Culture Shock

Martin & Marseille

Monday, October 2. 2006

Posted by Martin Braun in Culture

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The title's really just to get some attention. I really like France in general and Marseille in particular. However, there are - of course - some things that might theoretically drive a german student nuts. Just talking in theory, though

I've compiled a small list:

French bureaucracy is just incredible and makes me feel like doing some stuff at the Stadtverwaltung Germersheim to relax. A lot of you might know the film Asterix erobert Rom (sorry, only know the german title) where Asterix has to get form A39. Just to remind you: Asterix is originally french, meaning the author didn't have to exaggerate much. The difference is that in the Asterix movie, everything was in the same building, here you have to dash across town and others even have to go to Aix-En-Provence for some of their paperwork. I'm not mentioning any of the trouble the non-EU-students have to go through.

French driving is just generally a minimisation of used space on streets. Here, leaving more than 10cm between cars is considered a waste. For the first time in my life I was actually stuck in a traffic jam - with my bike! I couldn't move for at least 5 minutes. Same goes for parking (that's what the pavements are there for). A famous quote about french driving goes something like this: 'Traffic in France is just a matter of vocabulary', although I believe it's a lot worse in Paris than here (so I've been told).

Standing at the till in supermarkets. All of a sudden, the same person who was wildly honking his horn at everyone in the same district will calmly load his stuff into plastic bags, chat with the person at the till, think a couple of minutes about how he's going to pay, decide to use Carte Bleu if he's in a hurry or Cheques if the next person in the queue is, fill out the check slowly and double check it was right (although the tills have printers for checks), say goodbye to everyone and then pack the rest of his stuff.

The way there's always loads of food and half of it get's chucked away. Would anyone enlighten me if it's good manners to leave food on your plate or just habit?

AZERTY keyboards

The little liberty École-Students have. I'll write an entry about that sometime later.

The fact that as soon as someone knows I'm german, he or she'll start quoting random phrases they remeber from their german classes ('Guten Tag! Gesundheit! Ich liebe Schokolade! Jawohl Herr General! Heute hat es geregnet!' - never omitting the exlamation marks'). Don't mix this up with french people who just want to have a chat in German to brush it up - I like that, especially as those kind of people are more likely to correct me when I'm doing mistakes.

The bread. It goes stale after 12hrs and doesn't fill you up in the first place.

I'm not doing a list of stuff I like, though - it would be too much. Southern France is great!

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Hey Du Stinkor,

ich dachte die Russen sind schlimm was die Bürokratie angeht aber so wie das bei Dir klingt hast Du mehr Pech gehabt. Ich freu mich immer wenn ich mal ein anderes Ende von der Stadt sehe weil ich ein Konto eröffnen muss. Oder auch nur in einem Film mitspielen muss, in dem es um eine Deutsche Bäckerei in Russland geht. Die Russen sind irgendwie cool. Was macht Dein Französisch ... vergiss nicht Dir die dreckigen Schimpfworte zu notieren. Ich werde am Mittwoch in der banja mitschreiben was ich so höre. Was machen die Freizeitaktivitäten. Du weisst Alter .. das Leben ist zu kurz um richtig gut programmieren zu lerne. Setz Dich lieber mal auf ein Pferd oder häng Deinen blanken popka aus akno. See wormy ... keep in touch ...

le damné

#1 Hartmut (Homepage) on 2006-10-02 19:08 (Reply)

> AZERTY keyboards
w00t???

Liebe Gruesse!!!

#2 echox (Homepage) on 2006-10-03 11:04 (Reply)

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