This English-language aggregator of news in France sometimes generates lighter items about culture and life for anglophones in La France. One of them is a list of rural French habits we might pick up while living in small-town France. One of them, the first … yes, I can see already. This saying “bonjour” to literally […]

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Heretofore, “Emirates” was a name American sports fans saw just about only on the jerseys of prominent European soccer teams. Real Madrid. Arsenal. PSG. AC Milan. This season, the logo of the aggressive, Dubai-based airline, will be seen in a baseball stadium for the first time — behind home plate and at the foul poles […]

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So, nine anglophones go into a small-town-France bar … Ah, this is not headed for a punchline. Instead, it was the setting for a fine dinner (among folks with a certain amount of life experience) of that French winter staple cassoulet — which you would not want to eat every week but certainly do not […]

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France may be one of the few countries in the world where a significant fraction of native speakers prefer to see movies screened in their original language — with French subtitles. We saw the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! tonight in an old-fashioned, one-screen cinema, and not only is the movie fairly current, it ran in […]

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Wine is big in France. Of course. That’s well-known throughout the world. The French and their wines. Sure. What is not as universally grasped is the French connection to cheese, or “fromage”, in French. This is a country that produces at least 350 varieties of cheese. (Americans over a certain age remember a youth with […]

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This is Day 2 of what will be at least five days without access to the worldwide web in the rental home where we are living, in southern France. The local telecom, like all telecoms everywhere, is incompetent and probably instinctively evil and, after failing to acknowledge any problems for a week or two (“Have […]

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  Eating with American fast-food giant McDonald’s may be a bad idea, in terms of consumption, but I continue to be impressed by their schemes for trying to localize their menu. To wit: The McArabia, in the UAE. The American Winter menu, here in France. This is fairly ingenious.

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It is an unmistakable sound, though it may take a city boy a minute or two to place it. The steady “tinkle ” or “clank” of domesticated animals wearing bells, maybe just the other side of a rise of land, and on the move. A combined herd of sheep and goats is being raised somewhere […]

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Winter weather in this part of France can be fluky, we are learning. Yesterday, we were bundled up (well, by SoCal standards) during a walk to a nearby town — but were quite cold throughout because of powerful winds that took the wind-chill factor to 47 Fahrenheit. Today? Bright sun. Very little wind. Temps cracking […]

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A great thing about staying in the greater Pezenas area, north of Beziers and southwest of Montpellier … are the walks from one little town to another. The town we are in (year-round population of less than 600), is about 45 minutes from another little town in a variety of directions. I have done two […]

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