Culture Shock: Same or Different?

Maybe I am less trusting of cultural fact sheets because I always seem to retain the one tidbit that is out-dated or inaccurate.  Or maybe it’s because although I have been informed by respected intercultural experts that it is impolite to cut the point off the camembert at a French dinner party, my French friends repeatedly do just that.  I have also been informed that orange juice is served at the end of an evening as a sign for the guests to leave.  Apparently I don’t travel in the right circles, because my experience has always been that the imminent closing of the metro is the best predictor of when guests will depart.  It may be useful and it is certainly interesting to read about specific cultural differences and peculiarities in various countries, however in my experience, how you adapt to life in a foreign country, whether you are living abroad for an extended period of time or visiting a short period, depends a lot on how you react to and interpret new situations.  The current trend is to focus on cultural differences, yet cultural similarities abound, especially between Europe and the United States.  Let me introduce two simple rules, based on my own experiences in foreign countries and those of my American students in Paris, as well as one important, and often overlooked tool for navigating foreign settings.

Rule 1: Look for similarities in new environments.

            When my law students arrive in Paris for their summer study program, I try to orient them to common differences between French and American life. I also warn against the wholesale assumption of dissimilarity, which can lead to misunderstandings and confusion. In many respects, Paris is much like many major American cities, except when it is different.

            In my Survival French class, I focus on practical everyday skills such as shopping, taking public transportation and telephoning. A few years ago, public telephones in Paris could only be used with smart cards. Purchasing the card was relatively easy. Since the instructions in the phone booth were in French only, and involved low frequency vocabulary such as décrocher, to pick up (the receiver) and volet, the sliding cover for the card slot, I would give the students detailed instructions on removing the receiver from its hook, inserting the télécarte in the slot and then pulling down the cover.

capl@washjeff.edu

Washington & Jefferson College © 2012

This preparation was usually sufficient and I rarely heard any further questions on the matter.  One summer, I had a student who was having a particularly difficult time learning the ropes.  She came to my office several times for advice on telephoning.  After a few fruitless attempts, she flopped herself down into a chair, completely undone.  “I found where to put the card, but I cannot for the life of me locate the receiver!”  Now we were both stumped.  How could one possibly go to a public telephone and not be able to locate the receiver?  Could some hooligan have lopped it off during a vandalism spree?  I could think of no other explanation.

Her story was so bizarre that I asked her to show me the mysterious public telephone in question.  She led me several blocks from the institute, passing a perfectly serviceable bank of phone booths next to the metro, all clearly marked with the word TÉLÉPHONE with the receivers all neatly on the hook, to head down a small side street.  By now my interest was piqued.  My student led me directly to the object of her consternation.  “See,” she motioned triumphantly, “here is where the card goes, but there is no receiver!”  My gaze shifted to my student.  What could I say and how could I put it?  This young woman, who would later clerk for an appellate judge, had been trying to telephone from --- a parking meter.

The point of this story is that sometimes things are pretty much as they appear to be. Telephones can look just like the ones at home, or at least share enough common characteristics as to be readily recognizable. Searching for the differences obscures the similarities.

Rule 2: Sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be.

            Now that I’ve suggested that the differences between France and the U.S. aren’t so great, I offer this exception to Rule 1.  If something looks the same, it may well be, but if your experience doesn’t fit your original hypothesis, it may be time to reevaluate whether it really is similar or not.  In language, these false similarities are called faux amis, or false friends.  Sensible in French means sensitive and as health-food conscious Americans quickly find out, les préservatifs in France are for preventing pregnancy, not for prolonging the shelf life of food. 

 

© Supermarchés Casino

Navigating a culture also requires sifting through “true” and “false” friends.  Recently, another student announced to me that she and her friend where going to the casino over the weekend.  I assumed they were headed for Monte Carlo, but they informed me that there were casinos, “all over Paris.”  Since I had been coming to Paris for almost twenty years and had never heard of gambling in the city, I expressed my skepticism. “We’ve seen the ads all over town,” they assured me.  It wouldn’t have been the first time my students had taught me something new about Paris.  Curious, I queried a few Parisian friends over the weekend who were as uninformed as I about gaming in the City of Light. The following Monday, I asked the girls about their casino adventure.  Disappointed, they admitted that they hadn’t managed to find the casino, which was strange since they had seen ads for inexpensive casino meals, just like in Las Vegas, at every bus stop.

A few days later, I was leading my students on an excursion when one of the girls pulled me aside to show me the advertisement which did indeed depict an impressively low-priced plate of roasted chicken and French fries with the word Casino arching across the poster in bold red.  I had to explain to my students that Casino is the name of a supermarket chain.  They had clung so tightly to their original interpretation that they were unable to process other clues, such as Casino supermarkets they might have passed on the street or other Casino posters with pictures of articles not usually associated with gambling halls.

Helpful Tip: Sometimes an accent comes in handy.

            Learning to spot and interpret similarities and differences in a new environment is an important part of cultural adaptation.  Acculturation is a very long process and individuals adapt with varying degrees of speed and success.  Perhaps unexpectedly, being identified as an outsider can be an asset for someone finding her way in a foreign country.  Indeed, the accent that we generally strive to eradicate along with identifying characteristics such as mannerisms and clothing serve a very useful function.  For example, if you learn to ask a question with perfect grammar and an excellent accent, but are only minimally conversant in a language, there’s a good chance you won’t understand the answer.  Your interlocutor will assume that you speak the language fluently and it may not occur to him to slow down or make other speech adjustments as people naturally and unconsciously do when speaking with foreigners. 

            On the other hand, if you are a native speaker, but have not lived in your native country recently, you may find yourself in the uncomfortable position of understanding and speaking the language, but not the customs and nuances of everyday life. 

© Bill Madison.blogspot.com

In an instance of reverse cultural misunderstanding, my colleague Isabelle and I had a hilarious, but frustrating experience with French telephone operators in Paris.  In the early 1990s, Isabelle returned to France for the summer after several years of college in the U.S.  At the time, we were working together at a French university and found ourselves in possession of a Minitel, a pre-internet terminal hooked up to an early local version of today’s web.  It offered on-line directory assistance and a plethora of other information.  You could not take the metro without seeing ads promoting Minitel services of a romantic nature, called Minitel rose, pink being the code name for romance.  Each of these sites was accessed by a code with the number 3615 followed by a word, such as ULLA, for the Swedish girl chat line.  There were more practical applications, such as 3615 SNCF, for the train company, or 3615 RATP, for the bus company. 

We were delighted with our treasure, but had no idea how to access directory assistance.  I suggested calling directory assistance on the telephone and asking the operator how to use the Minitel.  When Isabelle called and requested help, the operator hung up on her.  Surprised, she called back, explained that she had been cut off and repeated her question.  Again, she was disconnected, but only after the operator yelled at her, saying she didn’t have time for pranks.  Isabelle, by this time, was incensed.  She called a third time, asked to speak to a supervisor and repeated her story.  The supervisor, noticeably annoyed, advised, “Call this number and they’ll explain everything.”  That number turned out to be the Central Income Tax Office. 

We could not get the information because the operators were convinced that the woman with the careful enunciation and educated accent was playing phone games with them.  Finally I called, and assuming an obvious American accent and imperfect grammar, explained that I was visiting France and had access to this machine, but had no idea how it worked.  The operator, encountering a foreigner who could not be expected to understand the workings of the Minitel instantly provided the needed information.

It is important to remember that many aspects of life in France will be familiar.  Assume similarity if it seems warranted, but pay attention to clues that indicate otherwise.  Some things will be different, but not necessarily the ones you expect.  Part of your task is to adapt to a new culture, but take your time, don’t be hard on yourself, and finally, take advantage of your status as an outsider to ask for clarification. 

French Kids Eat Everything – But not just anything and not just anytime or anywhere

After a decade of French and France bashing, the pendulum seems to be swinging in the other direction with a range of new books extolling the magic of the French art de vivre. After Pamela Druckerman’s coquettish “I’m not even sure I like it here” but nonetheless rose-tinted view of life in France (read, Paris), it’s refreshing to read Karen Bakker Le Billon’s earnest attempt to understand the French way of educating bébé at the table. While Druckerman bears and rears her children in Paris and in a French cultural context from conception, Le Billon moves with her French husband and two small children, ages two and six at the time, from the ultra-permissive, child-centered food culture of North America (Vancouver, to be exact) to the authoritarian and comparatively rigid environment of Brittany.

Relaxed Table with Cheese

© 2011 Isabelle Vianu

The Le Billon grandparents are horrified by the manners and eating habits of their Franco-Canadian grandchildren. From their French family’s perspective the children eat constantly, at inappropriate times and places, and with so sense of etiquette - n'importe quoi, n'importe quand et n'importe comment. Le Billon is not happy with her daughters’ poor eating habits and limited culinary range, but feels powerless to change them until she realizes that behavior tolerated at home is unacceptable in France and could pose a significant impediment to her children’s social acceptance.

With the rational mind and experimental rigor of her academic background, she sets out to identify aspects of French food culture that will help her educate her own children on healthy eating and good manners. What makes the book interesting is that Le Billon is not herself in love with the French way of life and she is not a foodie by a long shot. She is no instant convert to eating a wide variety of foods and spending hours languishing at the table either. Le Billon is not afraid to voice her discomfort with the rigidity of French culture with regards to expectations of child behavior. She often finds French attitudes towards children and food downright mean.

In the beginning Le Billon views children making their own food choices as empowering and the rigid rules around eating times unnecessarily strict. In American culture, choosing your own food is indicative of the overarching importance placed on individual liberty. In fact, much is made in North American culture of catering to children’s specific food tastes. This month’s Food & Wine issue (May 2012) has an article on Katie Workman, the “Family-Food Whisperer” who creates meals that appeal to adults and children alike, as long as you’re willing to make both the ‘adult’ and ‘child’ versions of meatballs and green beans (and here I thought meatballs and green beans were already child friendly!).

French culture, in contrast, values communal sharing of food as a means of strengthening bonds and increasing cohesiveness. The cultural significance of common cuisine made headlines last summer in France when extreme right political groups organized a series of apéritifs saucisson-vin rouge, wine and pork sausage events designed to enflame anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Muslim, sentiment. Their message was clearly ‘to be French is to eat French’. 

While Le Billon wishes that her daughters could adopt the manners and varied palates of their French peers she herself is a reluctant cook with a somewhat fearful and anxious attitude towards food. She sees mealtime as a chore and a time drain. However, over the course of the year she comes to appreciate not only the health benefits of specific mealtimes, a varied diet and no snacking, but also the interpersonal benefits of relaxed time together as a family. Meal times transition from battleground to an opportunity to spend time together, to connect, to be joyful and to relax. The book is overly long in my opinion, but the reader does identify with the slowness of her process in coming to terms - and eventual acceptance – of a way of eating that runs through French culture. Restraint, connection and pleasure are all to be found around the table.

Where this book distinguishes itself from others in the genre is that it does not conclude in France with a rosy cinematic fade out of the annual family day-long garden feast and a ‘happy end’ to the food wars. After their year in Brittany, the Le Billon family returns to Vancouver, intent on maintaining the French culinary art de vivre, or lifestyle. The return, as my family knows all too well, was rocky. They had spent a year consciously exploring another view entirely of food and its place in their lives culminating, literally, with the 10 commandments of eating well, only to find that it is very difficult and a whole lot less pleasurable to walk the walk in the land of ten minute school lunches.

Le Billon is now back in Vancouver where she is trying to change the school lunch culture and introduce more healthful eating. She’s in good company. There are several excellent TED talks on the topic. For ‘Lunch Lady’ Ann Cooper, school lunch is a social justice issue. Chef Jamie Oliver is also deeply involved in improving school lunches. Meanwhile, back in France all is not rosy either. According to an article in the inaugural issue of the food review Alimentation Générale, cost-cutting measures have led to the closure of school cafeterias that once cooked meals on site to out-sourcing of school lunches to industrial food giants such as Sodexo in up to 50% of French schools. This is horrifying to many French parents not only because of the reduction in freshness and taste, but also because of the ties that children have to the tatas de cantine, the school cooks, or ‘lunch ladies’. The food preparation may be off-site, but in general French pupils still sit down together to a full meal of entrée, plat, fromage and dessert (although some renegades are pushing for a ‘cheese or dessert’ course), and the lunch break, including playtime, is two hours. Below is an example of an “industrial, processed” lunch menu offered by the food company Avenance for schools in the town of Breuillet in the Greater Paris Region. In deference to the Catholic tradition, fish is often served on Friday.

Vendredi/Friday

Tarte au Fromage/Cheese Quiche

Lieu/ Pollack (fish, a member of the cod family)

Sauce Normande/Normandy Sauce (a white sauce made of fish stock, flavored with wine, and enriched with cream and egg yolks. Dishes called ‘Normande’ usually include butter, cream and/or apples.)

Epinards à la crème/Spinach in cream sauce

Fondu président/Soft white cheese

Fruit de saison/Seasonal fruit

Goûter/Snack

Pain et chocolat/Bread and chocolate (as mentioned in Le Billon’s book, baguette with squares of chocolate)

Jus d'orange/Orange juice

Compare this to the lunch menu for a local San Diego elementary school. In addition to having the option to bring your own lunch, the American elementary school lunch also offers a choice every day, except for the weekly Round Table Pizza lunch. Note that yogurt and graham crackers are offered daily as an additional main course option, and that nachos with cheese sauce and taco meat is a meal. Depending on the day the time allotted to lunch and recess ranges from 20 minutes to a ‘generous’ 45 minutes. The high school lunch break is 22 minutes. 

Le Billon, Karen (2012) French Kids eat Everything: How our family moved to France, cured picky eating, banned snacking, and discovered 10 simple rules for raising happy, healthy eaters. William Morrow, Harper Collins Publishers: New York.

I Love Paris in the Springtime: 5 Ideas for April

Notre-Dame: check; Eiffel Tower: check; Louvre: check; Champs-Elysées: check. If you 'did it all' your last trip, think again. There is so much to discover in Paris. So, this time, relax and open yourself to the quiet beauties of the city. Springtime in Paris can be delightful. Sun and clear skies are making their appearance with increasing regularity, daffodils, tulips and crocuses, flowers that a native Californian usually sees only in shops, now pop up in every garden space. On the weekend, Parisians flood the streets and lounge in cafes in anticipation of summer. The unpredictable nature of the weather only adds to the appreciation of the moment.

Les Berges de la Seine

© Ville de Paris

1) Sunday Walk along the Seine

On Sundays, the expressway that follows the Seine is closed to traffic on the Right Bank from 9 AM – 5 PM, from the Louvre, past Notre Dame and the Ile Saint Louis to the Bercy stadium in the 12^th arrondissement. You'll see people walking, jogging, biking, and rollerblading. You can begin at the Pont des Arts, the wooden pedestrian bridge connecting the Institut de France and the Louvre, crossing from the cobblestone quai onto the asphalt expressway. If it’s a nice day, you may see people picnicking, playing music, or selling souvenir images of Paris.

A walk in this direction should include a stopover on the Ile Saint Louis for ice cream at Berthillon, which has concessions on rue des Deux Ponts, rue St. Louis-en-l’Ile, and at the café Flore en l’Ile with a stunning view of the flying buttresses of Notre Dame. Beware of imitators. Hold out for the true Berthillon. My favorite ice cream flavors are agenaise (vanilla ice cream with prunes soaked in Armagnac), and cacao au whiskey. Berthillon is renowned for its exquisite sorbets: pamplemousse (grapefruit), thym citron (lemon thyme), poire (pear), fraise des bois (wild strawberries), and pomme verte (green apple) to name just a few.

Maison Berthillon, 31 rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, 4^th, M: Cité or Pont Marie. 

2) Visit a Marché or Rue Commerçante

A visit to a Parisian market is an absolute must. Well known weekly markets are the Marché couvert des Enfants Rouges in the Marais, the oldest covered market in Paris; the more working class, or populaire, Marché d’Aligre in the 12^th with indoor and outdoor spaces; and rues commercantes, commercial streets, such as rue Montorgueil on the rive droite, and rue Daguerre on the rive gauche, where you will find numerous boulangeries, patisseries, boucheries, fromageries, small supermarchés, cafés and tabacs. 

Marché couvert des Enfants Rouges, 39 rue de Bretagne, 3^rd, M: Temple

Marché d’Aligre, 12^th, M:Ledru-Rollin

Rue Montorgueil, between rue Turbigo and rue Reaumur, 1^st and 2^nd, M: Les Halles or Etienne Marcel

Rue Daguerre, beginning at Ave. du Général Leclerc, 14^th, M: Denfert-Rochereau

3) Take a cruise on the Canal St. Martin

After walking along the river, get another perspective of the Seine, from the river itself. Several companies cruise the Seine through the center of Paris, but for a water view off the beaten track, take a leisurely cruise up the Canal St. Martin. Beginning from the Port de l’Arsenal (M: Bastille) you’ll cross the 11^th arrondissement underground below the Richard Lenoir and Jules Ferry boulevards and then pop up in the 10^th arrondissement to pass through a series of locks as you make your way up the canal to the Parc de la Villette.

Canauxrama, Porte de Plaisance Paris-Arsenal, across from 50 bd de la Bastille, 12^th, M: Bastille (Opéra Bastille exit), Reserve by telephone or email at Tel. 01 42 39 15 00, or canauxrama.croisieres@wanadoo.fr. Departures at 9:45am and 2:30pm. The 2 ½ hour trip arrives at the Parc de la Villette, perfect for a visit of the park and the Cité des Sciences or the Cité de la Musique. 16€ (book online for 13.50€).

Springtime on the Canal St. Martin

© Isabelle Vianu

4) Museums – Off hours and off the tourist circuit

Friday Night at the Louvre

© Isabelle Vianu

Visit museums in the evening, during their nocturnes, when the tourist crowds are gone. The Louvre is open late on Wednesdays and Fridays, until 9:45 PM, and is free Friday evening after 6pm for young people 26 and under. Otherwise, the usual fee of 10€ applies. 



The Musée d’Orsay nocturnes begin at 6pm on Thursday nights with reduced entry of 6.50€.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

© Isabelle Vianu

For a change from the greatest hits museums, visit one of Paris’ lovely house museums. Several Paris City Museums in the Marais offer free entrance to the Carnavalet Museum of the History of Paris, Jay-Cognacq for 18^th Century paintings and furniture and Victor Hugo’s House on the Place des Vosges. For an early 20^th century reconstitution of an 18^th century home, visit the lovely Nissim de Camondo House in the 8^th district near the Parc Monceau. The art collecting couple turned their home into a museum. The Jacquemart-André, former home of the art collecting couple Nélie Jacquemart and Edouard André, is just a few blocks away, and has an impressive permanent collection of European paintings and sculptures, with a particular emphasis on Venetian and Florentine Renaissance art, along with the private living spaces of the couple.

5) Laze about in a Park

Spring flowers Buttes Chaumont

© Isabelle Vianu

Parc des Buttes Chaumont for its grottos, waterfall, ponds and folies. M: Buttes Chaumont or Botzaris.

Jardin du Luxembourg for its staturary, people watching, basketball courts chess playing grandpas, and jogging firemen. There is a separate children’s playground, basket swings, a childrens theater, and toy boat rental for the fountains behind the Senate building. RER: Luxembourg.

Jardin du Palais Royal for the black and white Buren columns, the green benches under one of the 400 tilleuls, or linden trees, the covered galleries, and revolutionary history. M: Palais Royal.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont

© Isabelle Vianu