Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

We were fully prepared for it to feel warm and indeed hot down here in the Summer.

“We thought that English people couldn’t cook French food but this is fantastic”.That’s typical of the comments we received when we hosted a reveillon break for a French family. The interesting aspect of that is that the comment was first made as the family were eating a roast turkey dinner which we considered typically English! In fact, although they had chosen all the dishes that we served over the three days all but one were what you would think was an English dish rather than a French one. Even the “French” one (duck, of course) isn’t something that’s completely unknown in the UK. Whilst the French are known for undercooking food, we found that this group not only didn’t complain that we had “overcooked” (ie cooked to UK standards) but complimented us on how well the food was done. As in other things, it may be that the French don’t actually like the food as cooked but just take it because that’s how it’s given to them.The undercooking is pretty much across the board and food hygiene laws in the UK would result in a number of the caffeteria type restaurants being closed if those laws were applied in France. We all know about the virtual impossibility of getting a steak “well done” in France (which seems to mean “not quite raw” to them) but consider how dangerous it is to undercook the likes of poultry.

Visiting the local cash and carry is an eye-opener in terms of French cuisine. Almost all of the local restaurants only serve food that’s available in a pre-prepared form in the local cash and carry. Consequently, the “French food” that the English can’t prepare is 90% reheated meals from the cash and carry and, of course, the menus are just about identical. In fact, there seem to be only three exceptions to this approach to French restaurant “cooking” locally: one haute cuisine French restaurant (with, of course, prices to match) and two owned by foreigners.

The snag is that this approach to food preparation changes the expectations of people. We had one very bad review because it took 30 minutes to get the meal on the table when they were used to having the meals on the table within 5 to 10 minutes. Of course, that 5 to 10 minutes is taken up with lifting the meal out of the freezer, heating it up in the microwave and emptying the contents onto a plate whereas our 30 minutes is made up of preparing the food and cooking it. Related to this, it can be quite rare for a French person to know how to read a menu because they’re used to reading the standard dishes listed on the “cash & carry” menus used by the bulk of restaurants here.

This “cash & carry” approach to menus combined with the attitude that nobody but the French can reheat meals means that the French, on the whole, are very unadventurous with what they will eat. If it’s spicy, it’s always refused so it was no great surprise that the “Nigel & Nippy” Indian restaurant folded as the locals won’t even try meals that look like they might be spicy. Net effect of this is that Indian restaurants have to tone down their offerings considerably and offer a very bland selection compared to what you’d get in the UK. Not only that, but they need to adjust their spices to those that the French know about so seem to stick to the curry powder from the cash & carry. What are the “French” dishes though? Well, for the most part they are the same as you find in the freezer sections of supermarkets in the UK. There are other things, of course, such as the local cuisine in the various regions which, in our area, is cassollet which is effectively tinned stew although since it’s considered a regional dish the price is correspondingly inflated.

So, basically, French food is the same as reheated and undercooked English food, less any spices.

As in most things, the French assume that hotel reservations work the way that they worked in France 50 years ago.

Of course, they rarely use the internet to make their reservations (although, to be fair, that is changing) and generally phone. In fact, it’s not unknown to receive a letter asking for a reservation and expecting a reply by letter too. Out of the peak seasons, that’s not too bad but we just ignore any letters received like that during the peak season as we just can’t afford to hold a room on the off-chance that they may actually confirm the reservation a week or two later.

The use of debit/credit card numbers as a guarantee is virtually unknown to them and they almost always ask to pay a deposit by cheque. Their lack of experience of using their card to guarantee a room means that it’s quite common for them to think that they’ve paid for the room when they make a reservation online and have quoted their card number which often requires considerable explanation at checkout time.

One major cause of friction is that they assume that it’s fine to cancel a reservation at anytime without charge. Everywhere else in the world, you need to cancel a hotel reservation before the arrival time you quoted and often 24 hours or more before that. Here, they assume that if they’ve not stayed in the room, then it’s OK. After all, the room isn’t costing the hotel anything, is it? It might not be costing anything, but when we get cancellations well into the evening, we’ve often turned people away because with a card number guaranteeing the room we are obliged to hold the room. This year for instance we had two days when we were completely full and turning away numerous people yet had hardly anyone who actually stayed!

Abroad, it’s even worse for them though. By and large, the French only have debit cards and severely limited ones at that. Whereas in the UK the cash withdrawal limit on a debit or cash card is around £250 (EUR 500) per DAY, in France the standard limit is EUR 300 per WEEK. Not only that but whilst you could, in principle, buy a house on a debit card in the UK, there is a spending limit of, usually, EUR 3000 per month on French debit cards (which is why they continue to use so many cheques). For most purposes, that’s OK. However, consider someone booking into a hotel in the UK. The first think that is done is that the card is run through for an authorisation of, usually, £100 per day (ie about EUR 150), even if the hotel actually only costs about £50 a night. So, a French person can stay a maximum of 20 days in UK hotels and, of course, that’s before you consider spending elsewhere.

This is why France is one of the few countries in the world that doesn’t pre-authorise payments.

So, no, the French don’t understand hotel reservations work unless they’re in France with a hotel that only operates in France.

Many things that seem “obvious” in the UK, aren’t in France.

Of course, there are many things that are clearly different between the two cultures and after a while you think that you’ve gotten into the swing of things and can extrapolate into other areas of French life. Everyone knows that it’s common practice to urinate in the streets in France for instance so you turn a blind eye to that after a while as it’s just “something French”, like the streets being constantly full of dog poo. If you thought about it, perhaps you’ve wondered if the French would drop their trousers and do a load in the streets too. Well, I’ve not seen it done in the streets but it’s surprisingly common to see a van pull off the road in the country and the driver head off into the field with a toilet roll.

What about more “universal” things though? Clearly it’s obvious that electricians, plumbers and the like will flock to do even a small job where a large building is concerned. Isn’t it? Well, from a UK-mindset it certainly is obvious. Not so to the French. For them, a small job is always a small job even if it’s in a large building and therefore there are likely to be a lot more similar small jobs in the future with the possibility of a large job now and again.

If you do need something relatively small done, what happens is that the electrician/plumber/etc. will come out (quite quickly if you have a large property) and give you an estimate. He’ll then say that he’ll be back to do the work the next week, or perhaps even later in the same week. After a while in France, you get to consider “next week” as meaning sometime in the next month or two so you’ll wait quite a while before wondering if he’ll actually be back. In fact, if the estimate was for an amount under EUR 500 or so, he will never be back because French tradespeople just can’t be bothered to do work under that level.

Initially, we thought that the reason they didn’t come back was that we were foreigners, we’d said something we shouldn’t have, misunderstood something, or whatever. It’s not that though because our French neighbours told us that it’s typical of the attitude of the local tradespeople: they can’t get any small jobs done either. Want someone to put in an extra electical socket? Either do it yourself, or wait ’til you need the whole house rewired.

The overall effect of this is clear in French towns and villages all over the country. Over a period of time, the bit of the wall where that section of plaster fell off isn’t redone, the door that needed repainted hasn’t been, etc. It’s particularly evident in this area as there are twins of those towns and villages just over the border in Spain. Wherever you look, you’ll see that the French villages are that little bit rundown and if you walk into the backstreets you’ll see houses everywhere that look pretty much derelict from the outside. There are exceptions to this, of course, but they are almost always the houses owned by foreigners who’ve bought an almost derelict house and had it restored. The strange thing is that in equivalent Spanish villages, almost all of the houses look like they’ve been restored yet in many cases the buildings on the French side were built when this area was part of Spain.

The effect is so pronounced that you can pretty much watch the sweep of foreign ownership through the various villages simply by looking at the increasing number that are well maintained.

So does anyone do odd-jobs in France? Yes: the ex-pats do but the French certainly don’t.

That probably seems like an odd question at first glance. How can a country with a fairly major economy be called backward?

Oh, I agree that it has such things as new technology, consumer rights, labour legislation and the like. Unfortunately the belief that anything outside France doesn’t really matter is quite widespread and this negates a large part of those aspects of an advanced economy.

Consider new technology. Yes, France has internet access across most of the country. However, few people use it. Take for example our experiences of the Summer of 2005. Up until then, no French person had every booked online with us but over a six week period during that Summer something like 80% of the French bookings were made online. That’s not a bad percentage as obviously not everyone will book online. Interestingly though, for nearly all of that 80% their booking with us was the first thing that they had ever bought online. They’d never booked a hotel, never reserved a flight, hadn’t even bought a book on Amazon before. This was quite a representative group too which made it even more unusual. So, yes, France is very much a backward nation in terms of internet use in comparison to the rest of the western world.

What about consumer rights? In any supermarket in the UK, you can take back a faulty product and have your money refunded. Try doing that in France sometime. The attitude in the shops seems to be an amalgam of the very worst of practices from decades ago elsewhere. Refuse to pay for a service not delivered? The first reaction is to take you to court because you have to pay for it anyway. Think the bill from your insurance company is too high this year and want to change to another one? Sorry, you had to cancel the insurance two months before we told you what it would cost (no, really, that’s true!). It’s very much a backward country in this area.

Perhaps you think that France was way ahead of the game in introducing chip & PIN technology for its debit cards? It was, 10 years ago. Snag is that as with other things they only considered France so the technology they used couldn’t be rolled out elsewhere. Net effect? France has had to change all it’s card machines to cope with the international chip & PIN standard. Result of this? Chaos. It made life so complicated that all the shops in one local tourist village have stopped accepting all cards.

Note that I said “debit cards” in that paragraph. That’s because, even now, France doesn’t have credit cards in the sense of the term as used elsewhere. Overdrafts don’t exist either. In fact, on the whole France is one of the most backward nations in terms of financial products in the western world.

Labour legislation is one area where France will argue that it’s more advanced than anyone. The problem is that the laws governing employment are so strict that the unemployment level is much higher than it needs to be. Small companies just can’t afford to employ people in the hope that the business will follow: they need to be sure that the business is there because sacking employees is such a long and costly affair.

So, in many respects, France is quite a backward looking country.