Maîtres mots

  • Il y a longtemps que notre pays est beau mais rude.

       --Newspaper editor Olivier Séguret, 25 January 2012

    The USA are entirely the creation of the accursed race, the French.

       --Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), writing to Nancy Mitford, 22 May 1957

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French Freedom of Speech

Today the cheminots are:


  • "À nous de vous faire préférer le train!"
    "Voyager autrement"
    "Avec le SNCF, tout est possible"
      --Former ad slogans of the SNCF (French national trains), each in turn quickly dropped

Fun French words

  • ouistiti

    (literally: marmoset)
    Etymology: onomatopoeia from the sound a marmoset makes. Actual meaning: this is what you say in France when you want people to smile for the camera.

    Selon une étude réalisée par le fabricant d’appareils photo Nikon, le « ouistiti » utilisé en France au moment de se faire prendre en photo est le petit mot le plus efficace pour s’assurer un joli sourire.

Who's en colère today?

  • Private sector

    First strike in 43 years at an aeronautics company in Toulouse, Latécoère


    Public sector

    The SNCF (toujours eux), regional train employees in the Lyons area guaranteeing unpleasant travel from the 17th-21st December
    Also yet another strike by Sud-Rail, a particularly truculent SNCF union in the south of France, this time five days in January: 6,7, 21, 22 and 23. "We have no choice." Right.

    Marseilles trams on strike until February

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« "Funny bone" in French: not so funny | Main | Anomalies of French life: weird punctuation »

Bastille Day fireworks

After dinner some of us tried to see the fireworks at the Eiffel Tower without walking all the way to Trocadero, which is crowded and in the past has been full of aggressive teenagers from Paris suburbs throwing cherry bombs in front of the completely unmoved police. Well, we missed the first half of the fireworks, and the symphony, and the light show commemorating World War I; it really was too bad. But even just seeing the top half of the Eiffel Tower and hearing the echoes boom around us was pretty impressive. A small crowd had gathered at the top of a street leading toward the Eiffel Tower to watch. I heard a little boy say, "Même pas peur!" (I'm not scared at all!) The full moon rose rapidly right behind the tower, as if it had been programmed in...and maybe it had!

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When it was all over, the tower just sparkled, for a long time, as the clouds of gunpowder turned the moon red.

IMG_4551


   

15 July 2014 in Daily life in Paris, France |

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Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Thanks for sharing your photos. What a sight! I've only seen one Bastille Day in France, in Lyon in 1963. Maybe next year...

Posted by: chrissoup | 22 July 2014 at 17:37

It only gets better!

Posted by: Sedulia | 24 July 2014 at 19:59

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Today's quotation

  • In Paris, the purest virtue is the object of the filthiest slander.

      –Honoré Balzac (1799-1850), in Scènes de la vie privée

    À Paris, la vertu la plus pure est l'objet des plus sales calomnies.

Le petit aperçu d'Ailleurs

  • Annual Geminids meteor shower (shooting stars!) coming this weekend, if it's not too cloudy out at night.

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