Les Halles (Paris)

Right before going to France, I had a dis­cus­sion with an Amer­i­can friend of mine. His par­ents had been to Paris many years ago and remem­bered French peo­ple as pretty rude folks. I wasn’t sur­prised nor offended because it is a pretty com­mon stereo­type on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Japan­ese travel a lot and take pic­tures, Chi­nese kick ass at math tests, British have bad teeth, Aus­tralians wres­tle croc­o­diles down under… you’ve heard them all before.

I entered France with my Cana­dian pass­port and I decided to become a woman with a mis­sion. I was going to find out if French were rude. Who else could bet­ter find out the dirty truth about French than a for­mer French?

About an hour after set­ting foot in my for­mer coun­try, I was ready to say yes. As soon as the plane landed, you could tell the French return­ing back home from the Cana­di­ans: the for­mer loudly rushed out of the plane while the later politely let each other go first. The same thing hap­pened at pass­port con­trol: for­tu­nately, there was a spe­cial line for U.E. pass­port hold­ers so all Euro­peans were able to com­plain together about the use­less­ness of Euro­pean policies.

I was still dazed and con­fused when I showed up at the train ticket booth in Roissy CDG. Yet, it was the kick I needed to find my French fight­ing spirit back. “The only tick­ets we have left are first class tick­ets”, claimed the bored employee. “For all the trains today?”, I retorted. “You didn’t say you wanted to leave today!” Feng watched me argu­ing and finally buy­ing the cheap­est tick­ets avail­able, slightly taken aback. “I’m not rude, honey, I’m just get­ting us tick­ets”. Les­son one: some­times you need to be a lit­tle bit rude assertive in order to get busi­ness done in France.

I soon remem­bered some­thing I had for­got­ten: French always seem to go by two rules. 1) There is never enough for every­body 2) The sys­tem hates you and is screw­ing you. Case in point, pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Peo­ple board the subway/bus/train the way Chi­nese peo­ple do: they queue ver­ti­cally and rush inside, grab a seat and defend their ter­ri­tory. When we arrived at the ter­mi­nal to take the local regional bus to St Michel, about 25 peo­ple were already wait­ing. As soon as the bus arrived, peo­ple crowded together at the door. Feng and I looked at each other, slightly bemused. In Canada, the Grey­hound is some­time very busy and there isn’t enough room for every­body – that’s no prob­lem, another bus is brought in to accom­mo­date the extra pas­sen­gers. “I got you seats”, called my grand-mother, who had already fought her way to the bus front door. You should have seen the last few pas­sen­gers fight! Because indeed, not all of us were able to board the bus, and the next one was sched­uled… the fol­low­ing day.

But this “French are rude” stereo­type is mostly just a big cul­tural mis­un­der­stand­ing. First, a lot of for­eign­ers’ bad expe­ri­ences with the French hap­pen in Paris. In big­ger cities, peo­ple usu­ally mind their own busi­ness and may have less patience with tourists. Imag­ine being asked every sin­gle day where Notre Dame and the Eif­fel Tower is!

Sec­ond, the body lan­guage is dif­fer­ent in France. For instance, French don’t smile as much as Amer­i­cans and they cer­tainly don’t smile unless they mean it. I per­son­ally found these perky cof­fee shop baris­tas annoy­ing when I first came to Canada, because I could tell they were not sin­cere, they were just told to smile and sound upbeat to please customers.

Finally, the notion of per­sonal space is dif­fer­ent in France. Instead of the reg­u­lar North American’s arm’s length of per­sonal space, you may find peo­ple squeez­ing you and even — gasp! — inad­ver­tently bump into you or touch you in crowded areas. Don’t be offended… it’s just the way it is.

I even­tu­ally devel­oped a the­ory: French peo­ple are not rude, they just defend their ter­ri­tory and tend to be dis­trust­ful at times. How­ever, they are extremely friendly and gen­er­ous with those close to them, such as fam­ily and friends. On the other hand, Cana­di­ans tend to be polite and treat strangers bet­ter. But they value their pri­vacy and per­sonal space and are more reserved, even around their friends and rel­a­tives… and all that can be inter­preted as rude­ness by for­eign­ers!

Related arti­cles:

1. 5 More Things My Mum Observed in Canada
2. French And Eng­lish (3÷10)
3. French, Eng­lish and Montréal
4. The Oh-So-Sexy French Myth
5. French Pas­tries