For the most part, “guy standing waiting for bus whom they thought they’d just walk over”. Really that’s the most of it, they just don’t seem to like sharing footpaths with anyone, walk towards them, walk away, they don’t make room, just march on.
Any other European stereotype I’ve heard hasn’t been played out in any way (except for the German couple who were studying in our university, very polite, very good with paperwork).
I had a long conversation with a taxi driver on a trip across town. He talked a lot about French language and how he’d picked it up over the years. In his experience, starting a conversation in France in French, no matter how poorly you speak it, does a lot to break the ice. Start with an immediate, do you speak English (in English) doesn’t do so well.
As someone who has visited NYC many times, (and because I often enjoy a few beers with lunch on vacation, someone who easily gets turned around on the streets of Manhattan) I can vouch for the truth in this statement.
New Yorkers, once they know you are not looking for a handout, will often go out of their way to give directions, give advice on a good place to eat in the neighborhood, or a heads-up on the easiest way to the subway.
I have travelled a lot, in many of the worlds great cities, also in many small little towns way, way off the tourist trails. I can count on one hand the number of unpleasant interactions I have had upon asking a local for help.
The traveller’s attitude and demeanor drive the tenor of the encounter 99% of the time, and if you go in with a smile and a desire to be pleasant, that’s what you almost always get back in return…
Mileage varies wildly. I actually found Hamburg to be one of the most open, accepting, and friendly parts of Germany. The people seemed very down-to-earth and non-judgmental. The unfriendliest city in Germany I’ve been to, or maybe I should say “coldest”, was Stuttgart. It’s not Bavaria, but it’s Southern Germany. I found Bavaria to be pretty friendly, overall, but somewhat culturally conservative. Still, I don’t recall anyone really be rude to me.
The French stereotype is unfortunate. I’ve never had any issues in Paris or otherwise. I speak high school French, and nobody ever made me feel like an idiot for trying, and, even when they continued talking in French, they seemed to understand me and not criticize my pronunciation.
My experience with European (not really including Brits) ex-pats living in the US is that, while they’re not exactly rude, they are often much more blunt than Americans tend to be, much more likely to call a spade a spade. I never got any impression that they were being intentionally unkind, just that the cultures from which they came allowed for much franker intercourse than is common in the US. For example, my ex-boyfriend’s mother, who was Swiss by birth, once offered me a candy bar with the off-hand comment that “You’re a candy fresser, right?” Fresser is a Yiddish (and possibly German) term for someone who is rather overly enthusiastic about , and given my lifelong struggle with my weight and the fact that I did enjoy candy, her comment was a bit hurtful, but I didn’t get the sense that this was her purpose (then again, maybe it was - I was after all living with her precious son, except that she was equally blunt with him as well). This is the only example I can think of off-hand, but I know I’ve met other Europeans who were similarly blunt without any apparent malice. Of course, this could also be due to the fact that, speaking a second language, one simply doesn’t have the luxury of dancing around a harsh truth linguistically, because it’s just too difficult to be speaking a second language and digging up very tactful vocabulary. Americans may be equally blunt in a second language for the same reason.
So it may well be that the French are not so mcuh rude as simply willing to be fairly blunt. Americans are not formal, but we do tend to avoid saying anything that might remotely suggest something negative about the people we’re speaking to, and to outright deny any negative qualities the other person might mention about him/herself, whereas a European might simply accept that person’s self-assessment. Of course, there are wide variations within any group, so you’re going to find Americans who are perfectly willing to insult anyone they meet, and Europeans who will bend over backwards to give any offense.
This. This alone will be the biggest help in getting along in France. Fail to do it and you may as well walk away and try somewhere else. Well, not really, but sometimes it feels like it especially in a small shop.
My father, who lives in Bordeaux, explained to me that when you walk into a small shop it’s incredibly ill-mannered not to greet everyone in the shop, staff and customers alike (when you walk past them). Just my (his) two-cents.
I remember once I saw a French woman busting her butt to catch the bus I was on. She reached the door, gasping, and said, “I need to get to blah blah blah - can I take this bus to get there?”
The bus driver paused for about 10 long seconds and replied, “bonjour, madame.”
He wouldn’t respond to her until she said ‘bonjour’. It was incredible (and a good lesson for me).
Another story that has reached urban legend status (but probably took place) is when an American woman went to a butcher shop in Paris to buy a ham. Since meats are cut differently here, she took the recipe and a picture to show the butcher what kind of ham she wanted. The recipe called for a honey glaze and pineapple or something like that.
Well, the butcher took one look at all the sweet gooey stuff that was going to be on his ham and he refused to sell it to her. He was worried that her guests would ask where she had bought the ham and he would be held liable for such a culinary disaster. The Spirit of Capitalism certainly hasn’t totally overwhelmed France! I know waiters who will refuse to serve soda with a killer meal - it’s about reputation and standards more than money. This is kind of a weird concept for Americans!
I have lived in Paris for the past oh 16 months now. I am a Brit who has spent significant time in the in the US as well as been/visited/lived in many many countries with my job. I always whereever I go know how to say please and thankyou, hello good bye excuse me etc where ever I go and it buys you buckets of respect and help. France is formal much more formal than I was used to. Even when I am getting on the bus headed home from work it has become a reflex to politely say Bonjour! to the driver as I swipe my Navigo pass. In the lift at work in the mornings headed up to the sixth floor as people alight at each level they each say and recieve Bonne Journee!. I spoke some French when I got here and although I am by no means fluent now I get by - I know I may not be using the correct tense when I say phrases or with the correct pronunciation but as I am making an effort to speak some French it helps.
The Parisiens are generally helpful - you will always come across exceptions to the rule I had a waiter yell at me once for not understanding what he was asking me. But if you have even a few words it helps especially the niceties for Hello/goodbye/Thankyou etc etc
Hmm, you know, I knew this before visiting Paris and in general was very good about maintaining this custom (it came pretty naturally), but in retrospect it’s entirely possible in my One Bad Experience story (with the bar staff/waiter at the place I popped into looking to use their restroom) that in my urgency, I forgot the introductory niceties. It just wasn’t on my mind.
I’m not sure I understand: did the waiter take the map out of your pocket telling you you’d dropped it? Or had you actually dropped it?
In any case, the use of “tu” probably isn’t an insult. It was in the past more common in France to use “vous” with strangers, but I believe it’s on the way out, especially among young people.
Yes, he pulled it out of my back pocket. It was fairly clear to me that he was emphasizing that I was a tourist or out-of-towner. Ah, well.
I do have another “rude French waiter” story from my honeymoon in Paris, but in a way that I liked. We visited one fairly well known restaurant, Au Pied de Cochon, and my wife was quite taken with the profiteroles dessert they had there, enough so that we made a special trip back to the same restaurant towards the end of our visit. Profiteroles are puff pastries with a custard filling served with chocolate sauce on top, and everywhere else we’d had them they were served cold with the chocolate already on it, but here the pastries were warm and the chocolate sauce was basically melted chocolate, still warm, served on the side in something like a gravy boat.
On this second trip there, my wife finished her pastries but not the chocolate sauce. She was pouring it onto her empty plate and scooping it up with the edge of her fork when the waiter came to clear the table (I had finished my own dessert), and she gestured to him that no, she wasn’t finished. The waiter paused slightly and said nothing as he cleared the rest of the table, but a few moments later he returned and silently laid a little drinking straw next to her plate of chocolate sauce
My wife looked quite abashed, put her fork down and said, “I’m done now.”
Or you just met a rude French person! Just because the stereotype is probably not really true doesn’t mean rude French people don’t exist. There’s no such thing as a country where every single person is nice, of course!
I’ve only spent a significant length of time in Paris once. I was treated like a king by everyone. Of course, I was being shown around by a French colonel in uniform.
Agree with all of the above.
I have a 26 year old son living in Paris, and since I was a kid myself, I have visited France multiple times–one of the times was in March 2003 when troops were invading Iraq.
I’ve only had a couple of less-than-polite incidents in Europe, period, and none of them were ever in France.
Just do a bit of research beforehand, and this will probably help immensely.
Me too.
You be nice, and they’ll be nice. Parisians can have a rep for rudeness like the way New Yorkers have a rep for rudeness. The large cities have a faster pace to them.
By all means, don’t let this keep you from visiting a wonderful country.
I went to Paris with the same reservations about having a horrible time and constantly slighted as being obviously from USA. I went in 2004, right during the big US election run-up where opinions seem the most polarized.
I had a fantastic time. I can’t recall a specific instance of being mistreated, save for a dinner on the Champs-Elysees. Even then, it was a pleasant experience. I just felt like our server was less-than-attentive. We walked nearly everywhere and only really ran into significant language problems in the Metro (subway), and again, this was no worst than being a tourist anywhere else.
One thing that I think I noticed (but may have imagined) is that after our initial communication with someone they’d perk up as we weren’t the sort to give off airs of entitlement, we wouldn’t ask for ketchup, and we’d always order wine. It just felt as if their body language was saying, “Oh, ok… he’s portly, but he’s not one of those Americans.”
