The Most Serious Dilemma I've Found While Living in France
Will I ever be able to tie a scarf properly?
When we boarded the last leg of our flight to France, I noticed that the scarf quota went up by 70%, as did the amount of black clothing and stark eyeglass frames. Suddenly, all the couples seemed to look like this:
I asked Roberto how long he thinks it will be before he starts wearing scarves but I think my question has effected the outcome. He will now refuse to start because he knows I’m waiting. If I had said nothing, I’m betting he would have been donning a French scarf by October.
What’s the deal with the French and scarves anyway? I found a short history on the site Divine Style and was surprised to learn that silk scarves weren’t a thing in France until the 1930s, like showing your underwear above your jeans wasn’t a thing in the US until the 1990s (I’m so proud to be an American).
I had several beautiful scarves that weren’t getting any wear at home, so I brought them with me on this trip, but the question, of course, is how do French women make them look so damn good? Our first breakfast here last December a young woman sat feeding her one year bebe while wearing a crisp white shirt, red lipstick, and a perfectly knotted silk scarf. I can’t keep a white shirt clean for half a day, and I don’t even have a bebe. Plus, I knew the scarf took her only 1.5 seconds to tie perfectly.
Here’s a short videos on how to tie a scarf like a French person, but I swear you have to do it from childhood to get it just so.
Here is one attempt I made. I think it is fairly successful.
And another. Not so successful this time.
I bought one scarf here this trip, and it’s so small that I can’t really screw it up:
Now that we have reached mid-May, the temperature has reached the 70s, and I have stopped trying the whole scarf thing. I’ll give it another whirl in the fall.
Check out the second picture of me above and you might notice that the man behind me is eating dinner wearing a hoodie. Montpellier is not a particularly fancy town; it feels relaxed in the same way Austin is relaxed. We can eat pretty much anywhere in sneakers, which was a real surprise. Due to the amount of hills and cobblestones all the French are in sensible shoes, including the women. None of that Emily in Paris three inch heel bullshit.
Besides relaxed fashion and relaxed people, we’ve had many other surprises, and today I wanted to share some of the more interesting ones.
Garbage and recyling bins are not assigned to individual apartments or houses in our part of town. There are six garbage bins on our street and little trucks come around to empty them four or five times a day! The city feels it is very important to keep the historic district clean.
Dogs are welcome everywhere, including inside Michelin star restaurants. They sit happily at their owner’s feet throughout the meal. They are walked off-leash all over town. We never see anyone cleaning up after their dogs, and yet the streets are clean. We think that the street cleaners must come around as often as the trash trucks.
This morning we walked out the door to find (what felt like) the entire city was having a garage sale. The streets were full of people sitting next to a rack or pile of their stuff—mostly clothes, some jewelry, and this handy €2 lap desk I’m now using as a drink holder on our couch :)
You can use your credit card everywhere. I even use my American Express in the big stores. Mom and pop stores tend not to take Amex but they definitely take MC and Visa. Those of you that have traveled to France in the past know this is a big deal.
The locals that I have told we are retiring here are flabbergasted. Mais pourquoi? they say. “But why?” They tell me that French people fantasize about moving to New York, Miami, or Los Angeles, and they cannot fathom that Americans dream of moving to southern France.
We all know that Europeans do not put ice in their drinks like Americans do, but did you know that the French think ice is actually bad for you? I read this in a book and then confirmed it with Agnès our agent. She believes ice is very bad for your stomach—it freezes it? But ice cream . . . doesn’t? This explains why waiters and waitresses look so concerned when we order beaucoup des glacons with our drinks. They think we are killing ourselves, one cube at a time.
And finally, the biggest surprise has been how open and kind the French people have been. And there is a calmness here we don’t feel at home—a distinct lack of anger. I realize that we are not interacting with the locals on a really deep level, and of course people here are angry about the state of the world. But we don’t feel the same type of rage that is happening at home (including within our own house) at the direction our country has been going and the violence we read about every day.
We expect the surprises to keep coming.
Jusqu’à la prochaine fois (until next time),
Carolyn & Roberto
Your observations are spot on. American rage is getting worse and worse.
Love all of your observations.