Five Ways to Tip Off French People That You're American (or at least not French)

This morning I had breakfast out at a little café (long story) and was inspired to write this blog entry. I hope you like it -- and Besançon friends, feel free to leave your opinion in the comment box. 

1. Smile with top AND bottom teeth 

This is probably the single biggest tip-off, because smiling with only the top set of teeth is more of a European thing in general than just French. Also, if you're from the Midwest or the South, more likely than not you smile at everyone whom you make eye contact with on the street -- here a dead give-away that you're not a native. 

This came up at the Friz'Bistonins Christmas party before winter break, and here Colin and I are demonstrating the difference. Notice how I look awkward in the first and he looks downright pained in the second:

Then TéTé and Alex decided they would demonstrate the difference too:

 

  <-- Natural smiles

                  "American" smiles -->

 

2. Leave a tip after buying only a single beverage

Leaving a tip is certainly expected at a nice restaurant for dinner, where the service is presumably more involved, or at a bar if you've been there for a while. But servers are paid proportionally more here, and their livelihood is less dependent on tips, so not leaving a tip, especially for something very small, isn't rude like it would be in the States. So leaving a 50-cent tip on a 3.50 coffee and pastry will certainly be appreciated, but don't be surprised if as you're leaving, the server asks you casually, "So, where are you from?"

3. Ask for coffee WITH your meal

Big, big no-no. Coffee is an acceptable order at pretty much any time or morning, day, or night, except during a meal. This is probably because when you order a regular coffee here, what you get is much smaller and much stronger than the typical cup o' joe served in restaurants in the US. The flavor is intense enough to mask most other flavors, so it's sort of like dumping salt and pepper on the plate you are served; you're saying the flavor of their food is so lacking or unpleasant that you don't mind masking it with the super-strong flavor of coffee.
 

4. Say "I'm sorry" 

This one is a bit more complicated, but certainly the one I commit the most out of the list. "I'm sorry" would be translated into French a couple of different ways: "Je suis désolé(e)" (as in, "I'm sorry I'm late), or "Excusez-moi" (as in, I'm sorry I stepped on your foot), or "Je suis navré(e) d'apprendre que..." (as in, I'm sorry to hear you broke your leg). Just plain "désolé" is probably the one I use the most, and tend to use in the context of when I would say "sorry" in the U.S. : sorry about that uncatchable pass I just threw you on the Frisbee field, sorry you missed your bus, sorry you have a lot of work tonight... But either French as a language is less sympathetic or I use sorry too much, because I frequently get funny looks. When I ask what I said wrong, people often reply with the question "Why did you say sorry, it's not your fault?" It's not that I was necessarily claiming fault with my initial sorry, just expressing my sympathy for whatever unpleasant situation arose. But apparently this is a huge tip-off.

5. Ask for butter to go with your bread (unless it's breakfast), or, god forbid, your croissant

No no no no! First of all, butter is probably the foundational element of French cuisine. Asking for more in almost any context is like saying, "Please oh please, my arteries have a death wish!" And if you've ever attempt any French recipes, you'll learn Paula Dean's homeland could just as easily be Franche-Comté as the good ol' South. But I think this aversion to butter on bread is because bread usually serves another role in the meal. For instance, in the morning, it goes with coffee or tea, and the flaky crustiness is a nice contrast with the strong coffee. At lunch or dinner, it's used to mop up the rest of the delicious sauce which covered your main dish, and as a conduit for cheese. This isn't to say that French bread isn't perfectly delicious on its own, but usually it's eaten in conjunction with something else, and unless it's breakfast and you're out of jam or Nutella, that something else is almost never butter.

Who Says Vacations Have to Be Lazy?

So this past weekend was part of the academic "winter break," but I certainly didn't laze around. Saturday morning Colin, Franzi, Franzi's two friends Gavriel and Joanna and I left for Chapelle for what was my second day of real cross-country skiing. The warm weather this past week has caused lots of the snow to melt at the ski stations near Besançon and there was talk of this being the last good weekend for snow. So Friday night we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and go! We got on the road a bit later than planned (nearly 10am) and some traffic jams in Pontarlier meant we didn't get to the ski rental place until nearly noon. Luckily Chapelle is small and so the time to rent skis, drive to the start of the trails, and get going was probably 15 minutes total. It was another gorgeous day! 50+ degrees and sunny, with a few clouds and not too much wind.

Unfortunately Gavriel didn't take to cross-country skiing (it was the first time for him, Joanna and Franzi) and after only a few minutes on the first run he decided he didn't want to continue. The rest of us did a short 4.5km loop, then met up with him for lunch. Franzi, Colin and I headed back out again after lunch and we ended up doing another 21km in less than 4 hours! By the end we were totally exhausted (we fell for the classic rookie skier mistake and picked the longer route each time we had a choice, then ran out of energy with another 5km to go).

I felt much more confident on my skis this time around and we tackled much more challenging trails with bigger descents and steeper climbs. Franzi was a champ; it was her first time cross-country skiing and she picked it up right away. I didn't fall once until late in the afternoon, then proceeded to take a major face-plant going down a hill (fatigue?) But overall it was a great success! I'm so glad we got to go again before the snow melted!

Then yesterday (Sunday) I had an all-day riding stage (clinic). This was my first all-day stage, I did a morning one back in the fall. This one was much better, although we had a few hiccups in the beginning (it took everyone a little while to get organized, so we weren't on the horses until after 10am, then the instructor's son fell off his bike while on his way to the barn and started screaming like he had broken his femur... it took Béa, the instructor, a little while to calm him down). But overall it was great! I got to ride 3 different horses: Luivafer, Quadrille, and Roxy. Quadrille is the horse/pony who is my usual mount. She's built like a large pony, but I'm positive she's technically too tall to be considered one. I had ridden Luivafer before and knew he was fun, although he was pretty wild at the beginning. We got to ride outside, which was a pleasant surprise!

The stage is basically four lessons, back-to-back, with a break after the second for lunch: mise-en-scène jumping (warm-up for jumping), jumping, lunch, mise-en-scène dressage, dressage. The idea is that you have four different mounts, one for each section, but I ended up riding Quadrille for jumping and mise-en-scène dressage. The ability level was more homogenous this time, which I think was part of the reason the stage was more pleasant. We were still quite numerous: 15 in the morning and 12 in the afternoon. The coolest part for me was that I got to jump a butte (bank) for the first time with Quadrille. I've never really done any eventing, and so jumping solid obstacles is intimidating for me anyway, let alone going down one! These pictures (photo credit to Wikipedia) will make it clearer:

Quadrille was great and handled both the ascent and descent like a pro (she's a recent addition to the barn and Béa had no idea if she'd ever done this before, which wasn't reassuring for me). Having the horse "fall" in front of me was a really strange sensation, but not entirely unpleasant and now I have a better understanding of how eventing could be a huge adrenaline rush.

The stage really did take all day, and I was quite sore at the end (we did posting trot without stirrups for what seemed like an eternity, and THEN did two-point with no stirrups, which should actually be classified as torture). I feel surprisingly good today, but let's face it, typing this blog entry isn't really stressing my legs. I hope all of you had equally-wonderful weekends!

Carnival in Basel, Switzerland!

Toujours en retard...
[always late]
 
Again, a week late. But I think these pictures will be worth the wait. Last Monday morning I left bright and early for Basel, Switzerland to go to the Carnival celebration there (I was invited by one of the families I tutor). I have to say, it was probably one of the most surprising and unique experiences I have had so far during this adventure abroad. Fasnacht, the Swiss-German name for this annual three-day festival, is the highlight of the year in Basel. There are lots of different things to see over the three days, but the main event is the non-stop parade, or Cortège, which begins at 4am on Monday morning with the Morgestraich and ends at 4am on Thursday morning.

If you've done your math correctly, you know that this Carnival celebration began on the Monday after Ash Wednesday. Why do they celebrate Carnival when it's technically already Lent? Before the Protestant Reformation, the Basel Carnival took place before Ash Wednesday like everywhere else. But once the city officially separated from the Catholic Church, the city officials wanted to make sure their Carnival tradition was distinct from the Catholic ones, so they moved it one week later. Of course all of this isn't really a big deal today since the festivities are no longer connected with the church at all, but I was curious about the timing, so I thought you might be too.

Anyway, the parades were really cool, sort of like New Orleans Mardi Gras meets Halloween meets 4th of July parade. The locals call it die drey scheenschte Dääg (the three most beautiful days). I arrived in Basel around 11:30am, checked into my hotel, and then headed down to the city center to explore. The parade takes a short break between the late morning and 1:30pm on Monday (for the people who were up at 4am), and although there was a definite bustle, the streets were practically empty compared to the crowds which would come later. You can see the difference in these two photos, both of the Rathaus (townhall) and then Marketsplatz (market square) in front of it.

Taken around noon:

Taken around 4:30pm:

There are four major groups who participate in the parades: cliques, gugge (marching bands), floats, and schyssdräggziigli.

Cliques can vary in size, but have at a minimum a vortrab (vanguard), pfeifer (piccolo players), a tambourmajor (drum master), and tambouren (drum players). Each clique picks a theme and usually all of the members are dressed in the same or similar costumes. The themes varied from the bizarre to completely ridiculous. Many were variations on clowns, but I saw a snowman-themed clique, a Russian doll-themed clique, an Occupy Sesame Street-themed clique and multiple Smurf-themed cliques. Most people join one clique as an adolescent or young adult and remain a part of that group for the rest of their life. It's also common for children to join the same clique as their parents, but there's no rule requiring people to stay in the same clique or join a particular one. Occasionally when a clique wore masks exposing the back of their heads, I could see quite a few gray-haired members.

Each clique also decorates its own "lantern." During the day they look more like giant rectangular canvases, but at the beginning of the Morgestraich they are all illuminated at once for the start of the parade. The city turns off all of the lights for the Morgestraich and apparently it's a fairly magical moment when all of the lanters light up at once. The lanterns are part of the clique's theme, and they can be light-hearted or deeply political.

(Harry Potter-themed clique... the house elves are pulling the lantern and there were piccolo and drum players representing each of the four houses)

The gugge, or brass bands, also dress up, and their costumes can be equally ridiculous.

The floats were probably my favorite part of the parade. On the large trailers (wagge) are Waggis, an affectionate spoof on the Alsatian farmers who used to bring their produce to market in Basel. The Waggis throw down candy, oranges, flowers, little toys, and random produce (carrots and cabbage were the most common, but I saw someone almost get beaned with a leek). The Waggis also throw confetti on the bystanders. They were often devious, and would tempt bystanders with a flower or handful of candy and then surprise them with a fistful of confetti. These Waggis were practically malicious, and I got a few photos of them stuffing confetti down people's hoods:

And these Waggis had a bathtub full of confetti in which they would dunk innocent bystanders...

More Waggis:

Part of what made the parade so interesting was the bizarre mix of innocent silliness and political commentary, youthful playfulness and vaguely inappropriate revelry. For instance, I saw a couple of floats with bars built into the bar (vodka on tap?) and some of them had penis-shaped pacifiers among their racks of toys to hand out. But in general, it was more of a Disney parade than New Orleans Mardi Gras bacchanal. I found the contrasts really interesting though. Also notable: the parade Tuesday afternoon was the kids' parade, and there were many more child participants and young bystanders during this parade (almost all of the above pictures are from the parade on Monay).

Last but not least, schyssdräggziigli. These are non-clique small groups or individuals who wander around playing music with piccolos or drums or both. They are in costume too:

So, I bet you're wondering, are there any foods associated with this colorful, musical festival? It turns out yes, but don't get too excited yet. The three foods of Fasnacht are Mehlsuppe (flour soup), Zwiebelwähe (onion tart) and Fastenwähe, a caraway-seed pretzel meant to be eaten with beer. Of the three, I tried mehlsuppe and if you are ever offered any, I suggest you politely refuse. This is what it looks like:

Basically it's flour, a little bit of butter, a little bit of onion, and water. Yuck. Not to knock Fasnacht, which as you can tell was pretty fantastic, but they should really work on their culinary specialties... What about beignets? The French are all about them during Carnival, and they're much tastier!!

So I spent pretty much all of Monday watching the parade with the family who invited me, and then had dinner with the mom and her friend who lives in Basel. On Tuesday morning I went to an exhibit of Pierre Bonnard's work at the Fondation Beyeler, a museum just outside of the city. Pierre Bonnard was a French painter who was part of the group called the Nabis at the end of the 19th century/early 20th century.

This painting of his, entitled Place Clichy, was done in the early 20th century. Normally it is displayed at the art museum in Besançon, but it was part of the exhibit in Basel. I think it's really neat not just because I like the painting itself, but because the perspective is from the inside of a café located at Place Clichy in Paris, a café called Café Wepler where my family and I ate while we were in Paris over Christmas.

Then in the afternoon I watched more of the parade and just wandered around Basel. It was really cool how with the constant parade and the music-filled air, I felt entertained just sitting on a bench beside the Rhine river, like this one (in the background is the Münster or main church of the city).

The big lesson I learned from this experience was to pay more attention to festivals and local celebrations when planning trips. Don't get me wrong, Basel is a cool city (famous for its art scene), but outside of this really unique and amazing festival, it would probably fit into the mold of most European cities of a similar size... lots of churches, old city walls and towers, museums, etc. This festival gave it a unique character and a magical atmosphere... I would certainly consider going back just to see it all again!