France Is Cool
France is cool. It’s mostly French people talking to each other in French. Totally normal like that.
Sometimes French people talk to you in French not knowing that you speak English and not French. Then they speak to you in English like they knew you didn’t speak French all along.
The biggest problem with not speaking French is that you never know when French people are speaking French to you.
France has teenagers. A lot of them. They mostly just say “ça va” to each other over and over again.
Everyone in France eats a lot of sandwiches. Their sandwiches are pretty good. But they’re different from our sandwiches. You have to bite into French sandwiches about 3 or 4 times before you get a mouthful of anything other than bread. Some people say the French are lazy, but they work really hard at eating a sandwich.
An actual joke told by a Frenchman: “Would you like water or wine? In France it is all the same…”
In France a lot of people walk their dogs off leash. French people without dogs don’t seem to mind. I didn’t get any dogs in France to tell me how they felt about walking without a leash.
France has a pretty good national anthem, La Marseillaise. But whenever a song by the French recording artists Daft Punk is played, all French people are obliged to rise, remove their berets and put their hands over their hearts and sing along.
I spent 8 days in France. I never saw a single beret.
Men in France wear shorts. But a lot of them do it just to confound our expectations.
Along France’s Mediterranean coast, even the views from the parking lot aren’t bad.
Everyone in France wishes you’d drive a little faster.
At the airport in Paris, there’s a restaurant called “Frenchy’s Bistro.” Probably don’t eat there.
As you depart France, you will feel a certain sense of relief once you realize that you will no longer need to incoherently mutter “bonjour” or “merci” or “perdon” to strangers.