Thursday, July 15, 2004

I've already mentioned the "Walmartization" of France, and the right-wing press is full of talk about the "Islamization" of France, but fewer people have noted the Anglicization of the country. Every tiny town has more real-estate offices than bakeries, and every one of them is pitching sales to the English and the Americans. Though real-estate prices in the Dordogne are no longer a bargain by any standard, the dream of owning a little haven from American/English commercialism and corporate materialism, and settling into the pastoral beauty of the villages that have kept their church and architecture, some of their centuries old methods for wine-making and oil-pressing, their slower pace, and their elegant landscape, has never been stronger, it seems. Even American bookstores are full of scores of titles about buying a small stone house in France and living happily ever after. The French are keenly aware that the influx of capital, restoration-projects, and tax funds are good for the practical survival of towns that otherwise would pass into ruin and abandonment as the young people leave for the cities and jobs. But then it was strange and somewhat depressing to find that most of the cafe tables surrounding us were full of mostly British, mostly English-speaking patrons. We felt, and F noted, that it was increasingly uncomfortable to be part of the "them" in the "us/them" equations---all the more visible in the small villages than in either big cities or blatant resort towns. These perceptions, plus, I'm sure, fatigue from the Bastille Day events, led us to pull up stakes again, and head north to find the little coastal tourist towns in Normandy that we'd loved last trip: Étretat and Yport, just northeast of Le Havre.

This decision meant 8 hours of awful driving on the autoroutes and slower roads. It was not helped by a terrible steak-frites lunch in Donzenac, a missed exit in the north that led us first to hunt for a hotel in Honfleur, a town GUARANTEED to be "Complet" by early afternoon on any high-season day, a final lurch east to another Biz hotel (Ibis) on the outskirts of Le Havre, and, if all that were not enough, a thoroughly disheartening dinner in an exemplar of the worst aspects of the Anglicization of France, the Restaumarché chain restaurant, which was, of course PACKED with French people who like the prices and no longer remember how ALL French food used to be so incredibly good. At least we were now north, and poised to negotiate the complexities of the car-rental return, and plane trip home from Paris.

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Copyright© 2004 - Darrell Taylor