Comparing and Contrasting

It's not really fair to compare and contrast two different cultures and civilizations but, hell, I do it all the time. As many of you have figured out, my blog posts often follow the in-the-U.S.-this-and-in-Brazil-that pattern. But I've decided to give the U.S. a break today and turn my sights to France. How can I not? Three weeks in France gave me material galore.

Going beyond the famous Venn Diagram-style of comparing and contrasting, here are some in-Brazil-this-and-in-France-that observations that struck me the most, in no particular order:

These days, when you check in to a hotel in Brazil, you still have to fill out a form at the reception desk, informing them of your nationality, sex, age, your passport number, how you arrived at the hotel, where you're traveling from, where you're next traveling to, and so on and so forth. But at no hotel in France did we ever fill out anything, whether we had reserved or not. All they wanted was our name if they didn't already have it. Who we were, where we were from, our car's license plate number, our favorite foods, nothing was of interest. Remember when you used to have to leave your passport at the hotel reception desk in any European country for the hotel to register with the police? Boy, have times changed!

In Brazil they've kept the "service" in service station. They still have uniformed attendants who pump your gas, check your oil, fill your tires, wash your windows, and even serve you coffee. France, on the other hand, has adopted the annoying and human-less pump-your-own approach. Me, I'll stick to Brazil and New Jersey.

OK, but where's the red button of the instructions?

In Brazil there is a safe in nearly every hotel room we've ever stayed in, whether the hotel is two-, three-, four- or five-star. The instructions are clear enough for a child to operate. During our travels in France we stayed in a total of 11 different hotels. Only three had safes in the rooms and, of those three, only one had clear instructions! I guess there's something admirable about a country that has no security issues.









Brazilians use plastic gloves in restaurant kitchens, in bakeries, at the deli counters, in short whenever there might be the slightest chance that their hands will touch your food. In addition, every wisp of Brazilian hair is tucked carefully inside a hairnet so as to prevent contamination. On the other hand, the French grab your food and serve it barehanded, letting bacteria land where it may. And in at least one bakery, I watched with some amusement as an employee kept whipping her long hair around, and with each toss of her head her ponytail hit the breads on display behind her. The French do, however, use plastic gloves when pumping their own gas. The gloves are offered in handy dispensers, alongside paper towels. Very hygienic.

In Brazil the public bathrooms are cleaned constantly, whether they're in high-end shopping malls or lowly gas stations. Here I always know the public toilets will be as clean as they are in my own house. Over there in la belle France? Well, I only used one public bathroom, and I made sure never to repeat that traumatic experience. It was in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, an otherwise beautiful city.




Most Brazilian restaurants will serve you anything you want at any time of day, and stay open until the last customer wipes his chin, heaves a satisfied sigh, and leaves. In France, most restaurants serve within very rigid schedules (non, Madame, lunch is from 12:00 to 2:30, and dinner from 7:00 to 9:30). Hungry at 4:00 in the afternoon? Tant pis. Just want a drink during the hours of food service? You'll have to sit at the bar, don't even think of occupying a table. Tables are for diners only — even if there aren't any. All this rigidity and discipline, though, probably goes a long way to explaining why the French are all still so skinny.

In Brazil you hardly ever see a convertible and, if you do get the rare glimpse, the top is never down. I’m figuring that speaks more to fear of violence than to car preferences. In France I was really struck by the number of convertibles cruising the roads, all with their tops down. Could have been spring break in Fort Lauderdale.




I'm happy to announce that in Brazil, smoking in public places is mostly a relic of the past. In France? Oh, boy. Puff puff puff puff. Not inside, at least, but outside, on the café terraces, where the best people-watching seats are. Wherever we went we were relegated to the boring and empty interiors unless, that is, we wanted to inhale clouds of secondhand smoke. The most discouraging part of all — and this is serious — is that the vast majority of those who are smoking are young people.

I've written before about all the golden-age perks for the elderly in Brazil, half price at all cultural and sporting events, free rides on public transportation . . . but over in France there are no deals for the elderly, nothing, nada, zip, rien. Oh, unless you belong to the European Community, and even that only goes for an occasional museum. And surprisingly, when we took the French subway, Mark and I looked for the signs we used to see asking people to give up their seats by the doors for "the elderly, the pregnant, and wounded war veterans." But they're gone now. (The signs, I mean. The elderly, the pregnant and the wounded war veterans can be seen hanging on to the straps for dear life.)

In Brazil, and particularly Búzios, the locals wear flat shoes and the tourists wear high heels. In France, it seemed that the locals were in the high heels and the tourists were in the comfortable flats. Just a curiosity for those who, like myself, are shoe-oriented.

We'll Always Have Paris

We had emptied the refrigerator, packed our bags, hugged all our friends, said our good-byes. I had announced to my blog readers that I was taking a hiatus. We were more than ready to get on the plane to Paris, grab a car and drive south in the direction of Provence. You see, before we’d ever met each other, Mark and I had separately had intense relationships with France. I had spent years helping defend France’s honor against Amoco in the legal aftermath of the AMOCO CADIZ oil spill disaster. Mark worked in Paris for a French publisher. We were determined to see if France was still France, and if there was anything for us there anymore.

Then the French air traffic controllers went on strike to protest EU plans to create a single, unified European air space. Our Tuesday late evening flight was canceled, but, given the option between full refund and rescheduling for Sunday, we took Sunday. Actually, we got off easy. We had not been on our way to a congress or a seminar that was not going to wait for us. We were not on our way to a wedding or a funeral that was also not going to wait for us. We were not stuck in a city we barely knew with nothing but the dirty clothes accumulated in the course of a lengthy trip and no prospects except to mark time for days in a hotel that the airline might pay for and then again might not. We were comfortably at home. We spent a few hours rearranging car rentals and hotel reservations. (Thank goodness for the Internet . . . how did we ever manage before?) But then the clock started ticking more sluggishly than usual. Nothing on the calendar. Nothing on the agenda.

Françoise Forton and Aloísio de Abreu

But again we were lucky. Wednesday, the day after we were to leave, was Santo Antônio, the Dia dos Namorados, the Brazilian equivalent of the American St. Valentine’s Day, and Búzios’s tourism department had organized a first-time-ever four-day series of events called (most unfortunately) Búzios Love. Thursday’s schedule promised a show that has been playing in Rio for eight months called Nós Sempre Teremos París (you got it: We’ll Always Have Paris). Was someone telling us something? What an incredible thing to pop up in Búzios, just when we were supposed to be in the Lubéron!

"We'll always have Paris . . ."

The show, a typical boy-meets/loses/finds-girl musical, was actually much more than that. It was the story of a Brazilian Boy who breaks away from his tour group to go sit in a café in Montparnasse on his last night in Paris. At the next table is a Brazilian Girl who is spending her last night in Paris as well. Their eyes meet, they recognize that they’re both Brazilians in love with Paris, and in a flash they fall in love with each other. Paris will do that to you. But they each go their separate ways until twenty years later, when . . . well, you can write the rest. The story unfolded through the lyrics of all the great French classic songs, from Jean Sablon to Charles Trenet to Edith Piaf to Charles Aznavour to Yves Montand — all those songs I learned by heart when I was a kid, because back then I wanted like crazy to be French myself. Here in Búzios we were being reminded of the universal nostalgia for France. We were completely charmed. We sang along, we laughed, we choked up. So did everyone else. It was one of those magical evenings that don’t come around that often anymore, and it reminded us of what we love about France, and what we love about Brazil. Rick and Ilsa might think that they’ll always have Paris, but the truth is that we all will and we all do. And with any luck, Mark and I should be in la douce France as you read this . . . so now I’m really going on a hiatus. À bientôt!