When the news broke, it swept across Paris like a shockwave. All over town, Parisians dropped their jaws, espresso spoons and social benefit checks in disbelief — how could the municipal government even think of such a radical, far-reaching piece … Read More
Who says Parisians are rude? Oh, wait, I do. Also the 1,200 people who responded to a recent survey by Skyscanner.net, reported on the Huffington Post, in which France ranked number one out of a field of 35 as the … Read More
Late June is one of my favorite times of year in France. The weather is (usually) mild, the sun doesn’t go down until after 10pm, the markets are full of freshly-picked, fructose-packed cherries and peaches, the Abba fan upstairs goes … Read More
It is a matter of public record, thanks in large part to the tireless research of the C’est Ironique support community, that Paris is full of commercial enterprises with names that Anglophones find, shall we say, ill-advised. Like this one, … Read More
Generally speaking, France’s national railroad is great. The SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer, or, in English, National Society of Carnival Shamans) offers clean, comfortable trains that cover virtually the entire country at high speeds, frequent intervals and affordable … Read More
Sometimes a topic for C’est Ironique seems to just fall from the sky. In this case, the topic has been literally falling from the sky, as of this writing, for months on end. The weather is not usually high on … Read More
Last week, in the first part of the C’est Ironique Field Guide to the Lesser Retail Species of France, I described many, but not all, of the rare varieties of shopkeepers whose goal in life seems to be to prevent … Read More
One day last week, I needed to buy something. So I went to a store, was greeted by a salesperson, asked for help finding the product I wanted, found it, paid for it, exchanged cheerful goodbyes with the staff and … Read More
Notice to readers who don’t follow French politics because there’s no iPhone app for it yet: we’ve been having a little scandal around here recently. It all started late last year when accusations began emerging that the now-former budget minister, … Read More
As I recounted in Part Three of this series last week, one of the high points of my life to date was obtaining, at exorbitant human and financial cost, a French driver’s license. I had been to driving school, studied … Read More
