When I moved to France in August 2023, the culture shock was so much bigger than I expected.
We took the chance to move to Lille with my husband’s work and started our three children in school here that September.
I remember taking the very naive view that France was in Europe, less than a few hours away from home. Surely settling in would be far easier for us than changing continent?
How wrong I was. I now think moving across the Atlantic would have been less daunting. It feels as though the unexpected difference between the French and Irish way of life has made the shock even more impactful.
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France is a wonderful country but to fully appreciate it, I needed to understand its people. It was only once I realised the French are so different in many ways to us Irish that I began to crack this place open. Not only could I begin to tolerate their ways of being and doing but began to actually smile at how uniquely different our respective peoples are.
The absence of urgency is the most striking aspect of living here. There is rarely a cause to rush.
Long queues in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport passport control? Pas de problem. There is absolutely no need to open any of the five additional vacant security booths.
It’s the same in the supermarkets. Cashiers will finish a conversation between themselves before they begin scanning goods for the growing line of customers. Even then, there is no fourth or dare I suggest, fifth gear in said scanning. Beep, beep, beep, the lait and pain and oeufs slowly and steadily move down the belt in third gear.
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Here when the clock strikes 12.30pm most workers down tools and take their one and half to two hour lunch break. This is non-negotiable. This utter blaséness, a complete lack of an eagerness-to-please mentality seems stark or even alien to us Irish.
And if I arrive at a restaurant, starving for an endive tarte tatin half an hour before French lunchtime ends (12-2pm), this experience continues. No you cannot be accommodated – despite many vacant tables visible before me. The restaurant owner, it seems, is not pushed to make an extra buck. They are happy with the compliant people who made their booking for the assigned French lunch period. It is only in tourist spots where you will find service outside of French dining customs.
I wish to post a parcel? I need to allow at least 20 minutes at the bureau de poste from when I reach the counter. Here the designated person will slowly assist in telling me the way I have packaged it is not sufficient and I must acquire a specific type of box. Details of addressee and sender (already noted on package) must then be inputted on to the system.
But despite my giving out, I wonder, perhaps it is us in Ireland that have it wrong and the French that have it right. Is it not better to work to live rather than live to work as it sometimes feels at home?
Lunchtime is protected as sacred. There are no sad cheese sandwiches over your keyboard. The French lunch away from the desk. The more sporty squeeze in a lunchtime jog or a game of padel. And as for the end of the working day? Hometime is hometime for most.
Watching my children make their way in the French education system makes me ask if this is part of the difference. Since I moved here I have said it a lot. Now I will shout it from the rooftops (or from this page) again: Ireland has a top class education system.
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I, for one, will be running home with my three children to our primary school. Here I have found school to be rigid, intense, lacking in colour and fun with little encouragement of independent thinking. The teaching feels like it’s stuck in the 1950s and the quality of schooling for a European superpower has shocked me. Does this feed into attitudes?
The French were always a superpower in Europe. And I have been pondering this when trying to understand the people among whom I live. Their long history as a wealthy nation of monarchs and colonisers, stands in sharp contrast to Ireland’s. It is visible in the chateaus and first class road and rail infrastructure in this great and beautiful country. Here there are excellent taxbreaks and free healthcare.
And yet, some will say (including a close French friend of mine) that many in France seem unhappy. There is a lot of grumbling and complaining. It feels different than in Ireland. Is it partly because their ancestors have not been without as much as the Irish? Or is it just the human condition? I am leaning towards the former.
I am missing my kin, the knowing wink, the warm smile, the way we raise our children. Yes it’s all very polite here with Bonjours, Bonne Journees, Madames and Monsieurs. Yet I have experienced people knocking over my three-year-old as we alighted from a train. Am I am being fair when I say this wouldn’t happen in Ireland?
I am thankful for my experience of France. I admire the preservation of their identity and language and culture (which means I have had trouble finding an English language book in any library or bookshop here).
They are a proud people and rightly so. It’s a wonderful country. I just wish the French themselves appreciated all they have a little more.
Aoife Nash is from Co Clare. She moved to France in 2023 with her husband Donall and three young children Sarah Kate, Daniel and Moya.
