France ... How much we read, watched, dreamed about her. As we wanted to visit Versailles, where the kings marched, to see the ambiguous but beckoning Bois de Boulogne, take a walk along the Champs Elysees, look at the Eiffel Tower, sit in a cafe and eat crispy croissants, and in the evening enjoy real French wine, looking at the well-groomed passing by women.
As we dreamed of stopping by in French boutiques and buying souvenirs for friends, a French or French piece of toilet is an elegant silk scarf. But visiting a country that had been dreamed of for so long, it turns out that you can not love France. What for?
1. For the inexplicable high cost of life and for the endless rise in prices, comparable only, perhaps, with the Russian one. So, a liter of gasoline costs more than 1.5 euros and to get from, say, Nice, you will have to pay 200 euros. It has long been a thing of the past, when absolutely any products could be bought in a supermarket near the house. Now the French are forced to travel to nearby countries for affordable cigarettes and alcohol.
2. For the pathological contempt of the French against foreigners. If you do not speak French, then you are doomed to dumb life among the speakers. The French basically do not want to speak foreign languages. This shows their national linguistic chauvinism.
3. For detachment, closeness of people. Well, if you have French friends, you're in luck. The French are very localized, the usual circle of their communication is family and childhood friends.
4. For a strange schedule of food service: from 12 to 14 hours. Didn’t have lunch at this time? Your problems, wait for dinner. Speech about the possibility of processing at least an hour will be perceived as a personal insult. Therefore, your only choice will be some food, for example, from an Arab or Chinese shop.
5. For cars arriving to pick up garbage at six in the morning, waking you with their roar. And all because it is so prescribed by the decree of the city hall or approved by the trade union.
6. For a kind of work, the system of housing and communal services and household services. For example, you can wait ten days for plumbers, and a week for dry cleaning. They say that even the installation of the Internet has to wait three to four months.
7. On Sundays and holidays, everything is always closed (for us, Russians, this has long been wildness). It is believed that you yourself must find yourself entertainment: a church, chatting with friends, cycling or rollerblading along Paris streets, etc.
8. For the French stage, where Johnny Holiday and Mireille Mathieu still rule the ball. And new ZAZ level names appear very rarely.
9. For the notorious Cote d'Azur at the end of summer, when tourists from all over the world besiege the longed-for coast. For a beach umbrella, just like in Sochi in Soviet times, you have to fight even on the beaches of expensive private hotels.
10. And, finally, for extinct after August Paris. When everyone finally goes on vacation at the same time and has to go for a bun for half an hour, and the city is filled with tourists wandering the streets of the capital, wandering aimlessly at expensive shops, marveling at prices and languishing from the heat.
Text: Irina Sheikhetova
