vignettes from la vie en france

This piece is more a light-hearted reflection on the four months I recently spent in Strasbourg, France. I was there for a research collaboration, but received a cross-cultural education at the same time.

Here is a collection of vignettes (including funny and embarrassing things that happened to me). For all you who asked me today “How was France??”, this is for you 🙂 

“Bonjour”

The greeting is issued politely with a courteous smile. No showing of teeth, just the slight upturn of “I acknowledge your presence”.

When the elevator doors open, we file in one after the other.

The father and daughter, hands full of shopping bags. The working woman with the pencil skirt and lipstick. The chic teen with the black leather jacket

I stand up straight, hold my handbag close to me. The elevator doors close. We ascend in silence.

The father and daughter stand close together, hands clutching their bags. But I make sure not to look too long, averting my eyes to stare out into undefined space so they don’t think I’m weird of course.

The elevator creaks up to the 6th floor and the doors open.

“Bonne journée!” I chirp, perhaps a little too excitedly, before exiting.

“Bonne journée” each one chimes back in turn before they return to the silent ascent. Cordial well-wishes one moment, aloof strangers the next.

This was a ritual I participated in with almost every stranger I shared a communal space with in France. According to The Bonjour Effect, a quick interesting (and super helpful) read on French etiquette, the word “Bonjour” is not so much a word with meaning as it is a phatic, which is merely a signal of social cues. 

Bonjour signals that you exist, that you have entered into a common space. Say ‘bonjour’ more often than you think, the book encourages, and even more so the smaller the space you share, hence the incessant greeting and well-wishing in elevators. 

In Canada, a friendly ‘hello’ most likely is followed with a ‘how are you?’ and some small-talk on the weather, the state of condo repairs or the dog they happened to be walking. But no such small talk is required in France after the ‘bonjour’ and in fact, silence is more the default mode. People liked to be left in their personal bubbles, unless you know each other, which in that case you lean in for the “bise”.

It had been a week of firsts. My first day at the lab, my first church service and now my very first small group.

I pushed in the 5 digit code that the hosts had sent in the WhatsApp message and creaked open the tall, arched grey-green doors that opened out to a little garden with squared tiles and a cream-coloured fountain. Ascend the second staircase to your right, the door should be open.

Apartments don’t go by number in France, I came to understand, rather you are expected to know the last name of the family you’re visiting which is posted as a neat label outside each unit. Being new, I had no clue what their last names were.

Thankfully, at the second landing of the spiral staircase, I spotted a sticker with a caricature of the couple labelled “Thomas and Madeleine” and I gratefully rang the bell.

I was completely unprepared for what greeted me upon the opening of those doors. A corridor of unfamiliar faces that leaned in with their faces as I approached. People whose names I did not yet know were leaning in for the bise.

Pretending like I had been doing this all my life, I followed their cue, going first to the left then to the right, touching their forearm lightly to get my bearings (and not lose my balance).

It was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly I picked up the bise, considering the last time someone had tried it on me I had slapped him squarely on the cheek.

It had simply been a reflex and before I had had time to react, both of us were staring awkwardly at each other – me aghast at what my hand had done, him stuttering, “Oh, it’s not your culture?” Oops.

Anyway, the rule here was that when you are the new person in the room, you do the bise to everyone who is already there, and when you leave, you’re supposed to make sure you go around to everyone to bise again.

Needless to say, I got lots of practice at every social gathering and may now find it weird that in Canada, I can leave a party by waving with a generic “Goodbye everyone” or even slipping out unnoticed (gasp!).

Considering how formal the French were in their interactions, it puzzled me how you could greet strangers with something as intimate as a cheek to cheek kiss.

Even when I left France, the whole leaning in while still saying your name was not completely natural. There were so many ways for it to go wrong – you could lean to the wrong side, kiss too many times (apparently it’s 3 times in the south of France but two everywhere else), awkwardly have your cheek or lips touch where they aren’t supposed to.

How do you know what rules to follow? When to do the bise and when to do a polite bonjour instead? When you are allowed to start using the informal ’tu’ instead of more stand-offish ‘vous’?

Ah, the uncoded world of politesse and unsaid social conventions. No wonder the phrase ‘faux pas’ finds its origin in the French language, with French dining being the easiest way for me to make one.

It happens a lot, and I still forget. We go to a restaurant and are given the menu. The real fancy places have the menu written on black chalkboard, perhaps because it changes so much based on what’s in season.

The waiter speaks intelligently on the specialties of the day: he starts with the choices of entrée (vélouté, escargots, a cheese platter), main course (confit au canard, Coq au Riesling, blanquette de veau), and of course ending with dessert, although my eyes always jump to this part of the menu first to see if they have my favorite chocolat moelleux.

The items are rattled off in rapid succession, the words rolling off the waiter’s tongue with an elegance I struggle to keep up with.

After I make my three selections that comprise my “formule” (the 3-course menu that is considered standard in even casual bistros), the waiter repeats my first two then pauses slightly.

“Et pour le dessert, on verra.” And for the dessert, we will see.

In the beginning, I thought it was just a tic of particular waiters. Maybe I had appeared apprehensive about my choice of dessert, even though there was no doubt in my head that the chocolate moelleux was far superior to the other choices.

But it happened without fail each time my order was taken, until I would start to anticipate it before it happened.

After stating my choice of main course, I now pause slightly and look meaningfully at the waiter.

“Et pour le dessert, on verra.” I smile sweetly. He nods, satisfied, before hustling off to pick up another plated wooden board from the kitchen.

The French perspective on food has probably left the strongest impression on me. Food is sacred, as they would say. There are carefully crafted rituals around food. Instead of the eating-on-the-go culture of North America, food is something you sit down to. It is meant to be enjoyed deeply over some good wine and conversation. You take your full time at lunch, which means ordering the formule and the meal must be given time to breathe, which means waiting an appropriate amount of time in between courses. 

When my lab friends heard that many North Americans eat their lunch by themselves in front of the computer, they were aghast. But lunch is what we look forward to in the day, they exclaim. 

I learned to not rush myself or others (including the waiter) through food and to more fully appreciate each stage of the meal. The anticipation as you wait for your entree while swirling a glass of wine, the whetting of your appetite with the entree, the savoury richness of a main course and the space while you wait to see what dessert you fancy given your present mood. 

As well, instead of food being measured in terms of calories or nutritional value, it is viewed through the lens of terroir, a term that refers to how a particular region’s soil, climate and geography affect the food it produces. 

Terroir is most pronounced when differentiating wines and cheeses from different regions, but also in terms of dishes that remind the French of its distinct regions. One eats choucroute Garni (sauerkraut with cuts of meat) in Alsace, cheese fondue in Savoie, cassoulet in the south of France. 

This notion of time and terroir took me a few faux pas to orientate myself to, as in the next vignette. 

My friend Chris and I were at a wine tasting in a rural Alsatian town called Obernai. We had walked into a tavern where they offered free tasting on wooden tables covered with red checkered cloth.

Being the only walk-in tasting customers at that time, we waited patiently as a tight-lipped lady with a greying bun attended first to the couple buying a bottle from her stock. As the couple debated each wine’s qualities, the lady marched over to us with two drink menus.

“Voila, what would you like?” She looked at us expectantly.

My eyes had only begun to focus on the flurry of names, dates and regions that had suddenly appeared in my field of vision.

I tried to buy us some time. “This is my friend,” I explained, “I’m showing him around Alsace and want to introduce him to some good Alsatian wine.”

“They’re all good Alsatian wine,” she snapped brusquely, “Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris. They’re all from our vineyards, and they’re all good.”

“Ummm okay let’s try a Gewurtztraminer?” I asked, vaguely remembering having tried it before and having a good impression.

Her eyebrows went up and I shrank a little bit. “A Gewurtztraminer? It’s sweet, you know.”

“Yeah, we like sweet wines,” I ventured tentatively.

She shrugged, retrieving a dark bottle from her humidity-controlled cellar, expertly popping off the cork and pouring our glass two fingers high.

I tried to remember what I had learned from that wine-tasting podcast I had listened to a while back – swirl the glass, look for fingers of liquid running down the sides, smell and try to identify fragrances.

Her hovering over our table certainly did not help me being flustered. A little sip sent a rush of sweet candy-like aromas up my nose.

“It’s…very sweet,” was the most intelligent thing I could come up with in the pregnant pause following the first sip.

“Yes, our Gewurtztraminers are very sweet. What would you like next?”

I once again scanned the drink menu desperately, “Uh, we’ll try the Riesling 2017?”

The second the word Riesling left my mouth, I immediately regretted it.

“Un Riesling??” Her voice was shrill, and she looked incredulous, “Mais, ça ne fait pas du sens! Pas du tout!” (That doesn’t make sense! Not at all!)

“Tell me, do you eat dessert before your dinner? Do you? No, it’s always after. You must always have sweet things last!” She proceeded to chide us loudly, attracting the attention of the couple at the counter.

Gesturing to them, she then described our horrible faux pas to them, “Can you believe they ordered a Riesling after a Gewurtztraminer, that’s completely backwards!”

“Well, of course you can’t do that!” The couple animatedly replied back, the three of them apparently blown away by the uncultured tastebuds that had unfortunately entered this tavern.

I was without words, my cheeks hot from the embarrassment.

“What do you recommend we drink next?” I decided that it was probably best to defer to her judgment.

But it seemed that this time we had stumped even her. “There’s nowhere you can go from here, so the only way to go is with the older, more mature Gewürztraminers,” she threw her hands up as if there was nothing she could do.

We had epically failed.

Since we did not want to drink sweeter wines, we had no other choice but to quietly drink our Riesling in shame, which she begrudgingly poured for us “comme vous voulez”. But to her the tasting had been messed up, tainted, blasphemed.

Having had travelled quite a lot of the world, I would consider myself quite cultured. 

But never have I felt so uncultured as that moment in the wine tavern in Obernai. 

We certainly learned an important lesson in wine that day and were sent home with a pamphlet describing the various grapes of the region that we could peruse in our own time. Yet, I feel like my time in France was only a minuscule step into the vast and complex world of viticulture. 

My first trip to the supermarket, I was completely overwhelmed by the four aisles dedicated solely to wine of different terroirs and years, codes I would solely familiarize myself to over the next few months. 

But as I diligently took notes of each glass of wine I had imbibed on a Google Sheet, the general contours of my wine preferences did emerge: I preferred low tannins, lighter-bodied red wines with fresh, fruity aromas, like a Pinot Noir, and a high acidity, citrus white wine like a Riesling.

I know now that wine knowledge is held in very high esteem in French culture and am continually impressed by all the areas of knowledge that are said to comprise a proper, holistic French education.

On the topic of French education, I just had some general observations from a collection of interactions I had with the Europeans I met on my journeys.

The first is how they seemed more well-rounded in their general knowledge of geography, history, politics and culture, even when it wasn’t directly pertinent to their field of study.

At a Thanksgiving dinner we held for our small group, I met a student who said she was from Benin.

I’m grateful that Yolande was in that conversation with me, as Yolande is a Hungarian student studying at the University of Strasbourg who has a much wider general knowledge than I.

While my first instinct was “And where is that in the world?”, Yolande followed up with, “Oh yeah, isn’t that a French colony?”

They proceeded to discuss the influence of French colonization on Benin, while I listened curiously.

That night, I looked up Benin on Google Maps and learned that it is a small country in West Africa, bordered by Togo and Nigeria.

For the next time I meet someone from Benin.

And another time, while in Germany, that an old high school friend took me to see the Benjamin Britten opera, “Peter Grimes”.

He was all prepared with opera binoculars that I found especially useful given our seats perched on the back balcony.

Unfortunately, my ignorance was exposed when I was asked what my favorite opera was and all I could say was the only other opera I’ve watched: “Phantom of the Opera…?”

Meanwhile, the others were rattling off their favorite operas like the names of pop songs: “Carmen, Le Boheme, Madame Butterfly…and have you seen The Magic Flute? It’s classic Mozart.”

One reason for this is how generously the EU subsidizes cultural opportunities for students (opera tickets for 5 E??), but I think it is also a function of how the geography, history, culture and politics of France is woven into their day to day – from how food is tied to the geography of various regions to how a morning commute could be very rudely interrupted by a political strike.

During my last few weeks in France, the nation-wide strike on public transport was all people would talk about, especially as the holidays neared and 50% of the trains were getting cancelled.

It almost felt surreal that a train you paid and booked for months in advance could be cancelled with a simple text message the night before and that the systems that are supposed to keep things running are helpless as the strike wreaks havoc over people’s Christmas plans.

Inevitably, the lengthy exchange of the inconvenience we have endured because of the strike would end with an apologetic shrug.

“C’est la France,” they would say to me.

Indeed, that is France. A country where people care deeply about being treated fairly, its inheritance from the French Revolution.

The downside – nationwide transport strikes; the upside – a high political awareness among the laity.

It is a country steeped in ritual and tradition, such as lunching together at specific times, saying ‘bonjour’ with every interaction, the bise.

The downside – making a faux pas as a foreigner; the upside – once you catch on, you get to be part of the social fabric!

And of course, as the stereotype goes, it is indeed a country of beauty.

However, more than just the beautiful old architecture or the quaint winding streets, I found the beauty in the way the French take their time to stroll by the river, dedicate themselves to their art because they see it as valuable, or eat lunch slow because they think it is better to spend the hour talking to the person before them rather than being productive in front of their computer. 

I don’t have to wait until I return to experience La Belle France; I can take it with me – this attitude with which I can see the rest of the world.

Et un jour, je reviendrai.