Personal Interactions in France and London

When going to a different country it is to be expected that the people will also be slightly different. I predicted that I would fit in a lot better with the people in London because I assumed they would be similar to Americans. My expectation was due to the fact that unlike France, London and the United States do not have a language barrier. The language barrier in France was equally as irritating to the French as it was to us. Compared to Americans, the French are very proper and extremely lax on time. They take daily activities at their own pace and show no need to rush. This was common in London as well. On the contrary, in America everyone is constantly rushing and with this I speak from experience. 

In France, the combination of a language barrier and a relaxed view on time created some difficulties for us. I ventured out to a café along with a friend while in France and had a very unpleasant encounter with the French. At the café, they were rude to us soon after they found out we spoke very little French. The waiter ignored us for the longest time before giving us service and seemed to make that a pattern until we received our bill. The waiter tried to explain to us in very broken English that they don’t take credit cards on purchases smaller than fifteen euro and tried to coarse us into buying cigarettes to increase our total. Sadly, the two of us both had credit cards and after attempting to increase our total by buying water bottles, the man was very angry. He ended up forcefully taking the card, throwing it back, and then shooing us out with a very rude merci. This was my last major encounter with the French and it was by far the worst.

On the bright side, the best encounter I had with the French people was from a distance. Watching the daily actions and mannerisms was quite intriguing to me. I noted that most French women are very proper and dress very modern and sophisticated. I noticed this in both France and London. I didn’t see anyone in sweat pants or basketball shorts other than groups of tourists. Most of the people were dressed nicely and very fashionably with bright colors and patterns. The clothing in France was slightly more conservative with higher cut neck lines. In London, you occasionally ran into the person that looked like they forgot to put on the rest of their outfit in the morning.

The thing I noticed most about the people in London was that a majority of the population smokes. Most of the time when you would see a person smoking they would just be walking down the street. For me this was weird because it is rare that you see someone smoking a cigarette and walking down the street in Michigan. The people in London were very diverse and relaxed, even slightly free spirited.  

On my first day I met a man in a sandwich shop and he proceeded to teach us the currency and give us useful tips to help us navigate around the city. The man told us not to take out all of our money when we go to pay and that we can find inexpensive water bottles at the supermarket instead of the tourist shops. The information he provided turned out to be very useful.

 While walking on the streets of London I quickly noticed that when people bump into you they don’t say excuse me which us Americans are so accustomed to. This was strange to me but come to think of it I don’t deal with large crowds of people on a daily basis. People watching was very interesting and helped give me insight on the people of France and London.