French school – part 1

Posted on 07/09/2021 by Mayken

School has just started again after its traditional two-months summer break, and what better time to look at the French school system?

Let’s start with a quick historic fact:
In 1882, Education Minister Jules Ferry made school compulsory and free (and secular). Primary education became compulsory for both boys and girls from age six to age thirteen. Schools weren’t mixed, and girls studied different subjects from boys.

The duration of compulsory education was extended gradually, the most recent being in 2016. It is now from age three to age sixteen.

*Mairie et écoles* – sometimes, schools and town hall are under the same roof (French countryside)

At age three, French children enter the school system via the école maternelle, literally maternity school. The three years they spend there are called Petite Section (PS), Moyenne Section (MS) and Grande Section (GS), respectively, small, middle and big section.

At age six, they enter primary school, l’école primaire. The five years they spend there are called:

cours préparartoire (CP) – preliminary course = grade 1
cours élementaire 1 (CE1) – elementary course 1 = grade 2
cours élementaire 2 (CE2) – elementary course 2 = grade 3
cours moyen 1 (CM1) – medium course 1 = grade 4
cours moyen 2 (CM2) – medium course 2 = grade 5

These names might sound confusing, but you have to remember that they stem from the old system where children either continued for two more years in the compulsory education (until age 13) which explains the naming of “medium” course. Boys could continue towards higher studies, first the prestigious baccalauréat and then university.
Today, the baccalauréat, or bac for short, is the French high school leaving certificate. But more on that next time.

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Bonne rentrée !

Posted on 31/08/2021 by Mayken

At the beginning of July, as the school year ends, activity in France begins to slow down. Parents ferry their kids off to camp or to the grandparents, and once the national holiday on July 14 is over, Bison Futé, the Smart Bison of French traffic predictions, warns of the annual traffic jams on the highways as the juillettistes head off to their vacation destinations.
Repeat this every weekend over the summer, with a particularly sharp peak in both directions as the juillettistes, the July holiday-makers, return home and the aoûtiens, the August holiday-makers, take their place.

The slowest time of the summer comes around the public holiday of August 15, when many small shops in the cities close and coastal towns will triple and quadruple their population as families enjoy the summer. I wrote about Paris in August in an earlier blog post.

But even the longest school holidays eventually come to an end. After almost two months, kids have to be back in school at the beginning of September. No big deal, right? It’s similar in many countries in the northern hemisphere. But France has this particularity that school years dictate the rhythm of the nation.

school supplies for the *rentrée scolaire*

Sports clubs, for example, won’t offer you calendar-year membership but school-year ones. This makes sense for kids who change schedules and activities from one school year to the next, their continuity interrupted by the long summer holidays. But grown-ups, who only have a three-week break in summer, are bound by the same rhythm.

Just as France slows down for the summer, it wakes up again at the rentrée. The term derives from the verb rentrer, to return. In September, you have the obvious rentrée scolaire, the return to school, but also the rentrée politique, as politicians come back from summer recess, the rentrée littéraire, as publishers throw new titles onto the market, variations like rentrée sportive, rentrée radio/tv (as radio and tv stations return to their regular programming), and others happily used by advertisers in late August and early September.

Everyone gets back to business, and you can wish your French friends a Bonne rentrée!

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Brittany and the Hermine

Posted on 17/08/2021 by Mayken

The hermine, a white weasel, is represented in heraldry by its fur. It is one of the historic symbols of Brittany. Legend has it that Anne de Bretagne, during a hunt, cornered a hermine. The animal had to choose between certain death or getting soiled on a swampy path, and it chose death. Anne de Bretagne was impressed by its attitude and let it live. The hermine became the emblem of Brittany for its courage and gave birth to the motto “Potius mori quam fœdari”, Rather Die than the Stain.

At the royal palace of Amboise, when Anne resided with her husbands King Charles VII and King Louis XII (see the explanation here), the columns in the council hall bear the fleur-de-lys of France and the hermine of Brittany.

The hermine can also be found in the Gwenn ha du, the Breton flag. It consists of black and white stripes and the corner of black hermine son a white background. Gwenn ha Du means “Black and White” in Breton.

The Gwenn ha Du floats on Brittany town halls

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River power in Brittany

Posted on 10/08/2021 by Mayken

In the north of the département Ille-et-Vilaine, two rivers hold extraordinary powers of very different nature: the Rance and the Couesnon.

The Couesnon is a coastal river of just 100km length. Still it crosses three départements that coincidentally belong to three different regions.
Its source is in Mayenne (53) which belongs to the Pays-de-la-Loire region. Then it runs through Ille-et-Vilaine but finishes in the Normandy département Manche (50) just west of the Mont Saint Michel.

As famous 19^th-century French writer Chateaubriand put it, “Le Couesnon dans sa folie a mis le Mont en Normandie” – the foolish Couesnon put the Mont into Normandy.
While the Couesnon does not officially constitute the limit between Brittany’s Ille-et-Vilaine department and the Norman Manche, it is true that the river despite its irregular course has always flown into the Mont Saint Michel Bay west of the Mont. Now that its banks are artificially consolidated, there is no longer any doubt about the affiliation of the Mont Saint Michel – it is located in Normandy, and no Breton protest will change that.

The Couesnon seen from the Mont Saint Michel – The Mont Saint Michel seen from the Couesnon

The Rance
The Rance is another coastal river only a little longer than the Couesnon. Its source lies in a village in Cotes d’Armor and it flows into the Channel between Dinard and Saint Malo in Ille-et-Vilaine.

The extraordinary power of the Rance is quite literally power, as in electricity, and the Rance owes it to the high tides on this part of the coast, which are in fact the third-highest in the world.

The difference between high and low tide is especially visible on the beach of Saint Malo

In the 1960s, France harnessed the power of the tides by building a tidal power station across the mouth of the Rance that remained for 45 years the largest tidal power station in the world. It has a peak output of 240MW, supplying 0,12% of the power demand of France.

The mouth of the Rance (red) and of the Couesnon (blue)

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Brittany in France

Posted on 03/08/2021 by Mayken

Brittany is the westernmost part of France, jutting out into the Atlantic ocean. It has over 1.100km of coastline, double that if you include the numerous islands.

Traditionally, you distinguish between the Armor or Arvor, the coastal or maritime area, and the Argoat, the interior.

The climate in Brittany is temperate, with more rain than the French average, but the southern coast and its beaches get less rain and more sunshine than the Monts d’Arrée mountains in the interior. (Mountains being a big word, as they culminate at 385m.)

The administrative region Brittany is divided into four départements: Ille-et-Vilaine (35) in the east, with the regional capital Rennes; Cotes d’Armor (22) in the north, Finistère (29) in the west, and Morbihan (56) in the south.
Historically, the département Loire-Atlantique (44) with its main city of Nantes, also belongs to Brittany. Actually, Nantes was the seat of the Duke of Brittany, the château des ducs de Bretagne is still there to prove it.

Château des Ducs de Bretagne (Ducal Palace), Nantes

Fun facts:
The numbers behind the département names correspond to their numbers in French nomenclature, which includes the first two numbers of the postal code and the number on the right side of the license plate, above the regional logo. Many Bretons living in the Loire-Atlantique replace the Pays-de-la-Loire regional logo with a sticker of the Brittany logo (the Gwenn ha Du).

The Morbihan is the only French département (of which there are 94 in mainland France (not counting Corsica and the overseas ones) whose name is not in French. Morbihan means “little sea” in Breton and refers to the Golfe du Morbihan.

Brittany was annexed to France in the 16^th century. King Charles VII married Anne de Bretagne who brought her Duchy into the marriage. In order to make sure Brittany was attached to France no matter what, the wedding contract included a clause that if Charles died without a heir, Anne would have to marry his successor.
Which is exactly what happened – Charles VII died an untimely accidental death (he hit his head against a door frame despite being only 1,52m tall) and Anne married his successor Louis XII. They didn’t have any male children either. Louis’ successor François I^er married the daughter of Louis and Anne, Claude, who inherited the Duchy of Brittany from her mother but who couldn’t inherit the throne of France from her father.
Long story short: François and Claude had several sons, and in 1532 Brittany became officially part of France.

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Letters from Paris goes to Brittany

Posted on 27/07/2021 by Mayken

It’s that time of the year again – August approaches, and those who haven’t taken their annual leave in July are packing their suitcases for summer holidays. As I explained last year, many factories and businesses close down in August, resulting in a majority of people taking their summer vacation in August rather than in July, the two months of school holidays.

I’ve decided this is as good a time as any to leave Paris for an excursion to my favorite region in France: Brittany. For the next few weeks, my posts will be Letters from Brittany.

As an introduction, have a look at my Twitter feed from early 2020, when I supported the campaign for a Gwenn ha Du (flag of Brittany) emoji by tweeting daily using the hashtag #emojibzh from January 17 to February 09.

This link will show you those tweets in reverse order.

Let's see if I can tweet one picture of my favorite places in #Brittany every day until Feb 9 with #emojibzh. (I have no lack of places or pictures.)

Here we go: That's pirate-me on the fortifications of St Malo (35), with the "tide pool" in the background.#mypicsfromBrittany pic.twitter.com/Xv0774RM0L
— Mayken Brünings 🏊 (@MaykenAlanna) January 17, 2020

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L is for Louis

Posted on 20/07/2021 by Mayken

Many French kings were named Louis, and their combined reigns stretch over hundreds of years of French history.

Louis I^st, born in 778, was the third son of Charlemagne, and became his successor after the death of his two older brothers. His grandson was Louis II, whose son in turn was Louis III, but it was his brother Charles who became the father of Louis IV and great-grandfather of Louis V.

Are you lost yet? Me too.

Louis VI at Saint Denis Basilica (bottom left)

Let’s leave the Carolingian dynasty for the Capetians. After Louis V who died in 987, it took a change of dynasty to get to Louis VI, born in 1084. His son was Louis VII, his great-grandson Louis VIII and with the following generation we finally get to someone interesting: Louis IX, better known as Saint-Louis. We’re in the 13^th century now, and Louis is king for over forty years. His reign is seen as the golden age for the kingdom of France which reached economic and political summits during this era. He had a reputation of being very pious and a high moral integrity.
He was canonized in 1297, twenty-seven years after his death, and remains the only French king to receive that distinction from the Catholic church.

Following his death, it took three generations to get to Louis X, the last Louis of the Capetian dynasty. And even after entering the Valois dynasty, it was some time before Louis XI became king in 1423. (He was the son and successor of Charles VII who was crowned with the help of Joan of Arc, with whom you might be more familiar than any of these kings.)

Onward, to cousin Louis XII, who died without giving the kingdom a successor, so the crown went to yet another cousin, François d’Angoulême (the first king named François). Contrary to Louis XII, he had a number of children, yet none of them was named Louis. (His daughter Louise died aged 3 but she couldn’t have become queen anyway.)

Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne at Saint Denis Basilica

Enter the Bourbon dynasty and the reigns of the most famous kings named Louis:

Louis XIII with his prime ministers Cardinal Richelieu and Mazarin, arch-enemies of the Three Musketeers

Louis XIV, the Sun King, who built the glorious palace of Versailles to escape the dangerous streets of Paris

Louis XV who lent his name to the architectural style Louis Quinze and reconciled France and Austria, sealing the alliance with the marriage between his grandson Louis and Marie-Antoinette.
Can you see it coming? That grandson is none other than Louis XVI who lost his head during the French Revolution.
Which makes his brother, Louis XVIII, who returned to the throne after the first fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1814, the last king of France by that name (and one of the last kings of France full stop).

You’ll wonder what happened to Louis XVII and what possessed the parents to name two of their sons Louis, especially as they were born only one year apart?
I can only answer the first question: Louis XVII, or Louis Charles, was the second son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. He was considered Dauphin after the death of his older brother but died aged ten during the French Revolution, 19 years before his uncle claimed back the throne.

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July 14 in Paris

Posted on 13/07/2021 by Mayken

July 14 is the French national holiday, known in the English-speaking world as Bastille Day. The Bastille was a fort meant to defend the Porte Saint Antoine on the east side of the Charles V city wall, and it was stormed and taken by the people on July 14, 1789 and later demolished.
The Storming of the Bastille is commemorated on July 14 since 1880.

In Paris, the celebrations of the 14-juillet, as it is called in French, start on the night before with the Bal des pompiers (the fire-fighters ball) held in the city’s various fire stations. In other French towns, it is either the Bal des pompiers, or the Bal Populaire (the people’s ball), often organized just outside the local town hall. Some towns have their fireworks on July 13, others on July 14.

In Paris, the day begins with the famous parade on the Champs Élysées that is traditionally opened with a fly-over by the Patrouille de France in the national colors bleu-blanc-rouge.

Then the president descends the avenue, accompanied by the Garde Républicaine, and takes place on the platform installed on the place de la Concorde, where he watches the parade with the government, members of the national assembly and the senate, assorted dignitaries and guests.

The parade descends from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. It is composed of military units on foot, on various motorized vehicles, on horseback, and in the air. The Foreign Legion marches in last place because their step is slowest.
The loudest applause from the spectators along the avenue is always for the firefighters who close the parade with all their different vehicles, for the Paris firefighters are part of the military. (They were founded by Napoléon Bonaparte after a fire broke out during a reception at the Austrian Embassy in 1810 during which around a hundred people died.)

During the day, the public has the occasion to meet the military, notably on the Esplanade des Invalides between the Dome des Invalides and the Seine river, where l’Armée de Terre (the army), l’Armée de l’air (the air force) and la Marine (the navy) are represented.

Show events include visiting tanks and helicopters, parachutists jumping from helicopters in the sky, and more.

The day concludes with a concert on the Champ de Mars that is transmitted live on television and the famous fireworks at the Eiffel Tower.

Spectators on the quays hoping for a good view

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Le Château du Louvre

Posted on 29/06/2021 by Mayken

You have never seen it. You haven’t queued for tickets, and you haven’t been inside to see the Mona Lisa. I know you haven’t because le château du Louvre is not what you think it is. It is not the giant palace in the center of Paris housing one of the most famous museums in the world. That would be the Louvre Palace, le palais du Louvre.

Nit-picking, you say? Tell that to King Philippe-Auguste (reign: 1180-1223) who had the château du Louvre (the Louvre Castle) built to reinforce the wall he had built around the city.

Location of the Château du Louvre and the Philippe Auguste city wall (in brown) on a map of Paris

The château du Louvre was built near the river at the western end of the city, where the risk of an attack was highest as the English occupied Normandy less than 100km away. Philippe Auguste also wanted a safe place for his treasure and for his archives which had been lost in a battle with Richard Lionheart but since been reconstituted. The château du Louvre was roughly square with a moat surrounding it and a round keep at the center.

model of the château du Louvre at the Louvre Museum

At the time of King Charles V (reign: 1364-1380), Paris had spread past the old city wall, and Charles V had a new wall built. The château du Louvre lost most of its military significance, and the king could sacrifice some of the protective building aspects to make it more habitable while still providing a safe place for the king, notably after the revolt of 1358 led by the Prévôt des Marchands Étienne Marcel.

During the Hundred Years War, the English under King Henry V were allied with the Burgundians who held Paris, so the English could enter the city and occupied the château du Louvre without a fight. They stayed from 1420 to 1436.

Successive French kings demolished the château little by little and built new structures on top. During works in the 19^th century, it was discovered that the foundations of the château du Louvre hadn’t been destroyed completely. The basis of the keep and two walls were cleared during the works for President François Mitterrand’s Grand Louvre project, and can be seen today during a visit of the Palais du Louvre’s famous museum, the Musée du Louvre.

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The Institut de France

Posted on 22/06/2021 by Mayken

The Institut de France is a French institution founded in 1795, located in the 6^tharrondissement. It assembles the scientific, literary and artistic elites of France so they can work together. It regroups five Académies, the best-known of which is the Académie française.
The Académie française was founded in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu to normalize the French language and is tasked with publishing an official dictionary of the French language. Its 40 members hold office for life, they are called the “immortals”.

The building also houses the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest public library in France, founded by Cardinal Mazarin under King Louis XIV. It was his private library at first but was opened to the public in 1691.