Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris

It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.

Such is the nature of an expatriate life. Stripped of romance, perhaps that's what being an expat is all about: a sense of not wholly belonging. [...] The insider-outsider dichotomy gives life a degree of tension. Not of a needling, negative variety but rather a keep-on-your-toes sort of tension that can plunge or peak with sudden rushes of love or anger. Learning to recognise and interpret cultural behaviour is a vital step forward for expats anywhere, but it doesn't mean that you grow to appreciate all the differences.

The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings?” (pp.281-82)

I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it's a love-hate relationship.

You'd think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery - so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me - only depresses me more. I plod on feeling confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise.

choose three others: creamy St-Félicien, which is so ripe it quivers at the slightest movement; brebis corse, a Corsican speciality made from sheep’s milk and rolled in rosemary and thyme; a chèvre—not too dry but tasty, I specify. A lot of the sec goat cheeses have a powdery texture, which I dislike, whereas the younger chèvres can be milky and a bit tasteless. He recommends the small discs of Picodon from the Drôme region. There might be six bakeries on Rue Montorgueil but I’m also particular about where I go for bread.

For example, if you’re a guest it is not polite to ask to use the host’s toilet, apparently: they might feel embarrassed because it isn’t presentable for guests. And as a host, don’t, whatever you do, pass the cheese platter more than once. It’s considered ill-mannered, I read, after I’d done precisely that at least five hundred times.

In Paris, I love having lunch at La Cloche des Halles, a smoky wine bar with a huge ham on the counter and sturdy wines by the glass. To me this simple fare is soul food.

times it’s like living in a gorgeous museum. Even the people don’t look quite real—those perfect-looking parents with perfect children in spotless navy coats. I dream of pushing them into puddles.

But ironically it’s precisely this state of poetic perfection—so appealing to visitors—that can become oppressive when you live here.

Soixante-huitards, for sure, Frédéric says afterward, meaning they probably threw a few cobblestones in 1968.

The person serving feels inferior to the person being served so they try and show they are important by being rude.

France is a very hierarchical society,” he says. “The whole question of service is linked to old ideas of power and class.

Smile sweetly at a waiter as you sit down and chances are you’ll be treated with contempt.

The French are not impressed by anything as banal as niceness.

Les françaises—particularly parisiennes, she stresses—perceive those of the same sex as rivals, not as potential friends.

Living in Paris requires constant effort: effort to make myself understood, effort to understand and to be alert for those cultural intricacies that can turn even going to the post office into a social adventure.

But appreciation of beauty can also creep up on you. It can be a taste acquired through experience, time, love and deepening knowledge.

I practically fall on the floor laughing.

The thing is, the French are highly sensitive to aesthetics. Anything unattractive—even something as insignificant as an underdressed tourist—can make them uncomfortable.

She epitomizes the look French women aspire to: a mix of aristocratic beauty spiced with a dash of modern mum.

The essence of French style can be summed up in two words, which linked together are loaded with meaning: bon goût. Good taste.

The loaded phrase “se mettre en valeur” is used all the time. It means “to make the most of yourself.” This is not something the French do when they feel like it: they do it every day.

concept that to me is totally foreign: looking scruffy is selfish. Not only do you look like a slob but you let down the whole city.

The city is a testament to civilization. Of course, I know from the last year that living in a gorgeous environment isn’t enough to make you happy. But breathtaking beauty of any kind is moving. It makes tourists of us all. It anchors your heart to a place.

clochards—homeless people who have been living on the same streets for so long that no one can remember a time when they weren’t there.

I don’t buy Le Figaro, either. Not because it’s a right-leaning paper but because I can’t forgive it for “Madame,” its weekend magazine full of beauty and fashion, the very name of which, it seems to me, implies that lipsticks and liposuction are far more interesting to women than the main magazine devoted