Top 5 Things that Suck About France

Okay, we’ve covered what’s sweet about France thusfar, now let’s take a look at its more shameful (dare I say D’Zmurian?) qualities:

Honorable Mention: Two other teaching assistants told me that I shoud include “French Hobos” in my top 5 list of what sucks about France. I wasn’t sure said hobos merited being selected for my top 5, but they certainly merit being talked about, and they make a nice segue into my number five topic of Dog Poo (perhaps for comic effect I should have made Dog Poo my “number 2” choice. Anyone? Ok, maybe it’s not that funny). Anyway, French hobos are quite obnoxious sometimes, especially in Le Mans. They tend to gather in clusters in front of supermarkets and places you need to go for everyday living purposes, and then create awkward situations for innocent passers-by when they ask them for money. They drink too much, they smell terrible, and they are probably one of the leading offenders when it comes to the French dog poo problem, because every French homeless person has at least one dog (some have two or three). Where French bums congregate, French dog poo is soon to follow. One such drunken French hobo once tried to sell my friends and me a cheap bottle of French wine, telling us that it was in fact “the blood of Christ”. The experience was simultaneously funny, awkward, and kind of pathetic. The one reason that I can’t put French hobos in my top 5 is that American hobos are so much worse. While French hobos may be drunk, obnoxious, and odiferous, in some ways they are kind of cute. They all have dogs, they seem to enjoy each other’s company, and they never seem to be seriously menacing toward the general public. In my experience, Chicago hobos are definitely more threatening and less pleasant. The first two times I visited Chicago as an unaccompanied suburban high school student, I was somewhat violently confronted by homeless streetwalkers on the prowl for other people’s money. One such man pushed me and my brother and made such violent threats that we paid him $10 apiece just to get him to leave us alone. Thinking back on it, rewarding his violent behavior with money was probably not the proper conditioning step to take, but we were afraid. I have never had an experience like that in France. French hobos may be bothersome, but at least they’re peacefully bothersome.

5) The Dog Poo

For those of you who have been to France, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you who have never been, trust me. It’s everywhere. If you haven’t seen it yet, you probably just stepped in it. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how (well, actually, I’m pretty sure I know how), but people just let their dogs poop wherever and whenever they want to. It’s disgusting. I have not yet made it through a succesfully poo-free semester in France, even with constant vigilance. The majority of my friends who have lived in France have also at some time stepped in this wicked canine befoulment. French people seriously need to learn to clean up after their dogs. Notable exception: In Paris, I actually saw a man pick up after his dog, and I have not noticed the same copious abundance of excrement in the ritzier parts of Paris (they probably move it all to the vingtieme arrondissement or something).

4) The Cheating

Maybe this is just my Puritan/WASP/American side talking, but I can’t help but notice how prevalent cheating is in French society. Prime example: Bill Clinton. French people love that guy like a fat kid loves cake, or like the Polds loves to make up stupid shit. I think they actually love him more because he cheated on his wife. It makes him more like their politicians, who as a forgone conclusion all have numerous mistresses. My french ex-girlfriend told me repeatedly that she wouldn’t break up with me if I cheated on her, which led to me being somewhat disturbed/suspicious that she might cheat on me. An American friend recently told me about a French magazine article she read telling women how to handle their husbands cheating on them and save the relationship. My paraphrase of her paraprhasing of the article: “Love and Marriage are really separate entities. You don’t have to love someone to be married to them, you just need to be committed. Love, passion and excitement can be found elsewhere outside the relationship, but for purposes of financial and family stability, a husband and a wife must stay together, even if they don’t love each other”. A Parisian girl that I met on an airplane told me about a friend in her study abroad group whose girlfriend told him, “Do what you want in Greece, just don’t tell me about it”. He proceeded to do what he wanted with many, many girls. Still not convinced? Read French literature or watch French films. Ok, the family films they export to the States such as “Amelie” and “Les Choristes” don’t count. Trust me, though, it’s there. The Cheating…..so adulterous…..

3) French teenagers

Okay, maybe it’s not healthy for me to think that the age group of students that I teach for a living here in France is one of the three worst things the country has to offer. I can accept that. But they really do suck. Maybe I’m just biased because I’ve been removed from American teenagers for the last 4 years, but I really think that French teenagers in particular have bad attitudes. The situation isn’t helped by what I consider one of the most annoying inventions of all time: the cellphone mp3 player. French teenagers love to get on the bus at 8 in the morning and blast bad French rap music as loudly as their crappy, treble-laden cellphone speakers can play. Other French teenage offenses include god-complexes, disrespect for authority, and constant PDA, which was almost bad enough of a problem itself to make it into the top five (almost). The thing is, no one sets them straight. One day, while riding the bus, some teenagers were waiting at a stop where the bus proceeded to stop for a full 2 minutes. The teenagers made no attempt to board the bus, but as it pulled away, they yelled at the driver, pounded on the side of the bus, and even jumpkicked the door (that’s right, jumpkicked). The driver simply let them on without a stern word. The little bastards have free reign, I tell you.

2) It’s not Denison.

This is kind of a vague category, because it applies to everywhere that isn’t Denison, not just to France, so I was unsure at first where to put it. I think 2 is a fair ranking for it. Honestly, no Chipotle, no Smash Bros., no Jack, no American football on TV, no chili-cornbread parties, no roof of Fellows, no roof of the library, no Brownstones, no black beans, no cheddar cheese, no DRU, no bluegrass, no Raymond Wise, no Ron Santoni, no Nestor Matthews, no easily accessible network of friends who live at most a half-mile away. The list goes on and on. Admittedly, some of these things are found almost anywhere in America, but that makes it doubly unbearable that France wouldn’t have them. Honestly, how is one supposed to live? France doesn’t suck, per se, but it would suck a lot less if it were Denison. That’s all I have to say about that.

1) No one gives a crap about anything.

I know what you’re thinking. How can this be simultaneously one of the best and worst things about France? It’s really a double edged sword, or some other cliche thing that has an upside and a downside. Really, there’s a good and a bad side to everything, but in this case, the effects of no one caring about anything are so extreme that it makes both top five lists. Like I said before, if you’re lazy, or don’t want to be judged for your behavior, France is a great place to be. You can jaywalk, smoke in the presence of conspicuous NO SMOKING signs, pay your rent a month late, be late to work, late to meetings, late to pretty much anything you want (except maybe trains), and it’s okay. No one will yell at you, and you’ll rarely ever face serious consequences. However, people not caring has some pretty significant negative effects as well. My landlord has never asked for my security deposit, but nor has he ever fixed any of the problems that he said he would fix in my appartment when I moved in. There are currently two lights out of four in my hallway that have burned out, and neither have them has been replaced for over a month. Another adverse side effect of the non-caring is that everything takes forever in France. If you show up on time for a meeting, someone will inevitably be late, and you’ll be forced to wait for them. In line at the post office, train station, prefecture, etc., the people at the desks take their time; they don’t care if you’re going to miss your train while waiting to buy the ticket. They don’t care if you’ll won’t be able to leave the country without your carte de sejour. They just know that in France, slow and steady wins the race. The French are the tortoise personified. This brings to light another major problem in France — beaureaucracy. This could be listed as a separate issue, but I feel the two are inexorably linked. See, the major problem with beaureaucracy, be it in a French prefectorate, a US consulate, or even Doane administration, is that you have the feeling that the person sitting behind the desk giving you the run-around has little or no regard for your satisfaction or well-being. The French are masters of this. Their first reaction is always that they can’t help you. Sometimes they can easily help you, and if you persist and point this out to them they come around and will eventually give you what you want. However, two things are always certain when dealing with French beaureaucracy: 1)Whoever is helping you won’t actually be helpful (they will more likely be cold, stubborn, and impolite), and 2) Whatever you want done will definitely take forever. Prime example, my work permit, which will allow me to travel outside France and collect government aid for my housing, required a 15-minute meeting in which I filled out and turned in a few forms, ID photos, etc. This was completed the second week of November, and I am still waiting to receive any notification on the status of said work permit. I went to the front desk of the prefecture to ask what could be causing the delays (they had told me at my meeting I would receive the permit in January), and I was told that there was no possible way to check the status of my permit request without making an appointment, which would take place two and a half weeks later. Now I know who trained the people in Doane. Bastards.

I can’t really say that this rounds out this week’s top 5, due to the negative and inherently un-sweet nature of this week’s top 5, so I’ll suffice it to say that France doesn’t really suck, even though a lot of things here suck. Tootles.

Tags: Bureaucracy, Cheating, France, Sucks