Martin & Marseille

Remember my entry on saying hi?

My favourite TV show about French/German inter cultural clashes (It's called Karambolage and can be seen every Sunday night on the French/German TV channel Arte) did their own version of my blog entry.

French version: http://sonix.sdv.fr:8080/ramgen/arte/karambolage/emission_118.rm
German version: http://sonix.sdv.fr:8080/ramgen/arte/karambolage/DE/karambolage_118.rm

Sorry, no English version...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!