France

France

By Frances J. Herring

Many students following their Erasmus program are asked to write about their experiences for their university. I was asked, but I didn't do it. However, after having read George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, I feel compelled to similarly document my experiences. Although our experiences were relatively different, I find some common themes in both our stories. The strangeness of France and French culture to a thoroughbred Anglo, the alcohol scented degeneracy of French urban life, and our various interactions with communists. However, I must begin my story before arriving in France, whilst I was in South Africa for winter break.

Please bear in mind that the events that I am going to describe in this account are the ones that stand out in my head and although they will be in some form of chronological order, doubtless the reality would have looked very different to an outside observer. The human mind is, alas, a powerful yet forgetful machine, and I am sure there is much that has been wiped from my memory. I will also attempt to recount the story in its most brutally honest fashion, this is partly the reason for my publishing under a pseudonym. Anyway, with that out the way, let's begin.

I arrived in South Africa in December. The plan was for met to travel to France on the 12^th  of January if my memory serves me correctly. Anyway, at the time I was dating a young Sardinian girl. Our relationship was rather immature. I drank a lot at university, and was constantly annoyed by the perceived lack of intimacy. We fought regularly, but the relationship was going quite well upon my departure, and we had agreed to do long distance when I went to France. I knew it wasn't going to work out, deep inside me, but I went ahead anyway.

I enjoyed South Africa, but I'd had my doubts for quite some time already. Then came that fateful evening at an eleven year old child's garden party. An older Dutch woman had taken an interest in me. She enquired if I would like to come with her to the beach for the weekend, as she was bored staying with her friends out here in the middle of nowhere, the poor princess. I declined her offer on the basis that I had a girlfriend. Also, to be honest, she struck me as slightly troubled, as her desires for the vices more common to younger people such as marijuana, tobacco and alcohol were quite suggestive of deep seated issues. She later confessed to me that she had been raped. Anyway, I declined and the night ended on an older man trying to fight me. This area in question is full of volatile hippies. She tried to molest me on the back of a pick-up truck on the way home, something I would have been partial to had I not already refused her advances.

Anyway, I broke up with my girlfriend the next day. I decided I was not going to sacrifice my youthful twenties for a bit of love. I'd have to pass up innumerable chances like that in the future if I stayed with her. Love is not everything, one learns, but love her I did. I missed her quite a lot in the months following. I still do sometimes to this day.

Anyway, I arrived in France, newly single, via Seychelles. I recall landing in Paris and leaving the airport by Uber to get my bus to Tours. I took the Uber from Charles de Gaulle to Bercy Seine bus station. It was here that I got my first exposure to what is a common pasttime in France; street harassment. I stood outside the station smoking a cigarette, it was rainy and Paris looked as Paris does. Large white buildings, busy, stately and modern yet distinctly European. An African man approached me and asked for or stated something. I have no idea what he wanted. At first I looked at him puzzled but then noticed everyone else was ignoring him, as if giving him any form of attention would egg him on. In other parts of the world, if someone approaches you in the street in broad daylight you assume there is something they need and respond. In France, you ignore them unless it is clear they are in genuine need of assistance. This is something I was to learn this more thoroughly later.

Anyway, after arriving at the gare, I waited until I boarded the bus. This was a particularly interesting moment for me. The station was filled with rough looking sorts, wearing classic banlieu attire. My French was very poor and I struggled asking which bus was mine. However, I found it without much difficulty and started the two hour journey on to Tours. The countryside was flat, it was cold and misty. Long muddy fields rolled slowly and gently as the bus continued along the highway. Contrary to its more mountainous south, and Britain's slightly claustrophobic countryside, the interior of central France or La France Profonde, can appear quite vast. However, we shortly arrived in Tours.

The bus driver was very nice and showed me the directions to my   accommodation. I wondered slowly down the plane tree – lined avenues. I arrived at my accommodation, excited by the sight of all the medieval buildings and bars. It seemed like a nice place, and I was particularly taken with the avenues that are distinctive to French cities. The Haussmann architecture is all over France, large buildings with white façades, just like one sees the touch of Charles Rennie Mackintosh around Glasgow and Scotland.

As stated before, people in France have grown accustomed to being accosted on the street by lowlifes. I approached a woman and asked her to direct me to the street where I was staying. She ignored me initially but she soon saw that my concern was genuine. I remember seeing the stone faced disinterest turn to a kinder, maternal concern for this young man with bad French on the street. Most people are good underneath I think, I like to imagine so.

I arrived at my accommodation and got settled into my studio apartment. I spent the next two days going out and making the friends that I was to spend the next semester with. They were a nice sort. Three girls, two Americans and one Canadian. Then there was a Kabyle Algerian girl who I was later to have an affair with. There was a half English half French guy called N- that I was to become good friends with, and a smattering of other students both international and French. We were a good group, though I squabbled now and then with one of the American girls who was a textbook example of an American white girl Democrat, repeating lines such as “Hillary lost because she's a woman” and “you can't be racist to white people/you can't oppress the oppressor”. Pretty bog standard stuff these days. Anyway, she was a good girl and we got on most of the time. I remember on one occasion we had all gone out and gotten very drunk. An Irish friend of ours (who occasionally dragged me to bed whenever I got too inebriated) was spewing on the street, and we were milling standing outside in the city centre, taking care of her. It was about 1 am, and nothing good happens in town around that time. The centre of town turns into the last days of Rome with students, vagabonds and ruffians getting plastered beyond belief and engaging in a general assortment of acts both degenerate and criminal. Suddenly, I saw my little democrat friend (who, bear in mind, was very petite and also a virgin at the time) surrounded by a group of young Arabs, leering at her and looking down at her like hyenas who've just seen a little lamb wonder into their den. I stepped up to one of them, between him and her, took the cigarette out of his mouth and smoked it. Next thing I knew one had me from behind and the other was laying into me from the front, I came to several metres away. God knows how. Anyway I woke up with a swollen jaw for several days after that.

One gets used to this level of sexual harassment in France. However, curiously enough, it was never Frenchmen I saw doing it. Contrary to popular belief French people can be quite hospitable, if a little stand offish at times, but no more than the average Londoner or Glaswegian. I was always helped by almost every French person I met, and they were always happy to hear me speak. However, France's migrant population, and I don't know whether this is due to cultural and economic exclusion or an inability to integrate due to incompatible cultures, has created a subculture unique to the banlieue; a culture that glorifies violence, harassment, drugs and general ill behaviour (such as the prolific street harassment). Now, as the accusations of racism fly please note that I have lived amongst Arabs in the Middle East and amongst Africans in South Africa, and they are the same as people the world over. Some idiots, some damn fine people, but overall just trying to get on with it with minimal pain and inconvenience. However, within France's urban centres, the ethnic population lives in relative fear of this diaspora on the streets. Both as individuals and a collective, they give French cities their reputation for harassment and violence. However, due to France's republican values of Liberté, égalité and fraternité, discussion concerning race is generally discouraged (although less so today). The France of the revolution was a France that wanted to evaporate discrimination of all sorts be it class, race or religion. The result was a country all the more ignorant of its internal issues. Also, government censuses based on race, ethnicity or religious beliefs are illegal, and thus it is impossible to figure out who is doing the crime. As opposed to the US, where detailed reports on race and crime are updated regularly and are the subjects of constant debate.

I made a very good friend on my trip there named O-. O- was a young Moroccan who I used to drink with regularly. We'd get drunk, walk about, smoke tobacco and talk. We were both a bit odd, quite into politics and enjoyed speaking Arabic with each other. He had a penchant for speaking at great lengths about things without really being interested in whether the listener had anything to respond with or was listening at all. I think he just very much enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Anyway he was quite intelligent and told me he had recently been imprisoned in Morocco for political activism against the government.

“You know what I used do in prison, my brother?” he would say.

“Sometimes I would just look up at the clouds and dream. For hours.”

His stories were interesting. He would tell me of all the older women he had intercourse with, yet the first story he told me about a sexual encounter he'd had during our time in France was when he buggered another chap because he was so drunk and desperate. Sexual opportunity in that town wasn't exactly slim pickings from my experience, so go figure.

We used to sit on the banks of the river Loire in the town. It was extremely beautiful, and I used to go for regular jogs by the river. As one heads out of the town one enter woods and farmland relatively quickly after the banlieues and highways. Here gypsies lived in their caravans and tents and the townsfolk had their vegetable allotments. I found it a pleasant respite from the town centre, and the weather was generally very agreeable. It was also, interestingly enough, only in the country that one would find widespread support for the FN, with slogans scribbled such “Votez Marine”.

As for classes, the university was appallingly organised. I remember in my medieval history class I spoke with my professor about doing an assignment. For some reason I was struggling to submit the assignment through standard means, so we agreed I'd send it to his email address. I made a point of going over it letter by letter with him, to make sure I didn't get it wrong. I never got a response after sending it. I gave up on that class quite quickly.

I enjoyed my ancient Greek class, I believe every university should offer it as it is the most intellectually stimulating subject I have ever taken. There is something very pure about ancient Greek vocabulary, you can sense a kind of magical archaism in the words and definitions.

I enjoyed my French classes with the rest of the Erasmus students, and I tried quite hard in these. However, my graded work was given to me by my home university, and I had to write a report on a topic specific to my region of France. I chose to go to each commune within Tours and report how they voted in the 2017 French presidential elections and why. The results were relatively predictable; the wealthy sectors had voted conservative catholic Fillon, the railway and university neighbourhoods voted socialist Melenchon, the urban middle class had voted Macron, and the poor, sparsely populated rural areas on the fringe had voted Le Pen.

Socialist students used to march every Thursday past my building. Red flags waving and protesting their recently elected fat cat Macron who was taking away university funding, making it impossible for students to receive funding if they failed a year, as they often did. I once met a girl who informed me this was her sixth year in university, so there were clearly those exploiting the system. During these marches, I enjoyed sticking my head out the window and shouting profanities at them such as “stupid fucking commie scum”. The young French political middle class are generally a deluded bunch, and I was unfortunate enough to be placed into a socialist stronghold, so I didn't meet a single FN supporter.

The end of my time in Tours was most pleasant. The weather was fine, I would do my university work in a Colombian café and I was seeing an Italian girl. I had stayed at her residence a few times before, and as I was due to leave to the south a day after my lease ended, she agreed I could spend a night at hers. The residence was a converted country estate I think, as the French, unlike the idiotic British, didn't demolish most of their country houses in the 20^th century, so many go for cheap and they are plentiful.

I remember looking outside her window at the well kept grounds fringed by large oak trees, with the view of the city in the distance. It was a warm, humid rainy day. Large drops fell on the new summer leaves in front of the old window pane. I breathed in the rainy, earthy scent. I felt absolutely at ease. She came out the shower and we bandied words for a while, before I left to have a goodbye beer with O- by the riverside.

We sat on a boat docked at the river that we'd found, drinking very cheap beer under a willow and watching the last sunset. I knew I would miss all this.

Anyway, the morning after we kissed goodbye and I was on my way to the South, first the Hautes Pyrenees region then Spain. I would stay in a village of two hundred people in the foothills of the Pyrenees with an old family friend called C-. C's wife had recently passed and he was spending the rest of his days in a grand old house in the village. An Oxford gentleman, he proved to be priceless company over the next week and an excellent host.

For twenty euros, I carpooled with a transgender man (or woman) from Tours to Toulouse where C- picked me up and we drove two hours to his village.

I came to truly love this part of France, deep France. The large forests, small towns and old churches were the stuff of postcards and honeymoon advertisements, except I was at liberty to enjoy it all to myself free of charge. I would frequently jog through the woods and eat my host's cooking which was generally the good French fare that he enjoyed.

Some notes on the French countryside:

Marine Le Pen once stated to a crowd of followers at one of her rallies in a small French town: “La France, c'est pas les banlieues. La France, c'est la campagne, d'abord.” meaning; “France; it is not the suburbs (or cities). France is the countryside, first and foremost.”

I must say I am in agreement with this. Upon entering the countryside in France, one certainly feels a type of pride. This is the life that they have lived for centuries, and it is displayed in their regional wines, cheeses and dialects. The many old churches and monuments are free to see and give one a most insightful view into the past. Were the streets devoid of people in many a French rural town, one could imagine oneself in the present or the 17^th century, it'd be hard to tell the difference.

These said towns are also struggling enormously and have been abandoned by the elite. Shops are closing and people are leaving to the cities, I  saw this as I drove through. This is where Le Pen has formed her base support, speaking to a neglected demographic.

I personally detected a feeling of animosity towards the urban centres at times. Hives of crime, migrants, drug use and overpriced commodities for the tourists turning France into a theme park. I can absolutely see why the residents of the countryside would believe this.

I will end this account here. From my stay here I took a bus from Toulouse to Barcelona, where I travelled Spain. But that's another story, and I hope the fragments of information I've given here prove to be entertaining, interesting or at least mildly infuriating. Thank you.