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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Budget airlines, cowbells and lunch

From headline-grabbing ideas on cheap flights to the future of Alpine tourism, via celebrations at France's winning way with lunch, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Published: 2 September 2023 06:36 CEST
Inside France: Budget airlines, cowbells and lunch
Photo by JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT / AFP

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Eating champions

Everyone loves topping a league table – and I’ve especially enjoyed the reaction to this OECD one, which reveals that the French are global winners when it comes to time spent eating and drinking – spending double the amount of time at the table as the poor old Americans down in last place.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has spent time here that meals are prioritised in France – it’s common for workers to take at least an hour break for lunch, sometimes two, and there’s virtually no culture of snatching a sandwich as you work (in fact, eating at your desk is technically illegal).

This is also reflected in one of the things that visitors to France frequently complain about – slow service in restaurants. Yes, service in France is slow, but that’s intentional. The idea is that you relax and take your time, enjoying the experience of a good meal with friends or family – it’s not a competition to bolt your food and get out as quickly as possible. 

Mountain summer

An alarming new report in the journal Nature Climate Change predicts that 90 percent of European ski resorts will face a critical shortage of snow in the years to come, due to ever-warming temperatures.

This is already happening in many of France’s lower-altitude resorts and there’s a push towards making areas like the Alps and the Pyrenees year-round destinations, so that tourism revenue no longer relies on snow.

Having just returned from a weekend in the mountains in Savoie, close to the historic spa town of Aix-les-Bains, I can confirm that summer tourism in the Alps is certainly no hardship (even if the noise of the cowbells distracted me from my book and forced me to open a bottle of local wine instead). 

Ticket to fly

Talking of environmental issues, France’s transport minister Clément Beaune (a man who knows how to grab a headline) has called for an EU-wide minimum price on plane tickets, saying that €10 flights ‘are no longer possible’ during a climate crisis.

Like anything involving the EU, this will not be a quick or simple process, but it follows a consistent line from France which has already limited domestic flights and plans to increase the tax on plane tickets in the 2024 budget.

Factcheck: Is France really banning cheap flights?

Residents in France are of course fortunate to have a great train network as an alternative – apart from the environmental considerations, going by train really makes the journey part of the holiday, rather than something to be endured as you cram yourself like a pretzel into a Ryanair seat and contemplate whether to pay €7 for a glass of dodgy wine. 

French TV recommendation

If you haven’t already seen it, I really cannot recommend highly enough the French series Le Bureau des Légendes. A Canal Plus production, it’s only available via the pay-TV channel or on DVD but I was lucky enough to get the box set for my birthday.

I finally finished it this week and I’m still processing just how stunningly good it is – smart, sexy, emotional, intelligent and with plot twists galore.

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Political farce, far-right fears and sharks under Paris

This week in France has been heavily focused on politics due to the surprise election, from the soap opera and the memes of the right-wing parties to grumpy faces among the Macronists, plus some light relief in the form of the weird stuff underneath Paris.

Published: 15 June 2024 11:41 CEST
Inside France: Political farce, far-right fears and sharks under Paris

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Ciotti chuckles

Anyone who says that the French have no sense of humour has clearly not spent any time on French social media this week as the jokes and memes came thick and fast in response to the ridiculous election shenanigans of the once-mighty right-wing Les Républicains party.

You can find the full details here but to cut a long story short, party leader Eric Ciotti announced an election alliance with the far-right, his fellow party bigwigs were horrified and attempted to expel him, Ciotti locked himself inside the party HQ and refused to allow anyone in, leaders held their meeting elsewhere and voted to expel him from the party, Ciotti refused to accept their verdict and posted a video of him showing up at work as normal the following day, insisting he was still in charge.

The whole thing was a gift for anyone with a Twitter account and a sense of humour. 

Sense of humour

The whole idea that ‘the French aren’t funny’ is an oddly enduring trope. I think it’s to do with the fact that French humour is often highly referential, making it hard for foreigners to get if they don’t understand the references.

READ ALSO 5 tips for understanding French humour and jokes

Far right

Funny as the whole Ciotti episode was, it didn’t quite distract from the widespread horror in France at the prospect of a far-right government, and bafflement over Emmanuel Macron’s high-stakes election gamble.

His announcement on Sunday night of a snap election took the country and the media entirely by surprise and seemed to catch plenty of his own party members off guard too.

The election is a gamble – un pari – Macron is banking on the country to reject the far-right at the polls and hand his party back an absolute majority in parliament. This could happen, or Marine Le Pen’s party could win and Macron would then go down in history as the man who handed the keys of government to the far-right. Or – and most analysts think this is the most likely scenario – no party could win an absolute majority and the parliament could be plunged into an even more messy deadlock.

READ ALSO What do the snap elections mean for France?

One of the most outspoken critics has been Gabriel Attal, the 35-year-old prime minister often described as a Macron protege. This photo of him with a face like thunder has become another meme, embodying all those who think that this election is a very bad idea. 

Talking France

We of course talk about the elections in a special episode of the Talking France podcast – listen here. During the election period we will be releasing the podcast on Mondays, and we will also be doing a bi-weekly election breakdown for anyone who wants to stay in touch with the latest – sign up here.

Sharknado

And if you want something to help you switch off from all the politics, I highly recommend the new Netflix film Sous la Seine (Under Paris). Not because it’s good – it’s not, in fact it’s terrible but it’s so bad that it’s actually hilarious. 

One thing that you might write off as dramatic licence is the idea of an enormous underground lake beneath Paris – but this is actually true. In fact, there’s a lot weird shit under Paris . . .

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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