Archive
French bureaucracy is difficult for French people too. The paperwork, the missing document, the second visit. Nobody finds it easy, and comp...
The baguette is regulated: a baguette de tradition may contain only flour, water, salt and yeast, and must be made on the premises. French p...
Repair, not replace. French heritage law is strict, and living in a two-hundred-year-old apartment with its original floors is unremarkable ...
The weekly market is where a French town sees itself. It is a fixed day, it has run for centuries in some places, and it functions as much a...
The initial answer to a request in France is frequently no, and it is not final. It is the opening of a negotiation, and accepting it as a v...
French food law protects place: an appellation defines where something may be made, from what, and how. The claim is that a product cannot b...
One weekend each September, buildings normally closed to the public open their doors: ministries, private houses, the Elysee. Millions of pe...
Everything restarts in the first week of September: schools, politics, publishing, cultural seasons, gym memberships. The rentree litteraire...
French secularism is an active principle that keeps religion out of state space rather than a neutral absence of interest. It is taught, arg...
An unprompted smile at a stranger in France reads as either a mistake or an approach. It is not coldness: the greeting does the work that a ...
Asking what someone earns, or what they paid for their flat, is a serious breach in France. Money is private in a way that politics, health ...
Book prices are fixed by law, so a novel costs the same in a chain, an independent and online. The result is that France still has around 3,...
French cities empty and the coasts and villages fill. Whole quarters of Paris go quiet, and the country accepts a month of reduced function ...
French commerce de proximite survives: a butcher, a baker, a cheesemonger, a greengrocer within walking distance. Shopping is several short ...
French cinema resists resolution. Ambiguity is treated as honest rather than unsatisfying, and a film that answers all its questions is rega...
Laptops on French cafe tables remain uncommon outside a few districts. The terrace is for watching, talking and reading, and working there r...
Public protest in France is a normal instrument of negotiation rather than a breakdown of it. It is expected, largely tolerated, and both si...
Every French school leaver, whatever their track, sits a four-hour philosophy exam. The subjects are published in the papers and argued abou...
Disagreement at a French table is a form of engagement, not conflict. Debating a point with a guest is how you signal you take them seriousl...
A French cafe terrace is rented time, not a table you must earn with orders. One coffee buys an hour, chairs face the street rather than eac...
You say bonjour on entering any shop, lift or waiting room, to everyone present. Omitting it is the single most common foreign error in Fran...
Most French shops are shut on Sunday and it is protected in law. The argument that won was not religious but social: a shared day off is onl...
On 21 June, anyone may play music anywhere in France, free, without a permit. It has run since 1982 and has been copied in over a hundred co...
France has a legal "right to disconnect." Employers cannot expect email responses outside work hours. The weekend is not an extension of the...
In France, aging is not something to fight. It is something to inhabit. French women do not chase their twenties. They develop personal styl...
In France, a lively disagreement over dinner is not conflict. It is sport. The French education system trains students in rhetoric and debat...
Sunday in France is structurally different. Most shops are closed. Families gather. The market opens early. Lunch is long. The afternoon is ...
France has a law that protects independent bookstores from online discounting. Books hold cultural status. The French read for pleasure, not...
The French have a concept called "flaner": to stroll without purpose. Sitting in a cafe watching people pass. Reading a book in the park wit...