What do you think about France?

Question

I am french!

Answer 1

A much maligned country.
Americans despise it yet they forget that the rights of man at the heart of their constitution came from France.
English people mistrust the French due to centuries of enmity. "L'enemi traditionnel de la France n'est pas l'Allemagne mais l'Angleterre".
Yet for centuries the rich US and UK citizens have flocked there to enjoy its culture, the art of living, and everything that they could not find at home. Now there is a tidal wave of Brits going to settle there, despite the prejudices held for so many years, to escape from present day Britain where life is becoming untenable. So it cannot be so bad, can it?
It is a beautiful and picturesque country where the food and the wines are excellent. Women on the whole are gracious and pleasant, and the young ones are very pretty. Good taste prevails over tackiness. Cities are clean, motorways are superb. The French have a talent for making the best of very little.
Yes, there is a certain arrogance amongst the men, but on the other hand there also is a certain amount of laissez-faire and tolerance. It is a myth that the French are ungrateful for American intervention in the two world wars. Recent commemorations have proved the reverse and Roosevelt and Churchill have a halo the size of a flying saucer.
The bureaucracy is horrendous, but one can now say the same about UK and the US.

UK and US citizens' attitude when in France often leaves a great deal to be desired. The Brits clog into small colonies and do not integrate. I know several couples who have gone to live there and speak no French and have no intention of learning it.The Americans are often loud , overbearing and condescending and expect everyone to speak English, which, incidentally, most young people there do. It is no wonder certain natives are very cool about this modern anglo- speaking invasion and are less than welcoming. Poor Joan of Arc would be turning in her grave if she had not been burnt alive. Let's face it, we are now feeling in the same way about the great tide of overtly Muslim immigrants washing over the Western world.

From personal experience, and I have lived in all three countries, once you have shown willingness to integrate, the French are very welcoming and their hospitality cannot be faulted. The English tend to keep themselves to themselves and that goes for their own nationals whilst the Scots are wonderfully warm and hospitable.The Americans have a veneer of pleasantness but on the whole are indifferent to those they are not closely acquainted with. Two of my children still live in the US and are outgoing and tactful, but they have met with a wall of indifference because they are British, even when one of them was severely wounded in an accident not of her own making.

No country is perfect. Despite its faults, France is a profoundly civilised nation and it has very much to recommend it.

Answer 2

Although I have always enjoyed France as a tourist destination I have lived there for over 3 years now and I can't wait to leave. It is a horrible place to be a foreigner. There's always someone going on about "liberté, égalité, fraternité" (and implying that all other countries are heathen wastelands), but there's precious little evidence of it in everyday life, especially if you happen not to be French. I'm white, educated, speak fluent French (never well enough for them, though) and I live in a nice area, yet I still feel oppressed. I dread to think how it would be if I were black or arab with bac -2 and lived in 93...

Answer 3

From an American:

A Country with a rich culture (gave the world Jules Verne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Voltaire, Claude Monet, The Song of Roland and Laetita Casta just to name a few.) and a great national soccer team (which has more wins in the World Cup than we Americans have appearances).

The Problem is you guys have been the bane of nearly every western alliance scince the death of Chrlemagne(Phillip leaving to attack England is a key reason why the Third Crusade largely failed, The Babylonian Captivity, Alliances with the Turks when they were at their most agressive after the Middle Ages, Napoleon, DeGualle's break with NATO and his subsequent flirting with the Soviet Union[Stalin's own error in judgement saved you guys from a Communist Dictatorship but that was before De Gualle was in power.], not to mention you guys housed the Ayatollah Kohemeni while in exile from Iran.)

The French people nowadays are either to blind to whats going on outside their own windows or their too scared to deal with it. The college riots because college students did not want bosses to put their foot down on the job site sets a poor example for the Third World.

The point is you guys are a great country but you need to do a little growing up. And unless changes are made soon even the US won't be powerful enough to pull you out of the fresh hole you dug yourselves.

Answer 4

My partner is French & I tell her the same, that;
France is a beautiful country,
Many French people are friendly
France is totally self centred
France is cowardly (just call a strike & Government policy is instantly changed),
France cannot therefore be depended upon
If it were a company, France would be almost bankrupt.

Answer 5

Rosbif is very unlucky to be living in Paris. I know French people living in London who feel exactly the same way about the English! I had a house in a small village in the Var for about ten years, and I loved it there. None of my neighbours spoke English but they were extraordinarily patient with my rather halting French. I loved the open air markets and the open air eating. I loved the weather (except for the Mistral!). I loved sitting on my terrace on an evening, with a glass of decent, inexpensive wine and listening to the crickets. I loved going to Antibes for lunch! I didn't love the motos, the caravan toting tourists or the casual attitude to lane discipline on the autoroute but they were small prices to pay for the sheer joy of being there.

Of course, I am Scottish, and the "auld alliance" is still very much in evidence!

Answer 6

Blockades on the channel ports,french farmers attacking English lorry drivers and their loads.Air traffic controllers allways picking the holiday season to go on strike.Allowing immigrants to be smuggled into England when you could do a lot more to stop it,but can not be bothered,or do not want the problem.And you ask what do we think of the french and France.No comment.

Answer 7

Bon Jour! that is about my limit.
France is a beautiful interesting country, which unlike Gt Britain stretches over a vastly changing climatic area. By this very fact its people are so interesting and different. As for France it self it is a great place for us to visit. Merci !

Answer 8

C'est manifique ! Actually, I hope to travel there next year to see for myself. There are a lot of negative impressions out there about the French. Their culture is unique (as it is in all other countries), so I don't know if it's valid for the USA to put an American point of view on French culture and policy. (Are the French pretentious and back-stabbing? Or are they just laid back & wish to be left alone? --- I'm not sure yet -- for me, the jury is still out on that one) AU REVOIR !

Answer 9

Nice nation. Lovely language - I wish I weren't so rusty at French, because it flies off the tongue like silk.

Good food, too. If I stayed there, I'd never lose weight. :-(

One drawback. I'm tee total. The wines of France are a topic eternally beyond my grasp.

Answer 10

I think that France has been a good ally of America and America has been a good ally of France. I also think that France is a beautiful place, aesthetically. They have also been somewhat self serving, but who hasn't? I hope that when the chips are down that France stands shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world to fight terrorism.