The smell of France

I’m not talking about the cheeses, although some of those are intense. I’m not talking about the lovely smell of a bakery, or the delicious smell of roti chickens in the market. I’m talking about the unpleasant smell that you can’t escape no matter where you are, the smell of urine. It is a rare and wonderful thing to find a public toilet in France which doesn’t smell of piss. Which is why you normally have to pay for the pleasure of an unscented toilet. The first thing that reminded me I was in France when I landed in Lyon airport after the Christmas holidays was the smell of the toilet. But it’s not just toilets. Possibly because of the extreme lack of public toilets in France, people pee in the streets. Often. So often that walking around a French town for 30 minutes you are nearly guaranteed the sight of someone urinating in the street. And not necessarily against a wall. I’ve seen it done off the bridge into the river, and as I had the... pleasure... of seeing the other day: a man facing and peeing into the middle of a busy pavement. It could be related to the lack of toilets, or it could be because they leave dog poo on the pavements and think ‘why can’t I leave my waste in the road too?’ disgusting, I know. And the smell... if you want an idea of what the roads smelt like before plumbing, certain streets in France might give you an idea.

Mr Inexplicable

I don’t even know how to describe this guy, he was so weird. Me and Claire went to a club on Valentines night (where we saw a girl with 3 guys circling like wolves, it was very cave-man like, I was waiting for one of them to knock her out and drag her back to his cave) and at the end of the night we got the metro, all very normal. As soon as Claire got off this random guy came and sat opposite me. Worried at first about random French guy, I ignored him and one stop came and went so I thought he wasn’t going to say anything. Then he asked me out. I said no. Then he spat on the floor and asked me if I was sure. You know what, I didn’t want to date him at first, but that display of masculinity made him SO much more attractive. I said I was sure and breathed a sigh of relief as my stop had arrived and I could get as far away from him as possible.

Guy #2. Mr I’ve-Heard-Women-Like-This

This is an example of the man who has read a ‘what women want’ manual and is testing it out without realising he’s not being natural (or charming) at all. I was at a house party and having a rest from dancing, a guy came and sat next to me and started asking me questions. It felt like I was on a gameshow or something. “What’s your name?” “Kiera, wha..” “where are you from?” “England, wh..” “Why are you in Lyon?” and so on... Someone had obviously told him that women like talking about themselves and this was what he was counting on. Although I have no explanation for what he asked me after question time was over and he had ‘got to know me’: “what do you think of me?” “what?” “what do you think of me?” “ummm... I don’t know” “do you want to kiss me?” “what? No!” Maybe he was just feeling lucky.

French Man #1. Mr Scary-Following-You-Home

I’ve actually had 2 of these, which makes me really glad I live next to a metro stop. The first was during the first term, I was just getting back after a night out and was about to open the door to get into the residence when there was a sudden voice behind me saying ‘excuzez-moi’ I jumped with fright, spun round preparing to attack this man who had silently crept up to me and was by this point about an inch away from me. Luckily I have an English accent and was able to tell him that I didn’t have a French mobile when he asked for my number. Well, it could have been true! The second guy was in the second term, I was getting a very early metro home after a house party and was, obviously, dressed for the night time at 6AM. Again, was just about to go through the door when a guy who was in front of me turned round and asked me something to do with drinks, I misunderstood and thought he was asking where he could get a drink (no sleep, somewhere between drunk and hungover, my listening skills aren’t fantastic at the best of times). Eventually I understood that he was asking me out for a drink with him. He was about 40.

French Romance

Let’s start by saying that everything you think you know about French men is probably a lie. They are not suave, smooth or charming. None that I’ve met anyway. They can range from the ‘casual look’ man wearing a scarf or jumper knotted around the neck (a look which is shockingly popular in France- they don’t understand what the ‘preppy/gay look’ is over here) to the Mediterranean highly-styled, designer-clothes-wearing, man-bag-carrying highly metrosexual man most commonly found near Italy. And these are just the men you might consider dating, there is a shockingly bad selection in France! There are the pervy men who stand around all day doing nothing but harassing every woman they see (to the point of following them because they simply have nothing better to do). There are the French version of chavs who are normally white guys not really understanding that the American style ‘gangsta’ needs to be black for him to be taken seriously. And then there are the guys who actually don’t seem to know how to talk to women. I’m not talking about the guys who completely freeze when they meet something with breasts, I mean the guys who have read an online manual of how to talk to women and want to practice their new-found ‘skills’. To demonstrate my points, I’m going to describe some of the men I have encountered during my time in France in my next blogs over the following weeks.

The Easiness of English Girls

So why is it that English girls are seen as slutty or easy when abroad? Well, taking France as my example I will look at the clothes first. Someone’s French housemate went out in a dress which ended above the knee and was worried it was too short. The general feeling of the French when they visit England is that about 90% of the girls are prostitutes. Short skirts are not worn by the French! There are some rare occasions when you will see a pair of legs on show, but the girl is normally accompanied by a boyfriend. When it gets colder you also see more skirts, normally just with sheer tights underneath. And they think the English are stupid!

Bright colours are also more readily worn by the English, something which is simply not allowed in French society, god only knows how H&M survives in France. Black is the colour of choice, teamed with a dark blue jean and sometimes other colours on the neutral spectrum such as white, beige, cream and grey. Just to mix things up a bit. Brighter colours attract the eye of the prowling French man who sees it as a mating symbol in a very ‘discovery channel’ ‘this is how the female bird attracts the male’ way.

Another possibility is that when English girls can speak a bit of French (and actually decide to talk to the locals rather than sticking with the comfort zone of people they know speak English), some of the things we do and say confuse the French and are not translatable. Flirting for example, is in France, always a sign of attraction, you can’t flirt with your friends. Just accept this and don’t try to explain it, I doubt you’d get anywhere. English words can be said with a French accent if we don’t know the translation, in the hope of it being a French word too. Sometimes it is, and the conversation carries on without anyone knowing you were just guessing. Sometimes it isn’t and everyone stares and says ‘quoi?’. Sometimes it is a French word but means something completely different. Like when I said ‘je suis excité’ when talking about the festival of lights. Well, it is a French word, and to some degree I suppose it does mean ‘excited’, just... over excited. I had actually said that I was turned on by a light festival. Not the sentiment I was trying to convey. It is also too easy to mis-conjugate verbs. Such as the word bisou which means kiss. Embrasser also means kiss. So does baiser, in certain contexts. Not when you are trying to say ‘I kissed him last night’. If you used ‘baiser’ as a verb in that context, it would be a colloquial way of telling everyone that you slept with him last night. And so voila! A reason that all English girls are seen as easy. Even if they’re not.

How to be a french student

Studying in France is, understandably, very different to studying in England. For a start you don’t actually need to read while at university. Thinking for yourself is not encouraged as the teacher gives you all of the information needed for the exam. That is of course, unless you are required to do a presentation. In which case you will be expected to speak for 30-45 minutes about a subject and essentially teach the class. This happened in one of my modules last year, and after each presentation the teacher would launch as many challenging questions as possible at the student(s) and leave them scrambling for answers they didn’t know. The rest of the time though, you will just be required to listen, make many notes (my record is 7 A4 pages in 2 hours) and occasionally read handouts in class. If you happen to be given a handout, to really fit in with the native students, you will need highlighters. And you will need to highlight everything. I mean everything, one student I remember ended up with sheets with big bright green rectangles in the middle of them, with maybe 3 blanks which included the less important words or sentences. The use of the internet, including Wikipedia, is also encouraged.