And here is the last part of this year’s “hunting graffitis in France”. As usual, the translation is below.

• “Passons à l’offensive sans attendre” (“let’s take the offensive now”): a sticker found on the University of Nantes campus. They were on strike for a long time, I assume this is related.
• “BDDP Unlimited — Producteur d’idées et de médias”: I found this graffiti in Paris, near Barbès. The company, BDDP Unlimited (probably an advertising company) advertised they were “producing ideas and medias”. Somebody ironically wrote below: “in a word, a continuous flow of ideas… tell me I’m dreaming!”. And someone else added: “canned intelligence, probably…”.
• Signs nearby the Paris City Hall: universities teachers, researchers, staffs and students have been on strike for a while, against a umpteen university reform. Can’t explain the details, it’s very technical… anyway, as a sign a protest, they covered the City Hall with various banners, including some in Chinese and English to explain why they protest. They also walk in circle night and day (see their blog, La Ronde Infinie Des Obstinés).
• “Moi, c’est le geste qui m’intéresse” (“I’m only interested in the gesture”): I found this sign on the top of a very high wall. I had to squint to read… and I found it funny. The artist didn’t wanted to share his wisdom or his opinions like many of the graffitis writer, he just stuck a big sheet of paper on top of the wall.

That’s it!

We are back in Ottawa, it’s almost spring and… and I should sleep now.

Related articles:

1. Rebel France (1/2)
2. Rebel France (2/2)
3. Rebel France III

Last year, when I visited France, I had a lot of fun collecting all the graffitis and posters on the walls and posting them in Rebel France I and Rebel France II. And here is Rebel France III, with more political messages! These were collected in Nantes and in Paris.

Translation and explanations below…

• “Les patrons ont besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin d’eux” (“bosses need you, you don’t need them”): an old communist/ anarchist slogan.
• “Ni pauvres, ni soumis” (“nor poor nor subdued”): Ni Pauvre Ni Soumis is a committee which demands a guaranteed minimum income for those who can’t work because of a condition or a disability.
• “Le chômage c’est la misère, le salariat, l’exploitation” (“unemployment is poverty and wage system is slavery”): this slogan mostly denounces job insecurity. Unemployment is very high in France because of the economic crisis and a lot of people are underemployed.
• “Qui sème la misère récolte la colère” (“sow poverty and reap anger”): a slogan from ¡No pasarán!, a left-wing committee.
• “Casse-toi, pauv’ con — et c’est Nicolas Sarkozy qui le dit!” (“Get the hell out of here, jerk — and that’s from Nicolas Sarkozy!”): in 2007, Sarkozy, the French President I did not vote for, paid a visit to the Salon de l’Agriculture (a giant county fair held in Paris). He shook some hands in the crowd, surrounded by security. At one point, one guy refused to shake the President’s hand and said “don’t touch me” (can’t blame the guy, I wouldn’t like Sarkozy to touch me either). The President then aggressively barked: “get the hell out of here, jerk!”. The scene was captured on video and Sarkozy’s vulgar reaction got everybody talking (you can watch the 0:45 seconds video on Youtube here). Note that he since made an habit of it: for example, he recently stated that  Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero was not very smart…
• “Ni dieu ni maître” (“no god, no master”): the famous anarchist slogan.

Related articles:

1. Rebel France (2/2)
2. Rebel France (1/2)
3. The Presidential Race in France

Weird Sign In Nantes

Each time I visit France, my friends all ask me if I miss it, and if I would ever go back there to live. In short, the answer is no. While I like the country, I must admit my life is much easier in Canada. I left right after high school and I never looked back, even though I enjoy visiting every once in a while.

Now, to each his own, and I’m happy to see expats and immigrants from all over the world (notably Barbara, Jennie, Lis, Emily, Sarah, Aimee, Princesse Écossaise and Tanya) having a great time in France!

There are things I miss, but there are also things I don’t miss. Let’s have a look…

First, what do I miss from my home country?

• Not having to drive everywhere, for a start. I grew up in the city center of Nantes, where the movie theater is a two minutes walk, where I had hundreds of restaurants and bars another ten minutes walk from home, as well as two nearby supermarkets and all the shops you can think of. The transit system is also pretty good, with buses and several tramway lines. In Canada, I live in a close suburb (about 10 minutes drive from downtown), but we rely on the car a lot to get around. City planning (or lack of in my opinion) is very different in North America and driving is a must.
• Having my family nearby, obviously. I have really good friends in Canada, but no family except for Feng and my in-laws.
• The art of hanging out in cafés: Canadians are pretty straightforward: if they want caffeine, they grab a venti coffee at Starbucks, Second Cup, Bridgehead, Timothys or Tim Hortons — to go. If they want to get drunk, they go to a bar. French, on the other hand, can linger for ages around a tiny cup of espresso or a beer. Plus, you can still smoke on terraces.
• French care about politics. Maybe a bit too much, considering demonstrating is almost a form of exercise. But I wish more Canadians care about national politics, which after all are important!
  
• Tip and tax included in the price. In Canada, GST and PST are never included in the price, nor is the tip in restaurants. I can never ever prepare my change at the cashier because I don’t know the final price. And I’m still not natural at calculating tips!
  
• The lack of political correctness: French are not too politically correct and I somehow like it. I feel that in North Anerica, there is always someone who is going to be offended by something!
• Healthier food: even bad food is somewhat healthier than North American’s bad food. Portions are smaller, food is less salty, less fatty and there is no “triple cheeseburgers with a side of onion ring, bacon, ribs” nonsense, like in the “land of plenty”.
• Historic cities: most cities are old and the heritage is preserved. There are tons of museums and everything is beautiful. Most cities in Canada are quite new and buildings are obviously not as pretty.

Now, what I don’t miss:

• Life is very expensive in France. If I was working (which is not a given considering the high unemployment rate), I would probably make between 1000–1500 € a month. Enough to survive and rent a small place, but I wouldn’t travel or go out much. I don’t make much in Canada, but I feel I can afford more: there are always cheap clothes on sale, entertainment like concert tickets are okay, eating out in ethnic restaurants is cheap enough etc.
• Renting a place can be a real headache: there is a housing crisis in bigger cities and finding a place can be tough. Plus, landlords are very picky and often demand a permanent job with a high salary.
• The bureaucracy. I feel things are relatively more straightforward in Canada: first of all, most of the info we need is often online. Second, there are 1–800 numbers (free) for everything. France is a bit backwards in term of government info on the internet and most contact phone numbers are over-taxed, not free!
• Stupid shop hours: in France, most places close at 7:00 pm (a bit later in Paris) and don’t open at all on Sunday. I never go to these 24 hours stores in Canada (well, I do, but not at 3:00 am!) but I must admit it’s very convenient to be able to go grocery shopping on Sunday and to have pharmacies open late.
• The health system. No, there is nothing wrong with it (other than its deficit). But what a lot of Europeans don’t seem to know is that our health system in Canada is not that bad. My French friends always ask me how we do to pay our health bills: well, we don’t have any. Everything but dental, eye care and medicine is covered by our provincial health system — not bad! Plus, in France, you have to pay first and you are reimbursed later. In Canada, our health card is just swiped and we don’t pay anything! Sure, there is a doctor shortage in Canada, and waiting lists can be long. But France also has waiting list for some specialties after all (see my post about both health systems, Sicko(s)).
  
• Lack of efficiency and no customer service: French are notorious for jumping queues, and it gets on my nerves. As for customer service… let’s just say it’s inexistent. Most people are very pleasant and polite, but this somehow change when they are serving you. I wanted to buy pens the other day in a store, but they were under lock and key. I asked the shop assistant, who sigh looking at me, and said: “can’t you get some other pens?”. Yep, that’s what I’m talking about…!
  
• Drunk kids in the streets: call my old-fashioned, but I hate to see young kids (I’m talking early teens) drinking in the streets and happily ordering Vodka in bars. Not to mention when they buy tons of liquor at the supermarket… I’m not stupid, I’m sure kids in Canada get drunk as well. But at least, the state doesn’t make it easy for them! I know, I used to think Canada’s attitude towards alcohol was a bit too much. Well, I changed my mind. I think kids drink too much in France… especially in Brittany, where I’m from
  
• Dirty cities: I find Canada amazingly clean compare to France. Dodging dog poo isn’t my favorite sports, and I hate seeing puke everywhere after the week end binge drinking!
• Lack of public phone booth: everybody has a cell phone these days in France. Now, when you are visiting, you have to rely on phone booths, but unlike Canada, they don’t work with coins but with phone cards, which you have to buy beforehand. Calling a cell is amazingly expensive (a 3 € phone cards to call cell phones lasted about 5 minutes), and even calling local numbers can be pricey. I like it better in Canada: 50 cents unlimited local calls and local cells! Plus, phone booths in France are heading towards extinction, and they can be hard to find.
  

So, what do you guys miss from home? What don’t you miss? I tag the French ladies mentioned above, plus:

• Los Zieglers En Canada (an Argentinian family who lives in Ottawa)
• Live From Waterloo (another Argentinian family who lives in Waterloo)
• Expat Travels (a Swiss who moved to Canada)

Have fun!

Related articles:

1. Purchasing Power Blues In France
2. 8 Things More Expensive in Canada than in France
3. Only In France…

Crêpes At The Market In Nantes

Crêpes (very thin cooked pancakes) are Brittany’s national dish. They can be sweet (crêpes) and cooked with butter, sugar, chocolate honey etc. Or, they can be salty (galettes) and be filled with ham, eggs, cheese, mushrooms, spinach etc. There are a lot of crêperies (crêpes restaurants) in Nantes, and they are even sold on the market!

French also like quiches (a baked dish in a pastry crust). The most common one is the quiche lorraine, with bacon and cream, but all kind of fillings are available, like tomatoes, cheese etc.

Nantes being close to the seaside, there are also tons of seafood. The most “French” may be the oysters and the Coquille St Jacques (scallops in a scallop shell). The sea-salt is hand-harvested locally.

Cheese is of course a French favorite, with hundreds of different kinds!

Crêpes In Montmartre, Paris

Making Crêpes

Quiche With Tomatoes

Quiche Lorraine

Cheese At The Market

Cheese With Spices

Oysters At The Market

Coquilles St Jacques

Local Salt

Sandwiches

Related articles:

1. Street Market in Nantes
2. Crêpes Dinner in Nantes
3. Fire in Nantes

French Bread

France is of course famous for its food. There are “pâtisseries” and “boulangeries” everywhere, the first ones specializing in cakes and elaborate pastries, the second ones offering many kinds of bread and basic bakery products.

French eat pastries without much guilt: it’s just a part of every day’s life. Bread is essential as well: one baguette (bread stick) per meal for a family, sometimes two. And try walking back from the bakery without tasting a just-bought baguette… impossible! As for fresh fruits, they are always available at local markets, which are an important part of traditional French culture.

French Sliced Bread

“Miches” Of Bread

Croissants And Pains Au Chocolat

French “Pâtisseries”

Oranges At The Market

Fruits At The Market

Young Chefs

French Cakes

Related articles:

1. French Bakeries
2. French Food
3. A French Market

Arc Of Triomphe

And here is the second part of our adventures in Paris.

We walked a lot everywhere: from Notre Dame to the Champs Elysées, from the Louvre to Place Vendôme, along the Jardin des Tuileries and all the way to La Défense, the business district. Phew!

Eiffel Tower

Concorde

The Pantheon

Walking Towards The Champs Élysées

Jardin Des Tuileries

Place Charles De Gaulle Étoile

La Défense

La Défense

On The Champs Élysées

École Militaire

Related articles:

1. Best Of Paris (2/2)
2. Sights of Paris (Part I)
3. Europe in our Eyes

View Of Le Louvre

Ah Paris! In the spring, the city is quite nice actually.

We spent a few days there, walking around the main sights and taking pictures. We have both been there many times, but it’s always fun to check out the city of light!

On Saturday, I also got the chance to meet a fellow blogger, lovely Barbara (Home In France) and her husband, Didier. I met her where she lives, in the suburb of Paris and we chatted for a little while (she speaks perfect French!) about life in France and traveling. Nice meeting you Barbara, and thanks again for the chocolate egg (somebody knew my weakness…!).

Le Louvre

The Pyramids

Opéra

Place Vendôme

Notre Dame (View From The Seine)

Banks Of The Seine

The Moulin Rouge In Pigalle

Sacré Coeur Church In Montmartre

Mime Nearby The Sacré Coeur

Sacré Coeur

Related articles:

1. Paris By Night
2. Along The Seine
3. Sights of Paris (Part I)

Revolution Sticker, Nantes

“C’est la crise, madame!”, you can hear everywhere when visiting France.

Yes, indeed. The economic crisis is now pretty much global and France is no exception. Well, here it actually started quite a while ago and it doesn’t take an degree in economy to realize that French are getting poorer, and that life has became more difficult in the last decade.

These days, French are obsessed with their “pouvoir d’achat” (purchasing power) and the “precarité” (insecurity) of their job. Food and other necessary items seem to be getting more expensive everyday, and meanwhile, unemployment rate is high.

The Franc disappeared forever on February 17, 2002 and France adopted the Euro as the new currency. Shortly after, prices were raised quite dramatically (and are still rising!). Is the Euro responsible? Economists disagree: some say it is, some blame the shops (for example, the supermarkets) for raising prices more than they should have, some say life feels more expensive because meanwhile, salary haven’t been raised in years. But no matter who you blame, life is more expensive — crazy expensive.

Take a lot at a few items (all the price quoted are in US$):

• In Canada, bananas sold in supermarkets are around 60 cents a kilo: in France, $2.60 (generally speaking, all the veggies I have bought so far at the market in France were at least double the price compared to Canada)
• A movie ticket in a big theater is $8, versus $13 in France
• The new MacBook Air is $1800 in Canada, $2520 in France
• The new Ipod Nano is $140 in Canada, but $200 in France.
• Gas was 65 cents when we left a week ago in Canada, it’s $1.30 in France

Basically, as a Canadian, the only things cheaper in France are cheeses, wines and some magazines. Phew. The French feel goods in stores cost more while they have less in their pockets… and it does look this way.

Meanwhile, massive lay-offs have raised the unemployment rate, which was already pretty high at 8.5% (January 2009). An incredible 19.1% of 15 to 24 years old in France are unemployed as of 2009… And it’s not like French who are working are rich. The minimum wage is the SMIC, which is now at 1037,53 € per month. Statistic varies, but it seems that the median salary for a household is about 2,000 € a month.

There is also a housing crisis, especially in the biggest cities. Rents are extremely expensive, there aren’t enough social housing (waiting list up to 14 years in Paris!) and landlords are kings: they don’t hesitate to demand a permanent job with a salary that is at least three times the rent. Students, immigrants and poor to middle-class professionals have the hardest time to find a place to live… even though over 10% of properties in Paris are vacant (mostly because owners keep them for real estate speculation). Forget about buying a property, unless you are very very rich. In 2009, in Paris, the average square meter price in the most expensive area of Paris (the 6th) was 9 800 €/m2, while the cheapest was the 19ème at 5 060 €/m2. Ouch.

As the result, some of the population is living in very bad conditions, because people either don’t find a place a rent, either can’t afford the rent. Recently, there have been several scandals: rundown buildings burned in Paris and students moved into squats because landlords didn’t want them as tenants. In 2007 The Children of Don Quixote set up hundreds of red tents for homeless people along a canal in a trendy part of Paris to put the plight of the homeless into the spotlight.

French aren’t exactly thriving. The gap between the affluent and the rest is widening (as I wrote last year visiting Paris) and no one seem to know how to solve all these issues. We are going through a crisis as well in North America, but there have been down times, and there will be up times. Now, France has been in crisis for a long time — what will it take to rebound to this situation?

Related articles:

1. 8 Things More Expensive in Canada than in France
2. Rebel France III
3. Rebel France IV

View Of Nantes

Nantes was pretty lucky during World War II: unlike a lot of French cities, it wasn’t totally destroyed by bombings. The city still has a rich heritage, dating right back to the Gallo-Roman period.

The medieval area is the Bouffay, with the Castle of the Duchy of Brittany and the many old buildings surrounding it. The 18th Century was the golden era for the city (slave trade…), and a lot was built during this time, notably Place Royale and Place Graslin. Later in history, Nantes was also an industrial city in the era of the first naval shipyards: the LU Tower is a reminder of that time.

Château Des Ducs De Bretagne

Château Des Ducs De Bretagne

Cathédrale De Nantes

Basilique Saint-Nicolas

From Inside The Castle

Passage Pommeraye

Inside The Castle

LU Tower (Former Cookies Factory)

Along The Erdre

Along The Loire

Related articles:

1. Nantes By Night
2. Fire in Nantes
3. A French Castle

The first split in the French population isn’t so much the one between the city and the countryside. It is between those who live in the center of cities, and those who live in the banlieue ( the outskirts of the city). City centers are old but historical, walkable and expensive. The outskirts generally connotes areas of low-income apartments and social housing. They are frequently described as “sensitive urban areas” because of their high level of poverty, violence and various trafficking. The middle and upper classes live downtown, immigrants and poor people live in the outskirts.

Paris is a bit different: they are some rich suburbs (like Versailles), and even some “banlieues rouges” (red outskirts — areas where, traditionally, the French Communist Party was powerful). But these are exceptions.

Class struggle is still omnipresent in France. Because politics is a national pastime, people like to describe themselves as “à droite” (right-wing), “à gauche” (left-wing), “soixante-huitard” (a person who either participated in the May 1968 Movement or has Utopian ideas) etc. Other common social nicknames include “bo-bo” (short for “bourgeois-bohemian”, basically the 1990s descendants of the yuppies), “gauche caviar” (French “limousine liberal” or “Champagne socialist” — fake socialist), “bling bling” (describe nouveau riche attitudes; such as Sarkozy wearing expensive and stylish suits and enjoying being in gossip magazines), “beauf” (French “redneck” — a person thought to be vulgar, somewhat alcoholic, unintelligent, bigoted, chauvinistic, supporter of Nationalism etc.)…

And because in France, history and the past are more important than the future, and because nothing really changes, there is still a “us” and a “them”.

Nantes was the slave trade capital of France, which led it to become the largest port in France and a wealthy city. A few large and powerful families settled in the city and still live there today: on the Cours Cambronne (where appartments are valued at over 800,000 €), around the Place Graslin nearby with the posh restaurant “La Cigale”, the Place Royale (which is also the meeting point for demonstrations). The Quai de la Fosse still bears mascaron ornaments on buildings’ facades, symbols of the slave trade.

France is at the opposite of the “American Dream” ideology, where all citizens can pursue their goals in life through hard work and free choice. Born rich, born poor, little opportunity for change, that’s the way it is. Privileges are kept jealously… For example, in France, there is a law that requires cities to offer 20% of public housing to their citizens. If they don’t, they must pay a fine, and rich cities don’t mind paying it: bye bye “équalité”… Same goes for schools: by law, citizens are required to send their kids to a nearby school (assuming that way that all kind of social classes will mix). But some schools (are some districts) are notoriously better than others, and thousands of parents do everything they can to escape this regulation (popular tricks include renting a phony residence next to a better school).

Sweet old France…

Théâtre Graslin — Graslin Theater

Cours Cambronne

Place Royale

Quai de La Fosse

Related articles:

1. Nantes By Night
2. Nantes’ Elephant
3. Historic Nantes