Observations

Eye Contact
The situation is that you are walking in the street or corridor and you pass a stranger coming the other direction. In the US you look for eye contact. If you get it, you nod and/or say a greeting. In France, you may or may not make eye contact. But you are likely to get a greeting just as you pass the person, or are slightly past the person. It can be confusing. Are they talking to you or someone behind you? There is not necessarily eye contact to confirm this. Entering a store may prove equally confusing. You may get a ‘Bonjour monsieur’, without eye contact from anyone.

Oh and when leaving a store, ‘merci’ is not an appropriate departing salutation like in the US. You still need to say ‘Au Revoir’ or something. The patisserie women hinted at this when I merely said ‘Merci’ as I left. She then repeated her ‘Au Revoir Monsieur’ a second time. But naturally, there was not eye contact, so I’m not totally sure.

Driving
Driving in Metro Detroit is sloppy, aggressive and unrewarding. If you are in a lane that is merging or is a turn only situation you obviously need to move a lane over. If there is a vehicle in that lane, their attitude often seems to be ‘you can move over, as long as it isn’t in front of me.’ So even if you are in front of this vehicle they have a tendency to speed up and close the gap to stop you changing lanes in front of them. Likewise, there are often people who use the merging lane as a chance to speed up and pass a few people and cut back in at the last second. If you don’t let them in, they will cut you off and force you into the opposite lane facing oncoming traffic. This has happened to me as well. So there is this perpetual I’m going to show you attitude where everyone is making sure that no takes advantage of them.

In France there seems to be this overall goal of maximizing traffic efficiency. If you are in that same situation where you need to change lanes, you simply turn on your blinker and the nearest possible opening appears. Even in the middle of Paris, people rush up to fill every possible gap at a red light. But once the light turns, there is a fluid release of pressure. Some people will accelerate faster than others but you aren’t going to get run off the road.

Of course the ‘round about’ exemplifies this goal of efficiency. You tend to time your entry to minimize the disturbance to existing circular traffic flow. Since everyone else does the same, you have no issues continuing and exiting the circle.

Oh and a GPS is a must have. There is a reason that even the majority of the locals seem to use them. They make navigation so easy. Good call Chiferd. Plus, they add to the overall efficiency of traffic.

Stereotypes
The French have a reputation for being rude and intolerant of foreigners, especially Americans. So far, everyone has been more than helpful to us. The woman in the information window at the Metro station when we were too stupid to figure out the time schedule was more than patient. Same goes for the woman at the Prefecture when we came to apply for our Carte de Sejour and were totally ill prepared. Even the receptionist at the health check office was polite and all smiles.

Government Bureaucracy
We’ve experienced the French Consolate, Health check office (OPHS), Prefecture. All three have been quite efficient. We haven’t waited more than 20 minutes to get served.

Complaints
The list is short. Dog shit! WTF. The French understandably have so much pride for French culture, architecture, history. So much of it is focused into a relatively small area of the city of Paris. Yet they allow it to be defaced thoroughly and regularly. You can’t look away because then of course you’ll step in it. So you’re stuck focusing on it. You start thinking, ‘Oh that’s a strange color’. Or maybe, ‘If that was my dog, I’d take him to the vet.’ Talk about completely losing one’s appetite. I think it’s the real reason Parisian women stay thin.

Oh and the designer of our hotel toilet seems to sit on a toilet backwards. By this I mean he straddles the water tank as opposed to backing up to it. I base this knowledge on his location of the toilet bowl water. Maybe if he stopped designing all the French toilets, they wouldn’t need to place a brush next to every toilet in the country.