Dave Hinz (in ) said:

| Well, it's not like they don't continue to do staggeringly stupid
| things over and over. And my knowledge is based on personal
| experience with several trips to France; I'm not just repeating
| what I've heard when I say that Paris is beautiful but smells
| awful, for instance. I'm also not just parroting something I've
| read or heard when I say that the French were astonishingly rude,
| both in Paris and Calais.

I've heard this from other visitors; and admit that I felt a certain
trepidation about traveling to France. I'd been told to expect a cold
rudeness and that I could expect to be looked down upon if I couldn't
speak French well (I don't.)

I've never cared much for major metroplexes. I appreciate what they
have to offer; and recognize that those offerings are only possible
because of their size and confluence of influences - but there have
only ever been two that I've been able to really like: Copenhagen and
Philadelphia. At one time Beirut would have been a third (although
it's never approached the sizes of these others). I'm certain that my
choices have much more to do with my own personality than with the
cities themselves - and with the fact that I grew up in a place where
a city with 40,000 people was considered huge. I was prepared to add
Paris to the list of cities that I really didn't much care for.

I guess I should add that I'm /not/ a good tourist. I burned out on
cathedrals and castles and relics of the distant past a half century
ago. My view is that most of the things that good tourists flock to
are much more easily seen in high-quality photographs and videos.
Certain places seem to demand that visitors present themselves - Paris
would seem to have more of these than many other cities - and I
dutifully paid my respects to a reasonable number of these.

But I'm much more interested in /people/ and how the way people in one
place see the world differently than people in other places - and I'm
interested in /why/ those differences exist. My visit to France was to
satisfy curiosity about its people and to discover anything at all
that might help me to broaden my horizons a bit.

I visited in September and October and it didn't smell awful. It
smelled better than Chicago when I was last in the Windy City. Perhaps
time of year or prevailing wind make a difference; and perhaps I was
just lucky.

I decided before I left that I would not, under any circumstances,
initiate the use of English in any converstation with the French -
that I would accept the embarassment of being a lousy linguist - and
that no one would be able to say that I didn't at least try to speak
their language. There were a few Frenchmen who did actually ask me to
speak English (/that/ was embarrasing!) but the rest were patient and
encouraging. The expected condecision for not being able to speak the
language well just wasn't there.

Early on (at the airport, actually), I noticed that the French
casually practiced formal manners with each other and with travelers.
Please, thank you, pardon me, bon jour (easily translated as "good
day" but used more generally than we'd say g'day), sir, madam, all
seemed to be truly important elements of dialog - more so than I was
used to. I mentally shrugged and greeted the customs inspector with a
smile and "Bonjour monsieur" - and was dumbfounded when he returned
the smile and the greeting. I can count on one finger the number of
times (out of at least a hundred) that a customs inspector has opened
with a smile and he was it. It was a strong clue, I got it, and it
served me well. I paid attention and noticed that people who opened by
stating their business (without smile and greeting) seemed to be
treated as if they'd "dissed" the person they were talking to. Mom was
right - manners /do/ matter - and the challenge is to pick up on the
nuances that aren't quite the same as back home.

I discovered that eye contact is also important; and that if you
/don't/ maintain good eye contact you can miss out on some really fun
stuff. This post is already too long; but one of my best memories of
Paris is an eye-contact episode that peripherally involved a ham and
cheese sandwich (pun intended).

| And, though I didn't write the line at the top of this post, I agree
| with it. Among the many categories that the French are useless,
| military ability ranks pretty high. They're great, though, at
| building open-air urinals, I'll give 'em that.

I didn't hang out with French troops. My XBIL trained French NATO
pilots to fly the F15E and he said their combat pilots were as good as
any he'd trained...

In a final effort to rediscover topicality, I'd like to announce that
my French vocabulary word for this week is /atelier(m)/ - workshop.
Mine was 95F this afternoon. I hope yours is cooler.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/solar.html