When you move countries, you know things are going to be different. There are some things you know beforehand, that you hear through the grapevine (which, these days, mostly just means the internet)- you know, stuff like driving on a different side of the road, or, in the case of France, that the bread will be different and that Europeans generally have their meals later. But you can never really, truly know what shape everything will take. My colleagues spoke of some things before I arrived, but there is so much that we all take for granted as normal. Until you go somewhere new, and discover that your normal is decidedly not universal.
So without further ado, here are about twenty differences between France and Australia:
- French pizza – not necessarily cut into slices. I stood there in the shop and watched them make at least ten pizzas, and it didn’t occur to me until I was sitting with my own, very whole pizza that I hadn’t seen them slice a single one.
- The pedestrian lights don’t have a sound to let you know when the lights go green – I actually have to pay attention at the crossing? Not on board with this. Some of us are trying to sight-see, or read. They do, however, have a secondary set of traffic lights attached to the pole lower down, so drivers stopped at the lights can actually see them, and that’s a great idea.
- The maps of the train lines on some Paris trains light up. So all the upcoming stops are lit up to tell you what stops the train is headed to and the light for the upcoming stop flashes as you get close- I wish this was adopted everywhere. Amazing.
- There are two distinct types of yogurt here. I am still investigating this one, but from what I can tell there is a more savoury one with a subtle flavour and the texture… I’m going to use the word stringy, but this is wildly inadequate. (Many experiences resist language, try as I might to coax them.) Regardless, it doesn’t fall off the spoon in globs the way the sweet – and recognisable to me – kind of yogurt does. They will often have both kinds at the school canteen here, so I aim to continue my investigations.
- The bank closes at 1230 for lunch and re-opens at 1500. This is common of quite a few businesses. I don’t mind this, and honestly, I think the best time to visit your larger supermarkets is between these hours on a weekday (provided they are still open). So quiet!
- There is more waiting here and no one seems to mind. At stores with only one check-out counter, or waiting for somewhere to re-open after lunch. Waiting for paperwork to go through and such. Just a very relaxed approach more broadly, I suppose. Except for school security which is more than what I am used to.
- In complete contrast, people are on the horn much faster when they’re driving – if the car at the front didn’t leave half a second before the light actually turned green, they were too slow!
- The light switches are huge! A lot of giant squares, occasionally split in half if a room requires two switches- but even these are more than twice the size of a standard Aussie light switch. Amusing to me, but I must say, really quite wonderful when your hands are full.
- Everything is built upwards (of course, the land to person ratio is very different to Australia’s) so while everything is taller, the houses all seem to have tiny little roofs. This delights me.
- The school bell isn’t a regular ring or the kind of ‘airport’ tone as we used to call it at my school, but a short little jingle. Different at different schools, but still seems to be broadly quite musical.
- The fire alarm on the other hand is brain-melting and honestly should have set off every dog in town. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if it is damaging, although it does make you leave the building very quickly in order to escape it. So at least it’s effective, I guess?
- The library is so impressive! This town has at least three, and still so impressive! There is a whole gaming room with a game of the month to play while in the library, but then you can also borrow games for various consoles to take home. Also board games and puzzles, and all manner of books, DVDs, and CDs – that’s the same as an Aussie library. But another point of difference: you can borrow paintings to hang on your wall! Best library ever – there may be prettier ones in the world, bigger libraries in bigger cities… But for a town this size, it has no business being four floors with such scope and variety of resources. Love it.*
- Lined notebooks are not the most common kind of notebook – grid patterns of various styles are actually much more common.
- You can buy horse meat at the grocery store. I will not be partaking of this option.
- You have to weigh your fruit and get a little sticker printed out BEFORE you head to the checkout. Also, sometimes to leave the store through a check-out you have to scan your receipt in order for it to open. (Man, I have messed up so much at the grocery store…)
- The international food aisle is huge. At the biggest and cheapest grocery store I have found so far (sadly not the closest by any means), it is actually “aisles”. Plural!
- You are only legally obligated to wear a bike helmet if you are twelve and under.
- So many mansard roofs! I thought that was over-idealised for media purposes and that they wouldn’t be that common, but they really are. These are those classic French roofs where the shingles come all the way down over the top floor- like an attic room except it really doesn’t look like an attic because the roof is barely sloped. I have looked into this, because from a functional perspective it seemed purposeless, and apparently the answer is tax evasion!(People weren’t taxed on areas behind slopped roofs.)**
- You can buy a ‘douzaine’ or dozen eggs here, or you can buy a ‘dixaine’, which is a lot of ten! (And also still a half dozen, just the same.)
- The smoke detector has a very bright white light that flashes periodically. Mostly fine, but do still freak out about it sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep and my brain registers it as lightning somehow inside my otherwise pitch-black room?!
I am sure there will be another one of these posts in the future, but, for today, that is twenty differences between France and Australia.
*The French word for library is “bibliotheque” or “mediatheque”, for those with the bigger variety of resources. Meanwhile, the French word for bookstore is “librarie”. Please sigh deeply once on my behalf. Thank you.