26: Cultural Update

I added a bunch of pictures to my last post! Check them out. I also tried to add some cultural thoughts, but it spun out of control so I just made a new post:

I thought about something: When Blaire and I grabbed coffee with Charlie, she delivered a rant about how shallow people in France are. This took me aback: there are clearly some superficial aspects of French culture, but I thought back to my outdoor gym in Paris and how people arriving would make sure to shake everyone’s hand before beginning their workout. Even at my new gym in Lille, a guy came up to shake my hand when he walked in last night. Such a greeting ritual seems genuinely gregarious, but Charlie countered that the French emphasis on social ritual was just cursory and perfunctory. This made me think of the distinction between midwestern kindness and Southern manners; kind vs nice; warm vs polite.

Charlie’s tirade also brought to my mind the American stereotype of French people being rude to foreigners. I had always dismissed this as equanimity towards tourists, the big-city attitude of Paris (not dissimilar to New York), and a different culture around food (waiters are not paid in tips, cuisine is meant to be enjoyed slowly, “why do these Americans want their waters refilled every cinq minutes?”). None of these justifications make me less annoyed when waiters refuse to respond in French, leaving us each speaking the wrong language as I order.

I hadn’t thought about this since studying abroad; back in the capital with my parents, I did start noticing that Parisians are more abrupt, impatient, and generally in a hurry. This stark contrast from Lille would seem to reinforce the “big city mentality” theory for French rudeness, except apparently my experience in Lille was not the right comparison. One night in Paris, we befriended a waiter named Nicholas (despite time spent in America, his geniality alone proves that a diversity of French personality types exist, even in Paris–where I had also befriended Baptiste, a local bartender, while studying abroad. If local Parisians working in the service industry can be as easily engaged as Nicholas, or absolute sweethearts like Baptiste, than is the big-city theory not enough? Or are there simply exceptions to every rule?) Digression aside, Nicholas told us that the «Lillois»–people from Lille–are exceptionally warm. Not a good control group for Parisians. Maybe this is the Belgian/Flanders culture, or just a cultural necessity that far north. But it makes a lot of sense, and I had definitely taken the (social) warmth for granted before returning to Paris.
Us with Nicholas

Nicholas also told us, for comparison, that people in the South of France are polite… at a distance. The ramifications of rural life–more solitary, less engaged with strangers, a shared cultural past underpinning uniform social rules, expansive living space–seem to connect the American South to Provence, just as the heads-down-in-a-hurry energies of New York and Paris seem connected by the logistics of urban living. Where the warmth of the North–with its heavy industrial past and close proximity to non-French cultures–plays in, I’m not sure. But I sure am happy to be surrounded by Lillois.