The French attitude

France, morning

If I want to write a post, I have to do it before to go to work in the morning. After, my day is just too full lately. Out of nothing I got a job offer the other day, to stay here some additional months after the end of my fellowship. The person who offered me the job would like me to do something that I don't know if it can be done, so it may be that I can't take the job ;-( I really hope that it will work out.

It is a bit more than a year that I live in the South of France and the general impression is very positive. In fact, I would like to stay here longer. It is positive even considering the assholes working at the agency who rented me my old apartment and still keep my entire deposit (900 euros). It is still positive beside the street full of dogs poo. It is still positive beside the fact that French needs to put butter on almost any edible thing. It is still positive even if the bureaucracy here is even worse than in Italy. I guess I just like here. It reminds me a lot about the life style Tuscany in some way.

But in this year I noticed that the French have an unique attitude, that I never found anywhere else in the world. They basically don't give a shit about absolutely anything except themselves. They don't do it in a mean way. It is not something bad. I think it is more something deep inside them, a deep cultural behavior to survive. They just left other people deal with what they do. And because of this, whatever it happens, it is never something to apologize for. But nothing of this means anything bad, it is just the way they are. Because if you actually ask their help, they can be very nice and people here are extremely friendly and pleasant.

If I would have a dog and my dog would poo in the middle of the street, I would clean it.
Here none does it and they don't care if someone will step on it. Someone else will take care of the cleaning.

If they open a door, they don't care of closing it slowly, so that the noisy don't make anyone jump on the chair or in bed or anywhere else. They just slammed it.

If you are not used to the way they walk here on the street, better be careful. French don't move to let you pass. They walk straight, coming toward you, without the minimum intention of slightly moving out of the way. The walk everywhere on the street, without a general pattern, but more like:" this is my space, too bad I have to share it with other people. In any case it is their problem, they will deal with that". I have no idea how they can avoid to bump into each other at the last minute.

If you have a problem, any kind of problem, it is your problem. This includes the fact that if your neighbors are very very noisy and you will in any way try to let them understand that they cannot play laud music at 4 am because they wake you up, this will be your problem that you can't sleep with their laud music, not their lack of politeness.

If you receive a lot of commercial magazines every day in the mail, what everyone here does is to take them out of the their mailbox and piled on top of it, in the common space, till you will have a pile of commercial magazines, even of some weeks old, spreading everywhere, including the floor and you will decide that instead of trashing to the recycle only the one you found in your mailbox, maybe you can also trash the ones of anyone else living in the building. See? they know that what they will not do, will be done by someone else for them.

Minimum effort, maximum result! and the ones above are just a few example that I found very astonishing.