Category Archives: France

La Baguette

Posted on by
Reply

In terms of food, is there anything more French than the baguette?

Did you know the word baguette literally means “stick”? And that a baguette magique is not a magic bread but a magic wand?

La baguette is omnipresent in France. Every bakery (and every supermarket nowadays) sells it, and even if you don’t buy one yourself, you won’t spend a day in France without seeing someone carry a baguette.

A Parisian on his way home from the bakery caught by a tourist

Bread in this long thin shape was first mentioned in the 17th century. Back then, it was considered a luxury because it didn’t keep as long a the traditional round bread loaves. However, in 1957, it replaced the round bread loaf in the standard shopping basket of the French Statistics Office.

The classic baguette is made with only a few ingredients – water, flour, salt, yeast, and that’s it. It is 60cm long and weighs 250g.

If you go into a French bakery, it’s easy to get lost among all the long thin breads there. If you want to make sure you get the classic baguette, ask for a “Tradition”. In order to protect the bakers’ craft, a law of September 13, 1993, forbids any additive or fast freezing of these baguettes.
France being France, the Tradition is a candidate for the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.

Now you have bought your Tradition, what are you going to do with it?

Here’s what the French like to do:

  • eat part of it while it’s still fresh
  • cut it into fine stripes, butter them, and dip them into a soft-boiled egg
  • spread some butter on it and dip it into your café au lait
  • make yourself a jambon-beurre sandwich, with butter and jambon de Paris (ham)

My thanks to Jamy Gourmaud and his Youtube video on the baguette.

Share this:

An Introduction to the French Presidential Elections

Posted on by
Reply

In France, the president is elected by direct popular vote in a two-round election every five years.

Let’s look at this more closely:

The president is elected directly by the people. If you’re French and over 18, all you have to do is make sure you’re on the voting list (and if you’re not, sign up at your local mairie, or city hall).

It’s a two-round election. On the first-round election day, you go to the polling station and cast your vote for one of the dozen or so candidates. If no candidate secures the absolute majority in the first round, the two candidates who receive the most votes advance to the second round. The second round takes place two weeks after the first.
By the way, elections are always held on a Sunday.

Current French President Emmanuel Macron (since 2017) at Musée Grévin, with former President Georges Pompidou (1969until his death in 1974) on the screen in the background

The election takes place every five years. It used to be every seven years, and as a president can be reelected once, he can potentially hold the presidency for a total of 14 years (like François Mitterrand did, from 1981 to 1995). In 2000, then-president Jacques Chirac held a referendum to change the term from seven to five years. It passed, and when he was reelected in 2002, he served for another five years, with a total of 12 years in office.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012)

So far, there have been no female presidents. A woman made it to the second round in 2007 and in 2017, and in the 2022 presidential elections, there are four women among the 12 official candidates.

In order to become an official candidate, you need the official support (“parainnage”) of 500 elected officials, such as members of parliament, mayors, or senators. In 2022, there were 64 individuals who received at least one parrainage, 22 of whom were not even trying to become a candidate (such as the astronaut Thomas Pesquet). Add to that 16 individuals who tried to but did not receive any parrainage.

Astronaut Thomas Pesquet doesn’t want to become President

You get the idea, the field is crowded. Some go in for the attention, or to make a statement (political or otherwise).
The serious contenders, those who become official candidates, need to obtain at least 5% of the vote to get a meaningful chunk of their campaign expenses reimbursed. With twelve official candidates vying for the votes, good luck to them.

Share this:

Say “cheese”

Posted on by
Reply

Say “cheese”! And now say “Camembert de Normandie”.

The Camembert de Normandie isn’t just any cheese. It’s a cheese with a history. First of all, not any camembert made in Normandy may call itself Camembert de Normandie. That’s an AOP label, Appellation d’origine protégée, or Protected Designation of Origin.

A real Camembert de Nornandie (AOP)

That means a Camembert de Normandie has to respect a number of criteria. First of all, obviously, is has to be made in Normandy, and even more specifically, in the départements of Calvados, Orne, Manche, or the western part of the Eure.

grazing Normandy cows

At least 50% of the milk has to come from Normandy cows (that’s a breed). The cows, the Normandy ones and the others, have be out in the pasture at least 6 months of the year and are allowed only specific feed when they can’t graze outside.

After that, it gets very technical in how the Camembert is produced. A crucial point to remember however is that Camembert de Normandie is made with unpasteurized milk and as such might be banned in certain countries. Also, it is generally recommended not to eat raw-milk products during pregnancy.

The finished Camembert has the shape of a cylinder of 10,5-11cm in diameter and weights a minimum of 250g. It is sold in a round wooden box made from poplar.

a Camembert cheese and its wooden box

If you buy a Camembert in a cardboard box, or one that says only “Camembert” or even “Camembert fabriqué en Normandie”, you are not buying the real thing, the one we’re talking about.

But I promised history, right? Well, here we go:

As legend has it, the Camembert de Normandie was invented by Marie Harel in 1791, and the production was continued by her daughter, whose husband presented it to Napoléon III who gave it his seal of approval.

Normandy cow statue in Vimoutiers (adjacent to Camembert), where Marie Harel died

In better documented history, these factors advanced the spread of Camembert:

  • the railway expansion which linked the small Normandy towns to Paris in less than 6 hours instead of several days as well as the above-mentioned wooden box, replacing the straw bed, which allowed for a better transport of this fragile cheese
  • the First World War during which Camembert became part of the soldiers’ rations – those who returned home brought the Camembert into every part of France

And the name? Check your map of Normandy. Marie Harel came from a tiny town in the Orne called – Camembert.

Share this:

Open Doors at Foreign Affairs

Posted on by
Reply

As I explained in my previous post, on Heritage Days in September, doors are opened to the public that remain closed the rest of the year. Very popular places to visit are the presidential palace (Palais de l’Élysée) and the various ministries, housed in hôtels or palaces in the center of Paris.

Several years ago, I visited the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs in a building on the riverside road Quai d’Orsay, name which was transferred to the ministry by metonymy. “The Quay d’Orsay remained silent on this question”, a journalist might report.

King Henry II (son of François Ier) named the first minister of foreign affairs in 1547, Claude de l’Aubespine. The function was called Secretary of State, and Claude was in charge of the relations with Champagne, Burgundy, Bresse, Savoy, Germany and Switzerland. (He started small.)

The minister’s office and dining room

The Quay d’Orsay was built in 1844-55 specifically to house Foreign Affairs. The interior is in the style of Napoléon III, with the exception of the bathrooms set up in 1938 for the visit of King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth (parents and predecessors of Queen Elizabeth II).

Bathrooms of Queen Elizabeth (silver) and King George VI (gold)

In the Salon de l’Horloge, then-Foreign Affairs minister Robert Schuman pronounced on May 9, 1950 the Schuman Declaration, which laid the foundation for the European integration process resulting in the European Union. This is why May 9 is Europe Day.

Detail from the Salon de l’horloge
Location of the Quai d’Orsay
Share this:

Opening Doors in September

Posted on by
Reply

Back in 1984, the French minister for Culture created the “Historic Monuments Open Door Days” in France. The idea was picked up by the Council of Europe, which is not an institution of the European Union but an international organization that predates the European Union and has currently almost 50 member states.

King George V’s bathtub at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

European Heritage Days (the name varies from one country to another) take place in September, and open doors to monuments that are usually closed to the public, or if open, grant free entry, or offer special events and activities, including for children and youth, such as workshops, guided tours, that are not available on a regular basis.

Some sites are more popular than others, such as the French National Assembly

In France, Heritage Days are called Les Journées Européennes du Patrimoine (JEP) and take place on the third weekend of September.

activities and workshops galore at the Château Dourdan south of Paris

In this new series, Opening Doors in Paris, I’ll share some of the open doors I’ve entered over the last fifteen years.

the original machinery of the Eiffel Tower
Share this:

French school – part 2

Posted on by
Reply

My first French manual in school had a lesson that started with this sentence:

En France, les enfants de onze à quinze ans vont au college.

Aside from the accumulation of nasals, this sentence contains more precious information about the French school system that hasn’t changed since I started learning French:

In France, the children from age eleven to fifteen go to collège.

The collège, then, is the rough equivalent of middle school. From grade 6 on, years are counted backwards, like a countdown to the baccalauréat:

Sixième (6e) – grade 6
Cinquième (5e) – grade 7
Quatrième (4e) – grade 8
Troisième (5e) – grade 9

a public collège in Paris

The counting continues in the lycée, high school, for the final three years:

Seconde (2nde) – grade 10
Première (1ère) – grade 11

and finally, at the end of the countdown:

Terminale (terminal year) – grade 12

This is when French students pass their leaving exam, the baccalauréat I mentioned in part 1.

a public lycée in Paris

Speaking of part 1, do you remember I said school in France is secular? That’s right, just as there is a separation between Church and State, there is a separation between Church and School (which, after all, is run by the state). So unless you send your kids to a private religious school, thew will get a secular education.

a private Catholic lycée in Paris

This has led to a curious characteristic of the French school system: the Wednesday.
At first, I assume when school ran Mondays through Saturdays, there was no school on Thursdays, so that children could receive the religious education of their family’s choosing. In 1972, the day was moved to Wednesday.

Écoles maternelles and écoles primaires were closed on Wednesdays, and this could extend to Wednesday afternoons in collège. As a result, extracurricular activities are concentrated on Wednesdays too (now supplanting religious education), and parents who work at 80% frequently have their Wednesdays off.

A few years ago, however, the government decided to rebalance school hours and open schools on Wednesday mornings to allow for shorter afternoon classes on the other days. This resulted in many protests, as the responsibility for after-school daycare is the responsibility of municipalities, which were not necessarily of the same political color as the government.

In the end, the government backtracked and allowed each département to choose whether to open schools on Wednesday mornings or not. Welcome to France.

Share this:

French school – part 1

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Share this:

Bonne rentrée !

Posted on by
Reply

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.

the rentrée littéraire

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

Share this:

Brittany and the Hermine

Posted on by
Reply

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

Share this:

River power in Brittany

Posted on by
Reply

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 19th-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)
Share this: