The Snyders in the France-Paris Mission

  Part 3 Although I grew up in Southern California, I’ve spent the last 37 years living in Utah County, Utah—the land of lovely mountain valleys and orderly cities and towns systematically laid out on a beautiful grid pattern by the great Brigham Young. Sometimes called the American Moses, Brigham could have whipped those recalcitrant Israelites into shape in half the time it took the original Moses—and he would have done it without the help of all those plagues. While I can’t honestly say that I’ve never been lost in Utah, I can confidently affirm that I always knew in which direction north, south, east, and west were located (except in shopping malls).   In the rare instances when I wasn’t sure—say, when hiking, fishing, or riding in the mountains—I knew that if I got disoriented and lost, all I had to do to save myself would be to follow a stream or trail downhill or, even better, just give my horse his head. Obviously, because France isn’t Utah, and Paris isn’t Salt Lake...

Part 2 French politeness extends beyond cars to other modes of transportation such as trains, metros, and busses, where the disabled, the infirm, the pregnant, and the aged have priority seating. There are signs politely urging able-bodied passengers to give up these seats to those who fit the priority category. I’ve also noted that, on occasion, the inebriated are also sometimes welcomed to these priority seats by passengers eager to vacate them. Every day I look for an opportunity to be a gentleman on a crowded train or metro. Once or twice, I’ve created a sort of domino effect among the other passengers, with several of them following my seat-relinquishing example by the end of which, I ended up being reseated in a different seat while everyone around me laughed.  One gentleman, himself reseated, smiled at me and observed, “Ah, a gentleman.”  I responded, “Comme mes parents m’ont enseigné.” [As my parents taught me.]   Occasionally, to my everlasting chagrin, I m...

Despite their international reputation for aloof coldness, especially toward tourists of the ugly American variety, the French are a very polite people who place great value on common decency and consideration. While the famous motto of the French Republique, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” posted throughout the country may have an ideological influence on proper behavior and speech, I think their politeness stems from more pragmatic concerns.  D riving in France, for example, requires everyone’s cooperation because of traffic on narrow streets with unusual right-of-way rules, alternating side-of-street parking, non-intuitive international signage (with the exception of STOP),  and roundabouts of wide-ranging size from the multi-lane étoile [star] that goes round and round the Arc de Triomphe to residential streets circling elevated cobblestones the size and shape of a old-fashioned trash can lid. Even the major autoroutes, with their extremely short entrance and exit lanes, a...