemplate for an American, but there it is.*

And that was our first brief vacation together in France. Must pick another area to explore. Hmmmm . . . .

Visit: https://www.perigueux-vesunna.fr/

*The French are mostly still shorter, like Celts, even though their country has a Germanic name.

Categories
Culture Food France

Stuff You Might Miss

A menu from the Banquet du Chasse yesterday. Lots of food.

BONJOUR!

Sorry for my extended absence. La grippe can be a harsh taskmaster. Anyway, this is about some things you may miss if you visit, or move to, France.

  • Good Mexican (Tex-Mex anyway) food. French food is undeniable fine, but the French never have come to appreciate the tang of a chili. They do have chilis, of course, but they all seem to be the mild variety. I grew up in a household like that: Mom thought that pepperoni was “too hot to eat” so we never ate it, or anything like it. Same with the French, although they do use Spanish chorizo on pizza.
  • Pepperoni. You might think that pepperoni is a basic Italian sausage, but it isn’t. In fact, pepperoni was invented by Italian immigrants in New York City. Yes, the most iconic pizza topping of them all is absent from French pizzarias, even though the pizza is, in general, pretty good.
  • Mac and Cheese. They do sell the stuff in boxes, but it ain’t Kraft, buddy. Not even close. Of course, you don’t have to miss Mac and Cheese if you learn to make your own, which, in fact, is pretty easy. Still, Kraft we don’t have. Sorry.
  • Hershey’s chocolate. It seems that people who didn’t grow up with Hershey’s chocolate tend not to like it, probably because it’s made with a different process from other chocolate products, a process that turns the milk ever so slightly, which is why Hershey’s tastes uniquely like Hershey’s. This extends to chocolate syrup for ice cream, where everyone “knows” that Hershey’s is the best of the lot. Oh, well.
  • Grabbing a quick lunch outside of fast food. Eating in France is an experience all its own. That banquet that we attended provided us with four hours of sequentially presented EIGHT courses! Yoiks! A “quick” lunch will run you about an hour, and many people take two, right out of their work day, to enjoy a leisurely lunch. Of course, if you go to Mickey Ds (McDo) you order from the screen and can leave as soon as you snarf down your food. Question is, for most of us most of the time, why do that? France is the second most popular country for McDonalds, by the way. Also the second biggest consumer of pizza per capita.

Some things you won’t have to miss include Snickers bars, Ben & Jerry’s, Hagen-Daszs, potato chips (not crisps, it says chips right on the bag), pretzels, burgers, hot dogs, pizza of course (Italian style, cooked hot and fast), paper towels, automobiles, freeways, toll roads, DIY stores (Bricos), supermarkets (even hypermarkets), movies (they always have showings of “VO” or version originale, with French subtitles of American films. You can ignore the subtitles.) And there’s more. The similarities, in fact, outweigh the differences.

I’ll do my best not to get the flu again, so I hope you’ll read on in my next post!

AU REVOIR

Categories
Culture Food France info Life

Home Again

This was our house the first time we looked at it. It actually looks the same as it did in the picture on the outside, except for our old Kia parked in front of it.

Kind of repeating a topic this time, but as this blog is intended to let whomever is interested in it to know about the experience of moving to France, it’s probably just the thing to do. I spent three months here (in this house) in the spring of 2022, and I moved here permanently in May of 2023. So I have actually lived in France for thirteen months now, and I do have some impressions.

First, it no longer seems at all odd. In fact, the way things happen here seems normal, and I’m not sure but that I’d need to do some adjusting if I were to move back to the US. Not that the US is bad, but it’s different. In France I am in the process of applying for a residence permit, which of course I’ll never need in the US. You ain’t seen bureaucracy until you’ve seen French bureaucracy! That said, they have a facility in the nearest sizeable town for the sole purpose of helping people find a way through the bureaucratic maze, and they were very nice, and very helpful, and I felt better when I left than I did when I went in. That, believe it or not, seems like a normal thing.

And the food really is better. Not just restaurant food, but food you make yourself. Europe doesn’t approve many additives in food, so the beef never had hormone treatments, nor antibiotics unless it was sick, and there is a lot less added sugar in, well, virtually everything, although sugary treats are quite easy to obtain, and not just weird Frenchie stuff, but Kit Kat bars, Snickers, Gummy Things, Nestles (naturally, as it’s a Swiss company,) plus pies and cakes and other dessert items. Even, occasionally, doughnuts that would sell in the US. Not all the time, but sometimes. But outside of the dessert aisles, the food is nutritious, and meats, in particular, taste better, and if you’re into veggies only (can be tougher in France) the legumes (vegetables) are extremely high in quality.

Streets and roads are not as wide as I was used to in Nevada. In fact, some country roads are just about wide enough for one car, and it’s not unusual for someone to have to pull into a side lane or entrance to a field to pass another vehicle. This is normal. Also, speeds are generally lower, although the Autoroutes (mostly toll roads) are beautifully maintained and have a speed limit of just above 80 mph. Every so often they catch somebody going 120 mph or so, but as enforcement is strict, that’s rare.

And I can speak some French. In my learning curve, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can see how much I don’t know. This is discouraging, but also encouraging. Sometimes I even understand what someone is saying to me, and I’ve had a few conversations that, I think, actually worked. So there’s that.

I hear my supper calling, so I’m signing off. Be sure to tune in for the next thrilling installment!

Categories
Culture France Life

Frenchified?

Inside Notre Dame de Paris, before the fire

Last weekend I went out walking with my dogs and found myself having an attack of Frankish resentment at an impolite encounter. The hunters were out (la chasse), in which some people stand by a road with shotguns while facing the woods, while others take their dogs, circle around to the other side of the woods, and attempt to chase out something for the folks by the road to shoot. The bush beaters have shotguns, too, so maybe the folks by the road are just backup. Anyway, as I’ve written a few times, in France, it is obligatoire to say bonjour to anyone you meet well enough to lock eyes with. Not saying bonjour is the height of bad manners. You might get away with no s’il vous plaît, no merci, or even no au revoir, but bonjour is not negotiable. One says that, or apologizes if one starts a conversation without doing so.

Anyway, on Sunday the mutts and I passed by a number of people standing along the road holding shotguns. I’m cool with guns, and none of these people looked like they were obsessed with their guns, which are, of course, a tool to use of you happen to want to kill your prey animals yourself. I’ve eaten some of the wild boar from around here, and it is probably worth shooting. It’s very good. Most of the people and I exchanged bonjours, although one man we so intent on the tree line that I don’t think he even knew we were passing. But there was one small group, a man and a woman, who I looked at, nodded at, and said bounour to each of, who just stared at me as I walked past. Now, I’ll admit, maybe they were strangers to France. Maybe from someplace like Denmark where, I’m told, saying hello before getting down to business is considered impolite. I admit, maybe they had their reasons, but, you know, I found their failure to say hello made me angry. I mean, how dare they? One always says hello, boor!

I wasn’t that angry. I didn’t say anything to them about it (they should know better anyway, right?) But I was surprised to find out that they sort of pissed me off by not responding. I’ve lived here a total of just about a year, counting three months in 2022, and apparently that’s enough to start soaking up local cultural norms. Who knows what’s next? You never know, I might start eating pizza and beer and cheeseburgers like I see a lot of French people doing. And there’s just no telling where that might lead! Or, seriously, it is interesting that I would react that way. You don’t formally greet everybody you happen to meet the eyes of in the US, do you? I didn’t, although I did always at least nod and maybe make some sort of sound.

I guess I’m just moving along the continuum toward being a judgmental twit, huh? Well, life’s a journey!

Categories
Culture France Healthcare

Sproing!

Springtime in Paris? Well, yes to be accurate.

The sound in the title of this post is spring, springing. Last month it was colder than heck for around here (I used to live in Minneapolis, don’t bother with examples of when it gets “really cold.”) Yesterday it was 65 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. The cranes (grue) have been flying north over Lizant. It’s actually rather pleasant, and not terribly cold even when it rains. This weather is premature, but I haven’t heard any complaints. Maybe next summer the weather will continue to smile upon us and it won’t get up to 30 degrees Celsius every other week like it did last year. Maybe.

My French is improving. I had my medical exam for my Titre de sejour, residence card, last Tuesday. So on Monday I had to drive to Poitiers, about an hour away, to go to a French equivalent of a county hospital to get a chest X-ray taken. Then on Tuesday morning I walked into what we’d call a “Class C office building” again in Poitiers, with uncertain lighting and disturbingly bland decor, at 9:25 in the morning. At 11:55 I walked out again, having had a six minute interview with a nurse, and a fifteen minute interview with a couple of doctors. I’m telling you here and now, if you want to live in a particular country, be sure to be born there. It’s a lot less aggravating. I’ve since applied online for my official “can you live in France?” interview, which should be easy enough to pass. I had to send them many of the same documents I had to send the agency that gives out visas. France has a huge bureaucracy, with many branches, and apparently no two branches do much effective communicating with each other. This is itself very encouraging, as a scary situation would be where you give your documents to just one office, and the entire government apparatus knows all about you. I tell myself that while awaiting another step in a bureaucratic dance.

Besides awaiting that appointment, I await eagerly my carte sanitaire, or health insurance card. French healthcare is priced according to income, and they do not include pensions. Our income being all pensions at the moment, it should be cheap enough, huh? I applied in October, sent further documentation in late December, and as soon as I receive the card I plan to visit my French doctor, if only because I promised those doctors in Poitiers that I would do so. I do believe that there is no way that one could overestimate the ubiquity of French bureaucracy. But, what the heck, I do like living here.

Speaking of which, I’m considering reviving my “Grumpy American Moves to France” YouTube channel. Please let me know if you’d be interested in such a thing. If you want to check out what it was a couple of years ago, click here: (483) A Grumpy American Moves to France – YouTube

Categories
Culture France

French Labor

A view from Montmartre. That’s a “high school” class visit walking past, in case you were wondering.

News today in France: It is very difficult to get to anywhere significant from anywhere significant as farmers are staging nationwide protests by blocking roads and Paris streets. The Autoroutes and National Roads (largely freeways) are affected, and the alternate routes are, shall we say, not so fast at the best of times. French people in general back the farmers, and also labor unions of all sorts.

Remember that last sentence. A majority of French citizens, while off put by the inconvenience, support the ideas behind the protests. A protest is called a manifestation, a union is called a syndicat. These protests are mostly organized by a group whose name translates as “Young Farmers’ Union.” If this sounds weird to American sensibilities, that’s just because it is, but you should know that most Europeans agree with the French people on this one. This is the weirdest thing about life in France, that labor unions are appreciated and respected. Yet, France is a capitalist country. France has the most productive economy in the European Union. France is the second largest food exporting country in the world after the US. But France, generally speaking, supports labor and farmers.

I’m not offering an opinion on this phenomenon in this post. I’m just pointing out something different about French and European society. I leave you to make what you will out of these simple facts. For me, this has little impact on my daily life. I’m retired, I live in a small village, and all the towns I need to get to are along side roads, but there are lots of people who are impacted in a major way. As Dorothy says to Toto, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, are we?

Categories
Culture France language

The French Languages

A Real Book. A Long History. Written in French. Sigh.

You may think I’m going to talk about dialects of French, and there certainly are a lot of them to consider. French is spoken as a native language in the Carribean, in Canada, in Africa, and in Polynesia plus some other places. But, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that, whatever dialect you speak, you probably will need to learn two French languages. Spoken French (not too awful) and Written French (too awful.)

To begin with, let me show you a few letter combinations you can write to represent the sound we call a “long A”.

è, é, ai, ait, er (on the end of a word), and several more if you can believe it. Now, about the plain old e. It’s a schwa (the linguists term for it) which means it’s just a generic vowel mostly considered unworthy of being pronounced, especially if it is at the end of a word. Chien, is pronounced sort of like shieh. It means Dog, masculine or just generically. Chiene is pronounced sort of like “she-en” and means Dog, feminine. Many times, a vowel with an e on the end of it is the feminine form of an otherwise masculine word. If you see an unaccented e on the end of a word, never pronounce it. If you do, the members of Richlieu’s Academy will probably come threaten you with their swords, and maybe send you to their secret jail somewhere. (Kidding)

French, like English, changes verb forms depending on who’s doing it. I run, you run, he runs, that sort of thing. They run, easy enough. In French that phrase looks like ils courent. The word “to run” is courer. Keep up, now. To run sounds like “Cou-ray”. I run sounds like “Cour” (there is an s on the end of the word.) courent sonds just like cours. Yep, ent means absolutely nothing to how one pronounces the word in French, but it absolutely must be put there if you’re writing it out. L’academie français, founded by that famous Cardinal Richlieu, keeps a tight grip on written French. But, being a free country, French people say whatever they want to.

For example, if you take French, they’ll tell you that “I don’t know” is Je ne sais pas. Sounds sort of like Zhe nay say pah. But, forget that. Write it, but in speaking it, I kid you not, what comes out sounds a lot like Zhay Pah. In French, even under current rules, you could write that out as J’ai pas, but don’t ever do that, or the ghost of every retired French grammar teacher will haunt you to your grave. (J’ai pas, by the way, could be translated as “I have nothing.” That would even work, wouldn’t it?)

This, then, is a warning. study your academic French well. You’ll need that, if only to fill out government paperwork (or to read government paperwork) but remember to speak the way French people do, in what is, pretty much, an entirely different language.

Categories
Culture France memoir

Je Vais à Disneyland !

This is the plaza outside the entrance to Disney Parks, Paris photo by the author

That picture was taken on January 7, 2024, 25 kilometers East of Paris Centre-Ville. Yep, Disneyland Paris (and Walt Disney Studios) in January. Had a pretty good time, considering the weather, which kept getting colder as time passed. The feels like temperature got as low as 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Our puffy, cold-climate worthy coats never arrived from Nevada. Lined raincoats are good, but maybe not good enough. At least I had earmuffs!

It was the final day of the Holidays at Disney

his tree is just inside Disneyland, or was, that is. Disneyland is the same place, only different. Have another picture or two:

Top: Main Street; Bottom Frontierland

You’ll notice the Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland. There is also a Mississippi steamboat, a really lame walk-through called “The Real Wild West,” restaurants, and maybe in summer those canoes, but I can’t say for sure. On Main Street you’re looking at the Emporium, which will be familiar if you’ve ever been to a Disneyland Magic Kingdom.

Amazingly, this park is 30 years old as of last year. (Guess that makes it 31 years old this year, huh?)

For lunch we found a place serving turkey legs with frites (fries, sorry) and soft drinks, and we ate outside. A bit cool, but not bad yet.

We got there at about noon, so after lunch we went on “It’s a Small World.”

I thought that the French were experts with topiary. This is one of the exhibits outside of the “Small World” entrance. Maybe I was wrong?

It hasn’t changed much since 1965, but here there is a small “American” section, consisting of a couple of NFL fans and the Hollywood sign in a high alcove. The default language, as in all of this park, is of course French. Most attractions also present in English.

This was the first Disney attraction I ever rode on, in 1965, Flushing Meadows, New York. It still gets me every time because it makes me feel the way I felt in 1965, which was excellent, and born of sheer naiveté. After this, we went looking for Tomorrowland.
Which isn’t there. Instead, we found Discoveryland, a Jules Verne themed area.

You can put Deepl/Google away. It says, “Whatever is within the limits of possibility is and will be accomplished.” It’s been trendy of late to credit Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, with inventing Science Fiction, but hers was more of speculative/fantasy. Verne was an educator, and you can learn the state of scientific knowledge of his time by reading his books. He invented classical Science Fiction, later developed by Asimov, Heinlein, and their peers. France is justly proud of what he accomplished.

Here’s an photo of Discoveryland:

It has Hyperspace Mountain, a Spiderman web-shooting ride, and some things that looked frankly worthy of le vomit!

Well, we were back the next day, and it was 5 below zero Celsius, which is 23 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too cold for a lined raincoat, but that’s what we had. We spent the morning on a couple of attractions, including a roller coaster in the dark (bad idea for an old guy) and a space adventure ride (Star Tours, for which they made a new script, bless them.)

That’s the roller coaster in the dark, Avengers themed. Heck, go for it

We went back to the hotel and sat in a hot tub for a couple of hours, coming back for dinner at Captain Jack’s, right next to Pirates of the Caribbean. Same song, a bit longer ride. Captain Jack’s serves good seafood, and takes a couple of hours to do it. Hey, it is a French restaurant!

Pirates of the Carribean is longer, but still has Captain Sparrow in it. It has not been edited to fit contemporary American tastes, so the wife sale is still on.

Captain Jack’s. Note how those people are dressed. They did a good business in character themed fuzzy hats!

After that we went back to the hotel. On the way our, we caught a bit of the final Holiday Parade of the season:

The next day, tired of freezing in Disney, we went into the city (Paris) and discovered that we needed to have advance tickets for Saint Chappelle, so to stop freezing in Paris, we had a most excellent steak dinner for lunch, went back to the hotel, and ate complementary beverages and snacks until it was time to return to the station to catch our train (more or less) home. I leave you with the following photograph of what was happening weather-wise as we waited for the shuttle to the station:

The snow stuck to the streets, even. It did not snow in Lizant until the next afternoon. It all melted the day after that.

One big difference between France and the US is that we live five hours by car (on excellent roads with 80 mph speed limits) from Disneyland Paris, but the train from Poitiers gets there in about two hours. Nice. (Yeah, Poitiers is an hour away, but that’s still two hours faster, innit?) If you like Disney stuff, I recommend these parks. But, if we go back, it will most likely be in May or October. I’m tired of being cold, folks!

Categories
Culture Food France

French Food

MENU

  • French Bread
  • French Fries
  • French Dressing
  • French Toast

Joke aside, French Fries are just called “fries” and anyway they’re originally Belgian. This week I’m writing about restaurants. Nothing specific, just in general. You can get fast food here. within an hour of where I sit, ten minutes in the case of McDonalds, you can find McDo (as it’s called locally), Burger King, and KFC. Unfortunately, it’s not a great McDo, as they rarely do the fries right. But I want to discuss “real” restaurants, which are anything but fast.

One thing an American will notice about a French restaurant is that they do not play background music. I believe that originally this was supposed to calm customers, but I think that these days it may serve to help in turnover. That is, it raises the noise level and makes it less pleasant to sit in the dining room. This is true even in upscale restaurants. In France, restaurants are supposed to be quiet enough for a table to converse without raising their voices. With nobody raising voices, this actually works. However, the noisiest restaurant I’ve been to in Paris was made noisy by a table full of drunken Parisians. So, I’m talking general guidelines here, not hard fast rules. As an American visiting France, be aware that we Americans do talk loudly when dining out and, you know, don’t.

There is a rule to remember: Keep Your Hands Visible above the table. This runs counter to American etiquette, so beware. You can even rest on your elbows, but avoid hiding your hands. If your hands aren’t visible, people will wonder what you’re up to. (Insert joke here.)

Nobody will ever hover around making a fuss and asking you if everything is okay. In fact, if you want service, you have to wave down your server. I’ll be honest, I prefer the French method, although it can be frustrating if your server is out of the room, which they sometimes are, of course. You will be seated normally and given menus, and likely asked what you’d like to drink. There’s nothing unusual about the drinks selection, except there aren’t free refills, which has never been a problem for me, but worth remembering. Your server will bring the drinks and ask if you’re ready to order. (So far the same, huh?) Often the Plat du Jour is worth looking at. We’ve had some great meals with the dish of the day. But, order whatever you want. In touristy areas you’ll probably get a menu in English that you may not even have to ask for. Once you’ve ordered, your server will disappear, maybe dropping off some bread. You may get an entree (starter) then other pre-main course items, depending on what you order. But, it may take a while between courses. We had lunch in a nearby village last week and were there almost two hours. But the food was delicious.

Delicious, but not spicy hot. French people prefer subtle flavors to spicy dishes. We had amazingly bland Mexican one time in Paris. Excellent otherwise, but begging for some Pace Picante. (There are some places to get authentic Indian, Mexican (Qudoba no less), and Middle Eastern food.)

Take your time eating. You’ll be left alone to enjoy your meal. Servers in France are considered professionals and paid a living wage. They have no need to grovel for tips. They’re off doing their job serving others at different phases of their meals, and are available to you any time you call them over. Traditionally, a cheese course follows the main course and precedes dessert. It’s a free country, you don’t have to take the cheese, but there are some excellent ones around and, as a tourist, you might want to try a few. For me, I go straight to dessert, which is usually excellent. Most recently I had a créme brulé, which is custard with sugar sprinkled on top which is then scorched with a small blowtorch. You think I’m kidding? Ask your server. They will have pastry, custards, maybe tartes (pies) all in smaller portions than you may be used to, but usually very good.

Speaking of those smaller portions, you will rarely be given too much food. In the US it’s common to have portions dripping off of the plate, which doesn’t happen in France, in my experience. But the food will be delicious. I’ve had excellent steaks, what are scalloped potatoes, vegetables of various sorts, some wonderful desserts, top-notch entrées (appetizers) and, sad to say, occasionally some lousy food, but that’s rare.

The big difference between eating out in the US and in France is that in France, even in a crowded restaurant, one can usually have a conversation using ones “inside” voice. In fact, that’s generally expected. And, the meal is never rushed. You can, of course, eat in a hurry and rush off, but that will surprise everybody. (If perchance you do have to eat in a hurry, tell your server as you’re seated, and you will be accommodated, at least in my experience.) And the portions will be what you can eat, not set up to appear as massive as possible. Contrary to what I’ve read elsewhere, boxes are provided if you can’t finish it all anyway. So, allow a couple of hours (French people do), use a quiet voice, remember to call your server over if you need service (even to get the bill, or addition.) In tourist-frequented areas (Paris for sure) you can probably get a menu in British English (close enough) and the server will probably know at least enough English to do their job in that language.

And, above all, enjoy the food!
If you liked the service, leave a Euro or two on the table. Forget 20%!