You learn a lot from the locals, but you get that everywhere you go.
I met up with a friend from Australia - Lissie, this evening. She moved back here as a COVID refugee, with her daughter during the days when you could barely get a flight out of the country after her work let her go and there were few places to turn. Three years on, she's settled back into life in Paris, her daughter is in school in the South and life is okay.
It was wonderful to spend time with her.
I asked her what she missed about Australia.
Here are a couple of things which made the list.
1. Salad. The French don't do salad. Not an Australian salad, with all of the great things you find in a salad, be it tomatoes, or cucumbers, or gherkins, or you name the vegetable, you will find it in a salad in Australia, you're not going to find it here.
"Salad is lettuce here. You have been warned.
We had dinner at this little Korean joint down on the rue de Lancry, about five minutes from the hotel and we were discussing the vegetarian option, which were there, but limited. Thankfully our one vegetarian ate fish - so we were good to go.
"How do you not do salad?" asked Ginny, the third person to our party.
"Salad is not a thing."
2. Customer Service
I have been pleasantly surprised by the customer service in France to date. Yes, I have one of those ingratiating natures which makes me be pleasant to retail staff, but according to Lissie, the service staff can be very rude indeed. She told me of how a shop assistant told her off for trying on too pairs of shoes. That she wanted to buy a couple of pairs of shoes doesn't matter. Lissie let the sale slide thanks to the rudeness of the staff.
Thankfully, I've not had that experience. Thankfully, the service staff haven't been rude or fawning, but they've been efficient. Walking into a shop and saying. "Bonjour", helps a lot. It's polite.
3. Clean streets.
What they don't tell you about Paris, it may be pretty, but it sure aint clean. Probably not made much better by the fact that it's pretty warm and it feels like it's overdue for a good rain shower or two.
There's an old adage about Napoleon, the old emperor here. He was coming home from a battle when he sent word to Josephine via an advanced courier. The message went along the lines of. "I'm coming home. Don't bathe."
It doesn't bear thinking about.
Well, just as Napoleon didn't want Josephine to wash, nobody wants to wash the streets of Paris. There's a bit more rubbish about, the cigarette butts, the persistent smell of urine from the blokes who piss against the down pipes, the dog shit.... the list goes on.
Can they do anything about it? Probably not, there'd be a greve (strike) over it. I see it as part of Paris's charm. And I will never take for granted the clean streets of Melbourne or Adelaide again.
4. Swearing
Lissie lived in Australia for twenty years before moving back here. Her partner was from Glasgow. Lissie can swear.
The French don't really swear - not like Australians.
We had a good chat about semantics. It seems about the worst thing you can call somebody around here is a dirty whore.
We had a good chuckle about how Australians swear, which is a nuanced, inclusive and completely bizarre part of our identity.
The French don't really have a good, acceptable way of saying 'Fuck off.". "Va te faire foutre" doesn't feel as good in the mouth.
It doesn't have the same adjectival connotations either.
5. Television.
French television, as in the terrestrial television, is fucking awful.
Australian terrestrial television has SBS and the ABC. Quality programming. You're not going to find that in France, at all. It's either reality television or game shows. I did get to see about five minutes of the French version of Bake Off, but that was about it. Most of the French subscribe to streaming services. There is really nothing to watch.
As a side note, Ginny, who has never been to Europe before, said that in watching French television, she could appreciate what we have.
Seeing Lissie was one of the joys of this French trip. I think she was as happy to see me, as I was her.
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