Corkonians Abroad: Kissing is a big culture shock here in France!

How did you end up in France, Jane?

I moved to France in 1988, having met a Frenchman in Cork.

How is life there?

Very nice! It’s a lovely area where we live, and we often walk around the canal in Versailles which is great when it gets too hot. The canal is lined with shady trees, as is a lot of the park of the château of Versailles.

Also, we are retired so we can do whatever we like, when we want!

What has been the biggest challenge since moving to France?

My biggest challenge in adapting to France was speaking the language. The French we learned in school from an Irish nun didn’t sound quite the same as normal spoken French :)

Also, we didn’t really learn to speak French in school, only reading and writing.

So that was the biggest challenge, and then finding a job as I had taken leave of absence to see if France would work out for me, and I wasn’t used to sitting around all day doing nothing, which is what I did for a while until I got to know people.

How might you spend your weekends?

We usually have an apéritif on Friday evenings and a light, easily prepared meal, and watch a film.

We might have our son and his partner visiting, or friends over for dinner, or go to friends for dinner.

I like to swim every Saturday morning, and we might go for a walk.

We rarely go into Paris itself, but we’ve been in twice recently... once to see my son, who’s a singer in a choir, and another time we went to see a bluegrass session on a barge on the Seine with some friends.

Plus, I have Irish friends over now and again and we went to the catacombs a few weeks ago for the first time.

Tell us a bit about the culture of where you live?

Around where I live, a lot of people tend to be Catholic, but unlike the Irish, a lot of these people are rich with ancestors who were royalists and a lot of them have holiday homes.

When I lived in Ireland, this wasn’t the case with the Irish catholics, and going back a few centuries, it was basically the poor Irish Catholics and the rich Anglo-Irish protestants. It’s almost the opposite here.

France is divided up into Communes and in general the right-wing communes are mostly Catholic, and the left-wing Communes are agnostic.

Where I live, people are courteous in general.

What are the main differences between France and Ireland?

I couldn’t go into all the differences, but one thing we’ve noticed is the Irish people are so friendly and helpful, and when you have a problem with something and ask for help, the answer is usually “Don’t worry about it/No problem”.

Whereas the French love complaining... I am generalising again, but we have had so many experience of having a problem with something, for example at the Town Hall (The Mairie)... it’s always a problem for them and they almost always complain and even refuse to help first, but then they give out a bit, grumble a bit, and then finally you get what you want.

French people are really into their food and are always talking about it. I used to laugh at them and say ‘here we go again’, but I’ve become like them in that aspect.

I barely cooked before I left Ireland, but I love cooking and baking now. Both my husband and I are fairly good cooks... he likes cooking elaborate meals and I prefer simple stuff like pot dishes.

I remember when I first arrived here, my husband might serve me some meat or fish with a vegetable and I’d say, “Where are the spuds?” Or he might serve me meat/fish with spuds and I’d say, “Where are the veggies?” That was what I was used to in Ireland.

I left in the the 1980s so I suppose lots of eating habits have changed since then.

Any culture shock type moments for you over the years?

The kissing! God! You’d be at some event where they were thirty-ish people, and you’d have to go around and kiss them all individually.

And my husband is from northern France so instead of the usual one kiss on each cheek... it was four up there...

That said, kissing isn’t as automatic as it used to be since covid.

French people work longer hours (in general) than at home. I had a 9-to-5 job in Cork. Here, employees are divided into two groups - ‘non-cadre’ (the plebs) and ‘cadre’ (the more qualified / management people for example.

The ‘cadre’ are expected to work long hours, sometimes 12 hours a day. It’s true that they earn more than the ‘non-cadre” people, but I think they work too much.

Tell us about your line of work/career?

I did a TEFL course at the American University of Paris and I taught English in various places: companies, schools, associations, and private lessons, but I never taught full-time, and I worked at Disneyland Paris.

I was there before the opening and translated for the Americans, etc.

I worked there for two years and then I had my son and resigned. When my son was a teenager, I went back to teaching.

Are there any wider societal issues that you see in Ireland that aren’t a problem in your new home? Or vice versa?

There seems to be a rising anti-migrant movement in Ireland... maybe it’s a minority but it’s there.

You don’t get that here except in places like Calais where there might be a lot of migrant camps.

We also pay for rubbish collection. Bins go out on certain days and are hidden on the other days.

This is a problem, I think, in Cork city where there are wheelie bins out on the streets... it’s very ugly.

Someone in the city hall needs to come up with a better system.

What has been your most memorable moment in your new location so far?

I suppose it was when we finally bought a house.

We’d been renting before that and had lived in different places in the suburbs of Paris, starting off in an apartment in the south of Paris, then moving east towards Disneyland, and now in the west of Paris.

Any special mentions to friends or family back in Cork?

My siblings still live in Cork and when I come back, I usually see most of them.

I’ve kept some great school friends and we always have a reunion when I get back. The two girls I sat next to in school have been over a few times and we were looking at our old school reports recently and the three of us “talked too much to their neighbour” :)

If you were back in Cork for one day, what would the ideal day be for you?

A reunion with my old school friends.

What are you looking forward to in the coming months?

Planning a holiday in Ireland. :)

Is there anything that you especially miss about Cork?

The friendliness, the beauty of the Irish countryside, and Clonakilty black and white pudding and sausages.