Paris, FRANCE. November, 1998. Here are some things you may not know about France:
1. At any given time half the cars in Paris are going backwards. This phenomenon must have something to do with one-way streets, traffic jams on narrow streets, hard-to-find parking places, or simply tourists getting lost. But the point is clear: check both ways before crossing a one-way street. You're just as likely to get run over by the guy backing down a one-way street as you are by the guy driving up.
2. The most awful place to live in Paris--or anywhere in France--is the dreaded "suburbs." Banlieue, in French. As in the headlines, "Teenagers attack RER train in the banlieue" or "Banlieue crime rates approach those of New York City." Beginning many years ago urban planners started to spruce up Paris. They cleared the slums, and reduced the population from almost three million to something less than two million. The displaced Parisians-- troublemakers who come from the French Caribbean (Martinique, Guadeloupe) or Northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia) according to BBC radio--were banished to the banlieue. As a result suburban living has a bad name.
3. The French are robust eaters, especially in the countryside. I would have expected dainty, fussy eaters, eaters who slowly pass every ingredient, in every sauce, across their palate before swallowing. Not true. The French attack their food. They rip bread, eat hunks of cheese with their hands, wolf down deserts. They never wait until everyone is served; that would be an insult to the chef. Rather, they have the fork in the air before the waiter puts the plate down.
4. On weekdays the subways come along every two minutes or so, sometimes more often. If any other city has such fast, reliable service I haven't seen it. I can't imagine what this system costs but, man, is it great.
5. The French push if you block an aperture and they must get through: a firm, steady hand on the shoulder to move you out of the way. Guards or police do this most often, but I've seen regular folks do it, too. I find this comforting. I like the physical contact. Generally, though, tourists who encounter the push go postal. "Get your hands off me!"
6. The behavioral characteristic the French hate most: ambition. It's okay to inherit wealth, or win the lottery, or get lucky. You couldn't help it, it wasn't your fault. But if you actually want to get ahead, to create a better life for yourself and your family, to work a little harder in order to have a little more, you're a serious menace to the French way of life. All the resources of the French bureaucracy will be employed to stop you.
7. The French go hunting. On a trip through Normandie one Sunday morning, in several places I saw groups of hunters encircling fields. Dogs would scare up game, and each hunter in turn would shoot. The idea is to shoot up, where the birds are, rather than across, where the other hunter are. Even so, Monday morning French radio tells of serious hunting accidents. I was told that, before the revolution, only the nobility could hunt. Commoners caught hunting were subject to the death penalty. The French won the right to hunt in the revolution. They aim to keep it, no matter how many people get killed in the crowded countryside on Sunday mornings.
8. The French smoke. Everyone, all the time. More than anyplace else in the world. Women and girls, men and boys, children beginning at age 12 or 13.
9. The French pay workers who go on strike. The right to strike is another important right the French won in their revolutions. The way the French look at it, the right to strike is meaningless if one doesn't get paid while doing it. So voila!, strikers here--government strikers, anyway--collect their paycheck, uninterrupted, during strikes.
10. For an equivalent unit of national product, the U.S. consumes about four times more energy than the French. Reason: energy in the U.S. is cheap, in France it's expensive. This energy gap has been growing in recent years, not shrinking as you might expect, mainly because of the high cost of air conditioning in those new houses in the fast-growing U.S. Sunbelt.
11. Finally, a bonus surprise: the French charge T.V.A., or value added tax, on everything, including other taxes. So, for example, my electric bill comes loaded with "local taxes" plus T.V.A. on these local taxes. Hard to think of a local tax as "value added," but then I'm not a French bureaucrat.