A Day in Airports

The line-up to go through secu­rity was inter­est­ing. Most trav­el­ers were fly­ing short and medium haul flights to either other parts of France or sunny des­ti­na­tions like Morocco, Tunisia or Turkey. And each and every one of them had some banned items in their hand luggage!

Ten Random Observations about France

Even though I haven’t lived in France in ten years and even though I’m reg­is­tered as a “French abroad”, I still received a carte d’électeur at my par­ents’ address to vote for this year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. So tech­ni­cally, I guess I can vote twice. Ahem… elec­tion fraud, anyone?

The Presidential Race in France

Liv­ing in Canada means that I’m rel­a­tively shel­tered from cam­paign craziness—I didn’t even know all the can­di­dates who had qual­i­fied, ten of them in total. But of course, this week I got a crash-course in 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions: it is the main focus in the media and the hottest topic on the street here.

Is The French Diet Still A Good Diet?

A decade ago, José Bové, the farmer syn­di­cal­ist, was fight­ing against junk food (he famously sacked a McDonald’s fran­chise to make his point) and French would rather have some baguette with stinky cheese than a ham­burger. But the more I walk in Nantes, the more I won­der whether the French diet is still a good diet.

Ten Things I Had Forgotten About France

Every­body speaks French! In Ottawa, I rarely hear “Parisian French”, and if I do, I tend to turn around and glance at who­ever talked. Well, I keep on doing that here: when­ever I hear French, I turn around. And I really have to stop doing it. This is France.

Political Pawns

I’m a bit dis­con­nected from French news. But recently, a few head­lines caught my eyes again, mostly because they quickly spread inter­na­tion­ally. First, there was the tragic story of the Dupont de Ligonnès family—the father is still on the run by the way.

France’s Most Wanted

The U.K and Roy­al­ists around the world cel­e­brated the Royal Wed­ding, the U.S.A finally got “America’s most wanted” and Canada woke up from the fed­eral elec­tions with a hangover—Harper in a major­ity gov­ern­ment, seriously?

Mean­while, the head­lines in France were all about a grisly case that took place in Nantes, my hometown.

Are French Rude?

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. 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.

Beauty Comes From Within (And From Shopping In France)

I felt like one of those peo­ple who are offered drugs at a party, got hooked and ended up sell­ing their car for a few grams of crack or what­ever is trendy these days. The girl at the counter had me hooked on the best cream ever by giv­ing me a free sam­ple. I decided to do the sen­si­ble thing: I just said no. I’m not spend­ing that much on a cream, this is ridicu­lous, no mat­ter how good it is.

A Parisian Bug Story

I pushed the door open, slightly annoyed myself, and let him in. “Ah oui, ah oui!” he exclaimed in sur­prise, sud­denly real­iz­ing I was not a drama-queen after all. We stared at each other, unsure of what to do. For­tu­nately, after 6 weeks in France, I had my French­ness back and I could try to solve the prob­lem as diplo­mat­i­cally as possible.