The French???????????????????...

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Mirielle

I was in Paris about a month ago, and I found the French to be extremely nice people (after all of the horrible things I had heard!) However, I did speak French to most of them. I've only taken French for about seven months, but since I've taken Spanish for 5 years and traveled to Spain, this was kind of like the second time around, and it worked out very well for me. I feel like they were much nicer to me than my parents who speak only English.
I wasn't in Paris for long at all, but I managed to have decent conversations with a chef, two store owners, a Parisian, a cab driver, and a metro employee, who were all extremely nice minus the cab driver. One of the store owners even gave me three Eiffel Tower keychains for free after he had given me the wrong change on two T-shirts I bought. The cab driver... he was quite apparently an immigrant likely from a French speaking country in Afrique Occidentale (Western Africa) and he was just an unfriendly guy.
I was in London on that same trip, and I found the French to be significantly nicer than the British. I had negative encounters with a Westminster Abbey employee, numerous store employees, and some Londoners, but through all of this there were nice ones, too.
What you think of the French probably depends on when you visited, too. I have a theory that they can be more rude in the summer when Paris is flocked by tourists. How would you like it if a summer herd of tourists flooded into your town one season every year? I've also heard the French in the South of France are nicer than the Parisians, but I can't verify this.

Cabal

Thank you Googie, in the name of all the French I thank you for not coming back to be another painful tourist. That makes more room for nice ones. :D

One down, many more to go. I dream of the day we will have only nice tourists, we won't be grabbed by the arm to get directions (not even to ask but to demand), called rudely 'hey you', have people hollering through the room without deference to anyone standing around, be asked indignantly why we won't do it their way (in our own country), and after having been insulted by a behaviour that is extremely rude by our standards (it's OUR country by the way, our country, our rules) by people who never bothered learning the minimum rules of French politeness having to listen to some same people holler how rude and ungrateful we were for lashing back at them.

Thanks goodness there's plenty of nice tourists, more than the other kind in truth. It makes living in a city that is visited by 50 millions people a year easier.

Oh,by the way I like the French.

googie

The French are the most ungrateful, rudest,most uncooperative people we have encountered in all our travels. If I never visit France again it will be too soon. The English, Welch, Irish, Italians , Dutch, Belgians, and Swiss did everything in their power to make our travels enjoyable Even the Moroccans were great hosts. The Greeks were the best. As for the French, if they are ever involved in another war, I would do everything in my power to defeat those b------s. So much so that I will not order a glass of French wine.

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