Entries by Martin Braun

Martin & Marseille

Thursday, February 15. 2007

Salut, ça va? Posted by Martin Braun in Culture at 14:14

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Defined tags for this entry: culture, france, greeting

The best way to pass as a Frenchman (if that's what you want) is to stick to group of other French people and not say much. However, you still have to get past the greeting ceremony - and that's more difficult than I ever thought it was.
I never thought much about greeting rituals, but they are more complex than I ever imagined and deeply integrated into local culture.
In Germany, we hardly ever say anything at all. A little wave or a nod to everyone in general is usually enough, perhaps accompanied with a little grunt or something along the lines of "'ello" (like "tach" or "yo"). Perhaps this is because of our efficiency-driven way of living; having to greet each other for ages would soak up valuable time we could put to work.
As if to confirm this, I read a description about some small island where the people seem to be particularly nice: "In a place where people having nothing else to do, they greet each other all the time.". It was a French journalist who wrote this, so I find it difficult to imagine - from my point of view, French people spend loads of time greeting.
The greeting ritual is still a mystery for me. A rough description: If you meet one or more people where it's not too crowded or awkward, you give all the blokes a handshake, all the girls the right number of 'bises' together with an appropriate micro-conversation about how you're doing. Sounds easy, but the details are difficult. If you're just greeting someone at the bakers for example, all this doesn't apply but a different set of rules becomes valid, that's when you start with the Bonjour-thing, but I won't go there for now.

First of all, you have to judge if the whole greeting ceremony can be shortened down to just giving the nearest people or even no-one at all the full greeting monty without being considered impolite. Of course if you're seeing someone the other end of a crowded bus, you don't have to walk over but if you're meeting someone in the corridor you're the right level of close to you can't skip it. If you don't know the person that well a verbal greeting might suffice, but not if it would leave an awkward gap (e.g. if you're waiting for the elevator together). The threshold for bises seems to be higher than for handshakes, but you usually wouldn't shake hands with a girl (I think).
Of course this is all different for formal occasions, luckily - I just couldn't imagine doing the bises before opening a bank account. In high-ranking positions it's something else: you will often see politicians doing bises if they want to make the closeness in a relationship clear. Bises between men are not at all uncommon, but luckily not compulsory. Now I think about it, I've seen that in Germany, too, but mostly with Turkish adolescents for some reason.

The next bit is what to say. I usually try and get out of this by being the first to say 'Salut, ça va?'. That way the other person has to think of an answer giving me some time to improvise the next bit of the conversation.
Like in some other countries (I've seen this with US-Americans, but I couldn't say this is generally true) the question 'ça va?' (meaning 'how are you?') is mostly not really an in-depth inquiry about your physical and mental health, but more like the near-dead 'how do you do?'. Again, this is very dependant on the type of relationship. The closer you are, the more details you may reveal. The most common is one of these: "Ça va? - Ça va.", "Ça va bien? - Oui, ça va" or variations. If you're a bit closer, it could be something like "Ça va? - Ouais... il faut... " (You alright? - Yeah... well... not much choice really....). However, you can't reveal serious problems, of course. If you're good friends OR you're extra-polite, you could say 'Comment vas-tu?' which this time really means "How are you?" (Ça va? literally means 'It goes?'). If the question was asked less out of politeness and more out of general interest, you may go ahead and answer honestly.
I don't know if it's a local thing, but Marseillaise people have a special answer for when they're alright: 'Ouais, tranquil...' ('yeah, easy-going...'). This would be a typical Marseillaise thing to say, explaining that the best possible state is when nothing really is happening.

The number of bises, by the way, seems to be regionally constant and is usually 1 on each side (at least here it is).

So, who would have imagined that I could write so much about greetings? I wonder if the German greeting has so many sides to it. I'd appreciate some input from some non-Germans, here.
I know one thing, however: It's not compatible to France. My way of greeting friends I see in the street at a medium distance is usually by yelling something short and easily perceptible like "hey!". Not being a complete cultural equivalent of the famous elephant in the china store I don't usually do that to French people, but I still do when I see Germans. Trouble is, to French ears it sounds a bit like "hey you, stop that or you'll meet my friend Desert Eagle" - this whole article is actually inspired by the 3 French guys I gave a jump when I was just greeting a fellow ERASMUS student.

Tuesday, January 30. 2007

Doctor's appointment Posted by Martin Braun in Culture at 11:33

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Doctor's appointment

Due to some bad luck I had the chance to check out the French health system. This is actually quite well described in the book 'A year in the merde' which I can recommend to anyone who wants a funny story about French culture (it's about this English business guy who works in France for year - at the end he wants to stay).

If you went to the doctor's in France, it could end up like this:

Act 1: The waiting room

Our hero enters an inconspiciously looking building that could be anything from HLM to tobacco storage. He rings the bell and enters.
In the waiting hall, there's a truckload of patients who are doing their best trying to look ill.
"Bonjour."
"Bonjour. Cough, cough."
Everyone's trying to avoid eye-contact, but without trying to be noticed, everyone notices exactly who's coming and going. As there's neither as assistant who calls people in nor any fixed dates, you have to remember who was before you in the queue. But of course you can't just ask who's currently last in the queue because that would spoil this plot.

1h later. There's only 3 people left who came before you and the rest came after you. The doctor calls out the next one. Panic and confusion spread beneath the 3 others.
Patient 1: "Was it me or you?"
Patient 2: "I forgot..."
Patient 3: "I came after you two."
Patient 2: "I really can't remember. Please, go first."
Patient 1: "Thank you."
Patient 4 (who came later): "After you it's me then, right?"

Luckily, our hero could save the situation by a super-fast usage of politeness and self-preservation:
"I'm sorry, I think it's me after him. I arrived before you did."
Patient 4: "Oh."
"Yeah, it's confusing, isn't it?"
Patient 4: "Yes, it is. Why don't we get a number?"

Unknowingly, patient 4 has just ask the most fundamental question of them all, nearly making the French health system collapse.

Act 2: At the doctor's.

The last patient is already at the doctor's. Our hero has strategically put aside his literature he cleverly brought along to spend the afternoon with. As soon as he hears the doctor saying good-bye to the last patient, he jumps up like a leopard to make a point of it being his turn now.
The doctor comes out of his room, a gleaming white light shining from it accompanied by a faint choir of angels in the background. Has all this waiting been in vain?

Doc: "Good afternoon. What can I do for you?"
"[explanation of injury]".
Doc: "OK. First of all, can I see your insurance card?"
"Sure, here it is. I've only got this German one, though."
The doctor, seeing his patient is a foreigner, tries talking English for a few sentences before finding out that his patient is actually a lot better at French than he is at English.
Doc: "OK, now I need your date of birth and your phone number although we'll probably never call you."
"It should be in the database already, I've been to your college who's room is exactly next to this one."
Doc: "Oh, the databases are different. So far, we haven't managed to coordinate them yet."
"All right. It's 06..."

Surprisingly, the actual diagnostic seems to the same as our hero's used to.

Doc: "Hm, doesn't seem to be any broken bones. Still, I'll prescribe you half a ton of medicine and I'd like to get an X-ray to go sure. That'll be 21€, please. Cheques are graciously accepted."

The hero is already looking forward to the Adventure, part II: Getting the German insurance to re-pay me, er, him.

Act 3: Pharmacie

"Hello. I'd like all this, please."
Pharmacist: "Sure. Your green health insurance card, please."
"Oh, I don't have one. I've only got this from my German health insurance."

Panic and confusion. The pharmacist turns to her colleague for help. After some research, they find out I can just pay the 40€ directly and handle the insurance myself.

Pharmacist: "Here you go. Do you need a small truck to carry all of this?"

Act 4: X-Ray

Our hero enters the X-Ray place. To his surprise, the radiologist has an assistant at the entrance.

"Hello. I need an X-ray."
Assistant: "OK. Do you have an appointment?"
"No. Do I need one?"
Assistant: "Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Oh. OK, could I make one and come back?"
Assistant: "Oh no, just wait in the waiting room."
"All right."

Our hero starts unpacking his book to pass the next eternity in the waiting room.
30 seconds later, he gets called in.

Afterwards, he wants to check out.

Assistant: "Can I have your insurance card, please?"
"I've only got this German one."

Panic and confusion.

Assistant: "I'll have to call the doctor."

Doctor: "Don't you have any insurance?"
"Apart from this excellent German one I just showed you, no."
Doctor: "Phew, we'll have to fix this when you come back for your pictures."

Next morning, our hero return for the pictures. The doctors have finally decided that he could just pay directly and handle the insurance himself.
While filling out the cheque, our hero misunderstands the amount and accidentally puts in 1€ less than the actual price.

Doctor: "Oh, you forgot one Euro. Well, never mind."

The hero is baffled.
Doctor: "Here's your piece of paper for the insurance."
"Thanks. Say, why did you sign the paper for me?"
Doctor: "Oh, my assistant thought she'd sign it for you. Do you think your insurance might mind if there's a different signature on this one?"
"Er, yes, I think they would."
Doctor: "OK, we'll make you a new one."

After staying at the doctor's for about the same time as for doing the actual X-ray, our hero returns home with all the necessary papers, knowing that now he has fought and survived the seven-headed monster of bureaucracy in two different countries now.

-- THE END --

Tuesday, January 30. 2007

Lu, Parlé, Ecrit? Posted by Martin Braun in Martinisms at 11:30

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Lu, Parlé, Ecrit?

It is interesting to watch the development of my language skills (the French language skills, that is). Remember for me it's the first time I'm really learning a foreign language, English doesn't count and Latin doesn't really count, either.
Before I went everyone told me I'd pick it up in no time and I'd be fluent after a couple of weeks. I don't find it that easy.
For a start, I communicate too much with other foreigners (i.e. non-French) people. This is less avoidable than it seems: for a start, I live with more foreigners than natives and then I do lots of stuff over the internet. If I work on a computer project for a day on my own computer I usually don't see much French stuff. Even some projects for university require reading English papers. I probably do much more stuff in English when I'm in Germany but never noticed.
Then I don't do much active learning. My École does offer French for foreigners, but that's designed for 1st year students and clashes with my 3rd year timetable. 80% of my learning is just chatting with people and listening in classes, the rest is made up of reading (fiction, newspapers, some web sites) and only a very little bit of actual work on my grammar and vocab. I think this is not the best way to learn a language: It's difficult to remember which prepositions to use and which gender nouns have this way.
Nevertheless, I'm a lot better than I was. I can follow most of my lessons, even when the prof doesn't talk too clearly (most of it interpolated, but still). I read French books (nothing hard, so far only French translations of English books) and newspapers and get quite far using a dictionary. I have conversations and use the subjonctive just because everything else sounds wrong. I get asked for directions and can help.
But I still make loads of mistakes. This is what I find difficult.

- Pronunciation
Is not really that hard. Write me down a French word and don't rush me, I'll read it without a mistake 95% of the time. But French pronunciation is adaptive. It changes. That makes it difficult to apply it correctly the same time as constructing sentences. And it is very sensitive to mistakes. Little pronunciation mistakes can make words and sentences completely incomprehensible.

- Conjugation and tenses
German conjugation is weird and very irregular so I should be used to this. There's a difference, though: in the spoken language, German speakers usually only need the present form (Indikativ), the past perfect (Perfekt) which uses a participle and present forms of be (sein) and have (haben). Future forms are even easier: connect future forms of 'be' and 'have' with the infinitive or use the present in a future context. The famous Konjunktiv isn't really used that often so you can get quite far with forms like 'Ich würde gerne klettern' (I'd like to climb).
French conjugations like their own forms. For spoken language, you need to conjugate the participle (for passé composé, past tense), the imparfait (simple past), futur, conditionnel, of course présent and the subjonctif which all have their own conjugations. Then, you should know the futur composé which is a composite conjugation but uses go (aller) for a modal instead of have and be. For a higher language level you also could learn the subjonctif imparfait and for reading the passé simple is often used in books, but for an intermediate level understanding them is enough.
Point I'm trying to make: we Germans are getting a bit lazy and use modals too often, so this multitude of conjugations is confusing.

- Vocab
I'm pretty lazy learning vocab. It's just so boring... But as I never learnt lots of French at school, most of my vocab I just 'picked up'. Which means I don't know much, use it in wrong places and of course mix up the genders. What I try and do is remember whole phrases: "La coté obscure de la force..." not only gives me the genders of two nouns, but also helps because words on -é usually have the same gender - now I know it's feminine.

- Writing
My writing in general is pretty bad. I'm starting to get the hang of accents, but my biggest source of mistakes is the accordance of adjectives and participles. Take this sentence: 'FSO is very well developed.'. In French, that's 'FSO est trés evoluée.'. I usually forget the last e, because it's so far from the word FSO. And even so, FSO is an English abbreviation - so why is it feminine? Answer: because it's a technology, and it's 'la technologie'. I just hope I didn't do any mistakes in this paragraph.

- Style
Have you ever seen or hear someone create a phrase and you thought "Grammatically it's correct and I can't explain why, but it doesn't sound very good?" People tell me that loads here. Interesting: seems like a 'feel' for a language evolves in several stages. I wonder if I ever get to the one where I can choose the 'better' phrase from two grammatically equivalent ones.

Although my French gets better all the time, I know it won't be anywhere near perfection until March. 6 months is just not enough to learn a language at my age

Tuesday, January 16. 2007

Useless laws weaken necessary laws Posted by Martin Braun in Culture at 14:46

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Defined tags for this entry: culture, france, french, germans, rules

Useless laws weaken necessary laws

Wow, what a quote. I'll break some journalistic rules and start with both a quote and a joke:

A US-American, a Frenchman and a German are sitting on a bridge. You want to make them jump down. What do you say to them to achieve that?

To the American: "There's a 1000$ down there"
To the Frenchman: "It's forbidden to jump off this bridge"
To the German: "Jump"

Where's the connection between the joke and the quote? Easy: this is an article about rules and German and French people.
Everyone knows the German are a law- and rule-abiding people. Well, at least everyone says so. And I have more than once done something like stopping at a red pedestrian light even there's no car around in the middle of Brazil, for example. I had a little chat with the secretary for internships here and she immediately started telling me about her trips to Germany and of course some anecdotes about German law-abidingness.

My observation: it's all true (I leap right back into the over-generalisation without any data backing me up again). But there's a twist, and here's my theory: Germans are more rule-abiding, but they also have more sensible rules.

France is by no means short of rules. You get them everywhere and by the hundreds and loads of them are ridiculous (in my humble opinion). So no wonder French people don't stick to rules: they couldn't budge a meter without breaking one. So hey, why not break a couple more while you're at it.

I think a typical French procedure is something like this: there's millions of rules, you stick to those you can care to do so, then someone 'in charge' will come complaining, you start a discussion and bargain out some understanding. When I organised a birthday party for someone from the student's home I had to sign a piece of paper that there wouldn't be any alcohol at all, I wouldn't invite more than 15 people, there'd be no noise and the room would be handed over spick and span by 23.00 tops. Quite impossible to both do a birthday party and stick to those rules, but I was assured by some people who do parties more often that you just have to have a quick word with the security guy and it would be OK... (and I didn't invite more then 15 people, they just came).
Rules are everywhere. There's traffic lights and crossings I wouldn't even notice without the lights. You're supposed to stop at zebra crossings if someone wants to cross, but there's one every 25m. My student card has some space just for general rules (in Karlsruhe the space is rented out for advertising). You automatically ignore them because there just not enough time to read them all. I am not allowed to attach an electric hotplate in my room, but a microwave oven is fine. A fridge is not. If you want cars to drive 40km/h because the road is dangerous there's a sign limiting to 10km/h.

So far my unqualified observations. There's lots of stuff I'd like to know, e.g. if the law system is something like that (see the quote), and if they started off with lots of laws and started ignoring them or if the many rules were introduced to compensate for the ignoring.

The title is (ironically) a quote by Charles de Montesquieu, a Frenchman (you've probably heard of him, he's the one who came up with the division of the administrative powers executive/legislative/judicative). Quite a loose translation, the German translation is "Wenn es nicht notwendig ist, ein Gesetz zu machen, dann ist es notwendig, kein Gesetz zu machen." His favourite author, Tacitus, also had his opinion on this subject: "The most rotten countries have the most laws." And here's the catch: this country is far too nice to be called rotten. At least French people don't blindly jump of bridges.

Monday, January 15. 2007

Bonne Année Posted by Martin Braun in Martinisms at 13:38

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Bonne Année

hi all,

happy new year. During my holidays in Germany I got a huge amount of positive feedback concerning my blog, and I want to thank everyone for their interest and also apologise that I haven't written anything for a while. I am quite busy, and practically all of my classes require computer work so I prefer to do something other then hacking away during my free time. However, especially having been home to Germany during the holidays I've come up with some new ideas for entries which will hopefully be available soon.

For those reading my blog on-line, some might have thought that the weather-plugin is buggy. It's not: since I got here I haven't had one day without sun and yesterday I did a nice hike from La Ciotat to Cassis along the Calanques, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and having some ice-cream afterwards. Incredible what a European summer can be like. As usual when I do something interesting, I forgot my camera, though.

Wednesday, December 13. 2006

Calanques + Climbing = Cool Posted by Martin Braun in Planet Mars at 12:22

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Calanques + Climbing = Cool

The 3 C equation. I might have been a bit harsh on this place on my blog, but that's only because it's easier to write about something I don't like for me in a interesting way. Not this time!

This is the first bit we went up. I'm warming up in the sun, the chap climbing is Petr who organised all of this - thanks again, Pete.
The date is not correct, by the way, we went on the 10th.

Before I hear the usual jokes about me and my attitude towards using my muscles: I went all the way up on all the rocks we went to.

Evidence.

This is one of the 2 rock formations we tackled that day.
OK, I must admit it got a bit cold in shorts when you weren't in the sun, but hey, it's the middle of December.

Wednesday, December 13. 2006

Remember Remember the 26th of November Posted by Martin Braun in Planet Mars at 12:14

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Remember Remember the 26th of November

Because that's when I went swimming in the sea. Here's photographic evidence:

Yep, that's me. It was a bit cold, but not unbearable. I love this place.

Thursday, November 23. 2006

Baguettism Posted by Martin Braun in Culture at 11:56

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Defined tags for this entry: baguette, culture

Baguettism

Whenever you see a (German) caricature of a Frenchman (say, a picture where you can see several different nations and the illustrator wants to make it clear that it is showing normal people instead of celebrities), he'll be likely to carry a baguette. This long, white piece of bread really is a symbol for France, and completely justified.

I'm not just talking about eating habits, here. Having lived here for a while, I've really got the impression that the baguette is an integral part of French culture.

First of all, let's clarify what we're actually talking about. If you go to a German bakery and order a baguette, you'll get also get a long white piece of bread, but that's not the same. A good French baguette is more crunchy on the outside, nice and fluffy in the inside and it doesn't have any nutritional value whatsoever. Often enough, they're just freshly made and still warm.
Getting a baguette, especially in the mornings has a cultural significance equally important as getting fresh rolls has in Germany. Every morning, you can see small armies of French people walking to the next boulangerie and back with one or several baguettes, which are impossible to carry without displaying them. If you're feeling peckish, you can get a nice croissant too, but that's another (yummy) story.

So, imagine you've got a baguette and start eating it. As mentioned before, a French baguette barely qualifies as food and you end up eating more of what you put on the baguette (most likely cheese, of which there's an excellent choice here, and butter, probably salted). So, having a lunch that consists mainly of baguette and cheese is hardly a lunch, it's more like nibbling. That's typical: while a typical German meal is made of a few basic ingredients (e.g. meat or potatoes) and designed to be eaten up and to make you big and strong, a French meal is more like fiddling around with loads of bits of food. So you'd usually have a baguette with something else.

The story isn't finished, here. Here, there's only one place to buy a baguette, and that's your local boulangerie. And a boulangerie is basically a place that sells baguettes. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but my that's my impression: you can get croissants, pains au chocolat, pieces of pizza, other sorts of bread... but the number of sold baguettes is way bigger than of all the other stuff. I've actually gone in and ordered 'One, please' and got one baguette without further inquiry. So, in a boulangerie they chuck some flour and water together and sell it for around 65cents. There's so many bakeries around - so how do they make money?

Ah... another interesting cultural thing! As I said, thinking about baguettes can get quite fascinating (well, I find it fascinating). First of all, that last question doesn't seem to crop up in France. It's a typical German question, I believe. That's probably why we Germans are world champions in rationalising, which is such a nice word for finding means to fire people by replacing them by efficient machinery. The biggest European baking company, by the way, is Kamps, founded in Germany. They have huge bread factories and have optimised the distribution to all the Kamps shops - because Germans have this urge to re-organise and optimise processes. The French love their boulangerie, and that's why it's usually an artisanale - they make their own bread.

You could probably go further and further into French culture and always find parallels and connections to baguette. But then, you'd have to be German to actually bother.

Thursday, November 23. 2006

Tour of the Centrale Posted by Martin Braun in Life at the Grande École at 11:49

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Defined tags for this entry: centrale, egim, fotos

Tour of the Centrale

I'll show you the inside of my École today. You've already seen it from on side and from top, so
here it is from the front:

However, if you go in the back entrance, you can see this:

This shows the confusion with the constant changing of name. At the top, it's got the current
name. But you can also see references to EGIM (which it was before, doesn't exist anymore), the
ESIM and the ISPA (2 of 4 schools which were put together to form the EGIM), the I.M.T. (I'm not
quite sure where this comes in, but apparently that's what the building used to be called), and
then there's LATP, INRIA, Polytech and L3M where I don't even know what they are.

But let's go inside.

This is what most class rooms look like. Reminds you of school? Trust me, everything here reminds
you of school.

This certainly reminds you of school - the timetable. It's even got time blocked for sports.

The students have a fair amount of own facilities. This is the foyer, where most of the school parties take place. There's rules, though, e.g. the no-alcohol-but-beer rule.

The outside is not too special, I admit. But you can play volleyball and - even more important - petanque.

But then, you can always meet with others to form a group. They've got a backline and most of stuff you need, a couple of pianos too.

The amount of computers per student is quite impressive, but as the computer rooms also double as classrooms for practical classes there are times when you can't get a computer at all - but then you'd usually be having class yourself. All machines are state-of-the-art dell computers, without double-boot, so there's always a Linux box available. Printing's for free.

Thursday, November 23. 2006

Fire Water Burn Posted by Martin Braun in Martinisms at 11:46

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Fire Water Burn

There I am, riding to school on my bike on nice sunny morning and what do I see? I never found out
if it was a French mini-riot in an otherwise unhabitated and uninhibited area, a parking fine or
an attack by vicious fireflies, but I don't think this car is going to try and overtake me in a
roundabout.

Tuesday, November 7. 2006

Lidelle Posted by Martin Braun at 18:23

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Defined tags for this entry: culture, lidl

Lidelle

On my way home from the Centrale there's a conveniently placed Lidl right on the way. I go there quite often to fill up my cheese or soap or whatever, so I know the place well enough to compare it to German Lidls, which I think is quite a good way to show differences between Germany and France.
Lidl itself could never been created in France, though. For a start, it's, well, little (sorry, couldn't resist) and French love huge supermarkets. But I want to show what France has done to our Lidls to adapt them to the local habits.

The first thing you notice are the hours: Lidl's open from 9-19.30 (less on saturdays), which is a bit less than German Lidls which are open from 8-8 everyday but Sunday. I couldn't really care less, though, so lets enter Lidl, which looks quite much like a German Lidl from the inside. Even the products are the same, often enough even the same brand (obviously imported). Most of the time they don't even bother with French labels, making me wonder if everyone in France knows the words Christstollen or Spekulatius. But you can get German beer (altough I've gotten used to French beer, even if 1,97€ for 10x0.25l should make you suspicious). Of course, there are differences: The cheese section is more adapted to France, you can get several sorts of Coulommier (Which's ammoniak emmissions I can smell right now, hmmm...), there's no bread (bread is a no-no for shops without their own Boulangerie) and you can only buy sweet cereal (which is why I always liked the family holidays to France, but right now I'd like some plain müsli). The veg section is nowhere near as good as the German one's (although I can't really compare that having only been to one Lidl) and CD-Rs are much more expensive than in Germany.

There are more typical French supermarket influences. First of all, there's the security guy. That's someone who basically just walks around with a 'Security' anorak and a walkie-talkie (no idea who he could contact in a Lidl?). Don't ask him where the eggs are, though, he doesn't seem to serve any active purpose. The more hyper supermarkets in France get, the more security guys they employ. The local Carrefour has whole armies of them running around.

Something's missing, though... ah yes, the hectic atmosphere. Unlike at home, it's not necessary for everyone to be in rush. People just do their shopping and then go to the till, no hurry. I like that, but the best bit is when you're actually queueing up. For my German mentality, this was really difficult to grasp, but once you get to the till you just take your time. If you take 5 minutes just paying, no-one will launch medium wars towards you like at home. OK, when you're in a hurry it's really annoying. But here, no-one seems to be in a hurry (unless they're driving). Paying by cheque would be banned in Germany if it would still be done just for being so slow.
The staff seems more relaxed, too. Wild stories of Lidl staff being timed at the till and having to do a minimum of X articles per minute certainly aren't true in France. The most funny incident I recall was when a woman who was already queueing up asked for an article and was directed towards it by the woman at the till (who could obviously not run stuff past the scanner at the same time), helped by the other to girls at the tills (who couldn't do anything else either) and was watched by all the customers (well, they didn't have anything else to do waiting at the till). When she finally found her on-offer batteries or whatever it was, I felt like cheering.

But everytime I come out of Lidl's, I can immediately see what's missing: bike stands. No-one here seems to use bikes, so outside supermarkets lamp-posts have to do.

Thursday, November 2. 2006

Where am I? Posted by Martin Braun in Planet Mars at 18:47

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Defined tags for this entry: calanques, ecole, fotos, marseille, satellite, vieux-port

Where am I?

The last entry has inspired me to give a more detailed overview of where I live - per satellite. Thanks to google for doing the hard work for me.

My École Centrale. The U-Shaped building at the top left is a student's home (not mine), the rest is ECM.

My Cité U. To the right's the University (not mine). The square above it's a Resto U, where you can get decent food for decent money.
I invite you to zoom out a bit and go the left. You can see the increasing number of huge blocks (HLMs). Welcome to the Merlan.

Our favourite place in the Calanques. This is where most people go, it's easy to get to. I can't believe I actually found it on the map....

The Vieux-Port Usually the beginning of every tour of Marseille. If you click 'Hybrid' you can find the Canebière, which leads off from the VP to the north-east. It's apparently really famous, someone wrote a song about it (so I've been told).

Thursday, November 2. 2006

How do we sleep when the bus is burning? Posted by Martin Braun in Planet Mars at 17:59

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Defined tags for this entry: marseille, riots, violence

How do we sleep when the bus is burning?

It made national and even international news: Last saturday, a bus in Marseille was burnt while stopping at a bus stop. A couple of kids poured petrol into the bus and lit it up. So far, no one has died but one senegalese student was extremely badly injured.
It helps knowing that that day, it was one year that the kids died in the transformer house, which incited the riots in Paris and Marseille last year.

This actually happened quite close to my student's home. Here's a Google Map Satellite image of where I live (I'm sorry, but I don't really know how Google copyright works and I've had enough trouble with net and law, so you'll have to follow the link). The two big greyish-reddish-beigish rectangular things in the middle are footie grounds, Résidence Chatenoud is right above them, the H-shaped building (I live in the lower right leg of the H). On the right hand side you can see a road running in north-south direction. If you follow the road downwards, past the footie grounds, you can see an oval shaped roundabout. That's about where the bus burnt.

While this is pretty close to where I live, the only problem this posed to me was that I couldn't get back from the station on sunday night because of the strike following this incident. If you look around at St Jerome, no-one seems very concerned at all. However, if you have look at the news you get the impression the whole nation is at war:

http://www.netzeitung.de/ausland/449863.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0,36-828800,0.html

OK, around Paris a couple of busses got burnt too, so this was hardly an accident. Still, the last article suggests that politicans are using this incident to show how well they can deal with situations like this, with an iron fist and bla bla.
Temporarily upgrading the number of police patrols won't help (I didn't see any, by the way). Sorry, France, but your policy regarding integration has never been really well. Here's some additional information: The 13eme Arrondissement mentioned in the article above isn't really a very beautiful area, it's the Marseillaise version of a ghetto. Loads of HLMs, a couple of supermarkets and that's basically it. People who can't afford the better areas get plonked here and most of the time, they don't get out. So it's not really surprising that sometimes, frustration turns to violence and leaks out in cruel ways like this.

However, living at the edge of the 13eme Arrondissement isn't that bad, before or after the incidence. No-one ever assumed public transport in Marseille to be entirely safe and this has reminded us again. It still sounds better than public transport in Berlin.

Thursday, October 12. 2006

> 9000 words Posted by Martin Braun in Martinisms at 13:41

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Defined tags for this entry: calanques, ecole, fotos, traversee, vieux-port

> 9000 words

The title gives a hint: I'll post some pictures today.

The Ecole Centrale Marseille

This is my École. You can see the names it's had, the current name (École Centrale Marseille) isn't there yet. You can nearly see all of my school on this picture - it's not big.

My room.

My room. Not much larger than my room in Germany, but without the 100MBit internet connection (without any connection, in fact - phone, net... it's got water and electricity, though).

Kitchen in my residence

The kitchen's bloody useless. We only managed to do this dinner in the kitchen because that was when most of the rooms were still empty.

Me & Marseille

Mesdames, Messieurs, je vous presente: Marseille.

Calanques

Marseille's got a lot of nature. This is in the Calanques.

Camargues

The Camargues is a nature park thingy, consists mainly of swamps but is very close to the sea. Apparently there's wild horses there, but we only saw flamingos.

Fluressen

It's not impossible to have fun in the residence, but pretty difficult. If it's not the annoying night-watchman's shift and we dismantle our rooms to improvise a table, and the guy at the end of the corridor isn't in we can even have real feasts.

Traversee Vieux-Port

The Traversee Vieux-Port. This boat made entirely of rubbish actually won the 1st prize in the category 'speed' (this is actually true). We got free tickets for 'Le diable s'habille en Prada', so I guess we should have gone for 'style' or 'creativity'. The overall winner actually got a weekend to Lapland.

Monday, October 9. 2006

[Update] The French language from a ... Posted by Martin Braun in Martinisms at 16:42

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Defined tags for this entry: french, language, signal processing

[Update] The French language from a signal processors point of view

I've been thinking about the French language a bit recently and I've come to the conclusion that if I'd analyse it using engineering logic the French language would be less useful than German would be.

Let me elaborate. First of all, here's my statement: When switching from French to German, you gain somewhere around 1dB comparing signal to noise ratios (SNR).

My apologies to all you non-engineers. I will try and explain everything in a comprehensible way, however it's not always that easy as I will be using engineering logic to prove my statement.
To understand the statement, imagine talking to someone with loads of background noise, e.g. using a bad phone line or in a very loud environment. Imagine the noise level isn't so high that it actually hurts and for the sake of the argument never will. I will arbitrarily define the SNR to be equal to 0dB when to noise level is so high you can just about understand the other one. If a language is more suitable for this kind of situation, you might be able to increase the noise level a little bit (or decrease the voice level). If you can actually double the noise level when switching from one language to another, you have a gain of 3dB on your SNR (if you can increase it by a factor 10, you gain 10dB and so on - the scale is logarithmic). 1dB means you can increase the noise by about 25%, but of course all of this is very, very hypothetical and of course in no way accurate.

Short version: I think german speakers have less trouble understanding what they're saying. (Note: this only applies for spoken language, not for written language, unless you have to use an AZERTY keyboard to write it).

Of course, I prefer my mother tongue, so at first I thought I wasn't really in the position to write this and any French person would think it was the other way round. Now, I'm not so sure. Here's a couple of reasons I think I'm right:

Too many similarities - My favourite example here is marron (brown) and marrant (funny, as in 'hey, that's funny'). For the untrained ear, those two words are hardly distinguishable. Anyone who know's some French can hear the difference if they're said after another, but actually pronouncing them right is extremely difficult, at least for me. Doesn't matter (so I'm told) because the French use context to distinguish the two - which can be confusing. In this case, both words are adjectives, so they have the same position in the sentence. I's easy to think of examples ('Mr. Jones? Oh, he lives over there, it's the house with the funny door.').

Heavy reliance on proper pronounciation - Of couse, this is the most annoying for foreigners, but I've heard people with accents having similar problems. It's happened several times to me that I said a - grammatically - perfectly right sentence and the other end had no clue what I was talking about - bad pronounciation. It's hard to get right, because the difference between an accent and bad pronounciation is a lot smaller than in German (I think). This also goes for questions: In French, you can quite often make a question from a statement by increasing the pitch of your voice at the end of the sentence. Today, I left an office saying 'Ah bon, c'est tout' which must have been pretty close to 'C'est tout?' because the secretary said 'Oui, c'est tout'.

Big difference between pronounciation and written words - Yes, I know German has a big difference here too, every language has. German has an advantage, though: We usually pronounce every letter in the word, exceptions usually being non-German based. And we leave a gap between the words, making them easier to distinguish. When talking to foreigners in Germany, I'm used to questions like: 'What was that word?' whereas here, I'm more interested in the whole sentence, simply because I can't tell where one word started and the other stopped.

Bad use of redundance - In language, redundance is what let's you understand a sentence even if you missed out a couple of syllables. French has some redundancys which are not really necessary. It starts with their tenses. Everyone tells me passé simple is not really important, but of course it's used in books. Grammatically, it has the same meaning as the passé composé (but is not made using a modal and a participle, just in case your interested, but has it's own forms) and in some cases, I've heard people use it as a shortcut in spoken language (e.g. saying j'eus [I had] instead of j'ai eu. Now I see this written down, I think I might have been malinformed about this - if you mumble the second one, it sounds like the first one).
Another thing is the adaption of adjectives. If I'd use an AZERTY keyboard for too long, I'd have to say 'Je serai fou' (I'm getting crazy). Unless, of course, I'm a girl (check.... no, I'm not) in which case I'd have to say 'je serai folle'. This adds zero information to the sentence, in 99% of the cases I hopefully don't have to adapt the adjective to clarify my sex (that's why I've grown a beard).

Problems with new words - A good example of new words is family names. Here, everyone just spells out their last name automatically, because just by hearing the sound you usually have no clue on how to spell something.

I might add some more to this entry in the future, but right now I've got french class. Time to adapt the filter matching in my acoustic signal processing lobe.

[Update]

This kind of supports my analysis: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/79712/from/rss09

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