01 July 2012

Why we like France: part 1

Civilised. Everyone greets everyone as you pass. Bon jour as you go into a shop/cafe, Au 'voir as you leave. People are generally gracious about giving way, both in cars and on foot, in narrow streets and lanes. They listen patiently to bad ungrammatical French, and most have better English than our French. Waiters, waitresses, even the check out operators in supermarkets are friendly and helpful.

Architecture. At least in the areas where we have been there is no ugly suburban architecture, or urban sprawl. New French houses look just like their older counterparts, which can be as old as thirteenth century. Old houses are either stone or render, new ones rendered (probably brick underneath). Roofs are red tile or grey slate. It makes the towns and villages a bit monochrome, but at least your sensibilities aren't jarred by stores painted bright purple, pink or aqua, or by modern buildings with no symmetry and hitler-salute excrescences. The larger towns do have industrial areas, ZI Zone Industrielle or ZAC, Zone Activities Commerciales. The former contain factories making stuff, the latter large retailers selling stuff, the equivalent of Bunnings, or Harvey Norman, etc. But they are discreetly placed on the outskirts of the cities and towns, and usually in bland inoffensive buildings,

Absence of unnecessary competition. There is never more than one of anything, not like Australia where there are rival petrol stations or supermarkets on opposite corners. If it has anything at all, a village has one epicerie, one boulangerie-patisserie, one bar-tabac.

Minimal signage of all kinds. Locks have deep drops on either side of the lock walls and machinery you can trip over. But there are no railings, no protective covers, no warning signs (except on one very deep lock, a small picture of a falling cat). Tie up points for the boat are marked with a P or with a small picture of a bollard with rope attached. Villages may have a small sign for the bakery or grocery, but that's it. No neon, no Coca Cola ads. There are name signs at either end of every village which are slow down signs by default. When you are on an open road, you are supposed to know what the speed limit is, there aren't constant signs. It's simple: ordinary roads 90 kph, divided roads 110 kph, motorways 130kph in fine weather, 110kph in the wet. In any town or village, 50kph, occasionally there are 30kph signs if the streets are narrow. Parking signs are also minimal, usually just indicating that you can or you can't park, with small additional signs when you need to take a ticket. Most intersection control is via roundabout, again with minimal signage. Traffic lights are so discreet compared with Australia that you have to watch carefully to make sure you don't miss them (no overhead gantries). But it all just works, to the extent that we rarely had problems knowing what we could and coudn't do in the car, or in finding things we were looking for. Our only gripe is that there are no distances on signposts to villages or places of interest. Doesn't matter so much when you are driving but when walking or biking it would be nice to know if a restaurant is 0.2km down the road or 2.0km.

Cycling is a national sport. At first we were nervous cycling on busy roads with no verges, but rapidly realised that the French motorist accepts cyclists as normal, and simply waits behind you at cyclist speed (in our case, pretty slow), until there is room to pull out and overtake. Would that Australian drivers were that considerate.

France is beautiful. They don't call it La Belle France for nothing. (Thinks: does anyone talk about Die Schone Deutschland? Or even La Bella Italia). France finds it easy being green. Particularly if you are looking at it from the middle of a river, France is just so green, and so many shades of green. The scenery here is quite grand with cliffs cut out by the river, but also has typical rural views of wheat fields, orchards, vineyards. All the villages are picturesque to some degree, some stunningly so. There are summer flowers everywhere, roses, begonias, petunias, geraniums, breaking up the greys and fawns of the stone and render on the houses. Taking photos almost seems a waste of time: if it's rural fields and villages Cezanne did it better, and if it's any scene with water in it, then you're competing with Monet and Manet.

The bells, the bells. Every village has a mairie, with a clock tower, and at least one church. Church bells ring every now and then, just a single bell note repeated, not changes as in England, and the town clocks strike the hour and half hour. When they strike the hour, they do it twice, with a short pause between. We have yet to find out why. My theory is that it is just one more example of French practicality, they strike twice in case you lost count the first time round and are now unsure whether it is (say) nine or ten.

Food & wine. Requires a post all of its own. Coming soon.

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