by Peter Johns

Created on: March 26, 2008

Based on the experiences I had in France, I'd have to say that the French are not very hospitable to American tourists. Again, I am formulating my opinion based on the experiences I had there. I have nothing against the French or any country/culture for that matter, I'm just telling it as I saw it. When a group of us went to France we returned home a week later not feeling very good about it.

Except for the street performers, the French in general were neutral to fairly cold towards us, but definitely not friendly. Several of us got robbed on the subway system (it was done so deftly that we only realized it later), but that can happen to anyone.

I'll never forget one experience in particular though. We walked into a creperie and ordered chocolate crepes. The owner acted neutral towards us at first, but when we started asking for seconds, she said "You'll have to leave now because we need to make room for customers." She wasn't making eye contact with us as she said this, and she continued moving around pretending to be busy.

At first we thought we had misunderstood. We thought that maybe she meant that we needed to let new customers have a turn to order, but when she followed up by saying "you go now" and physically gestured at us to leave as though we were a swarm of flies, it was clear what her intentions were. Her coldness left us baffled. You really had to be there to truly understand the degree of rudeness that was occurring in that moment.

Still baffled, we didn't leave immediately. Some of our group was also understandably not ready to be dismissed so easily and coldly. We just weren't used to rudeness of this magnitude and we wanted another crepe. She went from cold to annoyed to all out angry in a very short amount of time. Eventually she simply left, walking into the back room at which point her husband came out. He was acting a little sheepish as he tried to fill some of our orders which only confused us more. Was it OK then for us to stay after all? But then she came back out and he disappeared. It seemed like the couple didn't want to be out there at the same time. It was becoming something of a comedy.

She resumed trying to get us to leave, but because of her husband, some new orders had been made and paid for, so we definitely weren't going to leave before getting those orders filled. Flustered by our resoluteness, she stormed off again into the back room, and he returned.

This time she came back sooner though and joined her husband. She started yelling at us to leave and he looked down apparently embarrassed, but clearly supporting her. It was pretty obvious he didn't want us there either, he had just been trying to be polite earlier, a good business person. He gave us back the money for the crepes we hadn't received and we left.

There were a couple other experiences that left us rattled in the week that we were there, but that was definitely the worst. Maybe she was having a bad day for whatever reason, but I definitely left France with a bad taste in my mouth and am in no hurry to return.

Learn more about this author, Peter Johns.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.