Entre Les Murs

Leaving With Regret and Relief

• Formal courtesy - it's no more sincere perhaps than the Starbucks barrista's "have a nice day", but the formal greeting and thanking of the strangers one deals with, up to and including the bus driver when you get on the bus, feels right and decent.
  
• Aesthetics - Just walking around Paris or any other French town or city is a more pleasant experience than the same activity in North America.  Buildings fit in an overall aesthetic for the town or neighbourhood, matching the surrounding architecture and landscape, sometimes subtly, often not.  There's no such thing as a strip mall.
  
• Respect for working people - I'm now often slightly embarrassed by the subtle denigrations we impose on people in service jobs and the trades.  In France I have exchanged a "Bonjour Monsieur" with a park litter collector as he proudly went about his business.
  
• Wine - good wine easy to find at a modest price; our explorations of the wine regions and the independent producers.
  
• Bread - it doesn't stay fresh very long, but it doesn't usually last long enough for that to be a problem.
  
• Cheese - What's the point in learning the difference between all those shapes, colours and textures of chèvre if all you can find in a North American supermarket is nearly identical white blocks?

• Bureaucratic efficiency.  "C'est logique? Are you joking?"
  
• "Me first" sidewalk etiquette - or more like "Oh, is there someone else using the sidewalk too? I had no idea."
  
• Being at a profound language disadvantage in confrontational situations.  Sometimes you need a wide and flexible quiver in order to properly advise someone that they're being a jackass.
  
• Voice mail systems that fire numbers at you once and then disconnect.
  
• Teensy apartment elevators, however quaint.  With one external door and two doors to the cabin itself you need three hands to get in.  If you're carrying groceries it's faster to take the stairs.
  
• Cheesies - well, we will miss French cheesies, but we're better off without them.
  
• And of course: dog crud on the sidewalks.

posted 21.7.07