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Published: August 19th 2014
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Despite what many of you will know about me and my thoughts on camping, I'm currently lying in a sleeping bag inside a tent in a campsite in France. I can hear the rain dropping down onto the roof as I lay here trying to get to sleep. Someone told me once that camping is meant to reset your body's natural body-clock, but I must be an exception to the rule. I can hear the snuffled sounds of my brother and nephews as they are sleeping, but I'm still awake at 00:30. Normally I fall asleep whilst watching TV, but I haven't got one here, so I've been trying to fall sleep whilst watching a few videos I've got on my phone, but the resources are limited. For the past three nights I've twice watched the Christmas episode of Father Ted which I downloaded for free last year.Nevertheless, I'm having a real good time here in France with my brother and nephews. We did a similar camping trip two years ago in Brittany, so we thought we would try again for
another successful trip. It feels weird that in several months I will be living and working in this country; but I really can't wait. I've loved France as a country for years and everything about it makes me smile. From the italic-style font on the French road signs to the omnipresent pharmacies on every street corner -all of this appeals to me. It's for all these reasons why I keep coming back. There are, however, still things about France which I don't understand; even after tri-annual visits to the place. I have compiled a list below of them, and I hope any of you who have been to France will be able to relate to them, or maybe even help me answer them.
1) Where are all the French people? My eldest brothers ask me this question all the time, and it is my year-abroad goal to find the answer to it. If you drive through the UK and pass through a town, you will see people. You will see people walking their dogs, waiting at bus stops, going for a jog (and if you're from where I live, probably having a loud argument in the middle
of the street). If you're in France, you will not see this. As you drive/walk along the road, you will pass houses- houses with cars in the driveways, houses with neatly pruned gardens, houses with "Attention aux chiens" signs on the gate; but there will be no people. It is like that nuclear bomb test site at the start of Indiana Jones 4, but with a whole country acting as the fake town. The cars stay parked in the driveways, the gardens empty of gardeners and no barking "chiens" to beware of. This is one of my main worries about living in France, because I'm going to be in a small town in a mountainous region, so if a town near Paris where I am now is so silent, what will my year-abroad destination be like? So yes, France is quite deserted. I like to think that there are actually only 10 people in the French race of people, and they all have to run around the country pretending it is busy.
2) Why do they all drive white French-branded cars? I've noticed this quite a lot on my recent trips to France. They all love a good white car (with a few compulsory dents and scrapes), and they love their national car industry. Most French people seem to drive Peugeots or Renaults (I've seen less Citroëns, maybe because they've become too international), although the German Audi seems to make an odd appearance every now and then. It's a funny little part of French culture, that they admire solidarity and that they want to be the same. I hope I fit in in France with my white car (although it is a Japanese make, so I hope they don't see this as an insult and purposefully scrape by my car).
3) Why are the majority of shops, apart from the pharmacies, never open?Thanks to the good old hypochondriac that is France, the pharmaceutical industry is booming. Maybe this is the reason why the other shops don't need to open. I really don't understand this bit of France, and it is shops' opening times. In the UK, you will be hard-pushed to find a closed shop in the middle of a high streeton a Tuesday morning . In France, you're more likely to find Nigel Farage in an "I HEART MULTICULUTRALISM" t-shirt than a street of available commerce. It's currently peak holiday-maker season in France, and no-where is open. We had to drive 30 minutes to find an open supermarket yesterday, and whilst visiting a huge chateau today (which would have been exploited to the max by the UK tourism board), not a single shop was open (apart from a strange antique shop with a watery-eyed dog as host). I suppose we should congratulate France for not buying (pardon the pun) into this whole consumerism/exploitation-of-national-identity business, but I think at least opening the local corner shop on a Monday morning isn't too much to ask, is it?
4) Why are the shop assistants so insistent that you give them the correct change?If you are lucky enough to find an open shop in France, you may face this dilemma. At the end of a transaction, the shop assistant will tell you the total of your purchases, and nine times out of ten they will out rightly ask for the correct change (or at least the correct cents). I bought a book once from a woman who wouldn't let me have it until I paid her the correct seventy-nine cents. I don't know if the French banks aren't as willing to hand out change like they are in the UK, but this is something to watch out for in French shops. Back home, it's perfectly normal to use a twenty-pound note for a £4.00, but you're mighty adventurous (or maybe just an ignorant tourist) if you try doing that in Carrefour.
So, I hope that when I move France, I will be able to solve some of these mysteries. Or I might just become part of it myself: shun society, lock myself in my house, only to come out for a quick visit to the pharmacy, where I will pay the shop assistant with the correct change.
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