Best and worst of... France

[Offshore Toon]

Best: cheese, 90/00s holidays, David Ginola
Worst: Algerians, French kids abroad on school trips, terrorism

[Giggles]

:thbup: Pastry, Lille, Ginola.
:thbdn: the French.

[Offshore Toon]

Have we ever had a French poster?

[John]

Pokerface was French for a while, wasn't he?

[Magic]

Hadn't the Africans ruined France before the middle east got anywhere near?

[Sir Andy Mahowry]

Gil.

[Offshore Toon]

Gil was a don tbf.

[Foe]

No fucking mention of croissants offy you shit.

How many do you think Sama could eat in a oner?

[Shindig]

I have an unsettling addiction to the ones Tesco do in six-packs.

[Offshore Toon]

No fucking mention of croissants offy you shit.

How many do you think Sama could eat in a oner?
I don't know if I'm just desensitised to them, but I wouldn't rank them as better than David Ginola.

On a serious note, how could I forget poussin?

[Shindig]

Is Audrey Tautou still adorable or has age ruined her?

[Adamski]

Best: everything
Worst: Jimmy

[Reg]

Wouldn't it be amazing if we discovered Jimmy was French?

[Jimmy Floyd]

One side of my ancestors were French Huguenots who came to London in the late 1700s.

Where can you start with these fuckers. I haven't the energy right now.

[Mazuuurk]

France is a lot like the US; they have all the makings for a truly, truly fantastic country, but they manage to somehow fuck up an open goal by all being pompous snobs the lot of them.

Anyway.


Best:
Provence,
French Rap,
Zidane (as a player),
Biarnaise sauce,
Bits of Paris,
Cheeses
Rose wines (but the supposed fancy reds are just overpriced)

Worst:
Their laughable political mess,
Their segregation problems,
Their fucking collective attitude to anyone who isn't French,
But also their attitude to other French people,
Their often general managerial incompetence,
A lot of their food which is very overrated,
Bits of Paris.

[Giggles]

No fucking mention of croissants offy you shit.

How many do you think Sama could eat in a oner?

Pastry. They're made of pastry aren't they?

That said, the English do it better but it's still a high point.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Best
The little villages throughout the country (especially south) are a lovely place to be. I also like café culture, and the Paris metro has its moments. Cheese, fine, but I like all cheese and French is no better than anyone else's. I like the Alps as well.

Worst
Their food is ok, sometimes good, but relative to the amount of hype it is by far the worst cuisine in the world. How these fuckers have taken ownership of food as a concept (like gifting the world universal terms like 'chef', 'gourmet' and 'cuisine') has to be thoroughly investigated by the culture police, much like the German land grab for Christmas. Their food hasn't developed since the mid 1800s, little flavour, little interest. Wine, you say? In a sauce? This is revolutionary stuff.

That's just their good restaurant food though. Their day to day food is fucking atrocious. Nowhere is this better exemplified than the most important meal of them all, breakfast. Why would you put coffee in a bowl?

Hypermarkets. Why? I don't want to buy bread, fruit, meat and a bicycle from the same shop.

Fucking wine. Here we go again. Why are these cunts deemed to be wine kings? There is no French bottle that is good value for money. Not a single one.

Cultural superiority complex. I've touched on this a few times but it pervades everything. This isn't 'patriotism' or xenophobia which exists in every country, it's a peculiarly French conceit that French culture is innately superior to other cultures, which must be sneered at. This has had extremely damaging consequences throughout history. In the British Empire, we basically showed up in places, found the bloke who sucked up to us, put him in charge, then basically left him to it and returned every so often to collect our taxes. Not great but then there's the French version. You show up in Dakar, and instead of doing the above you decide no, everybody must be taught how to be French. They must learn from textbooks from the Académie (the biggest set of wankers in all France) and be taught how to cook with garlic and make pastry. If you go to Pondicherry, the only part of India which was French, they still have fucking bakeries and terrible food against all odds.

The above has ultimately led to terrible segregation and a lack of integration in post-colonial France - because they are culturally, if not necessarily ethnically, racist. Note that the football team is the team of the ethnic underclass, and the rugby team is a bunch of jumped up farm hands. Sport in general, the expression of unity and teamwork everywhere else, does not appeal to the French. The 'real' French will only break sweat to have an affair with someone 30 years younger than them.

They even seem to think their films are the best, which, I'm sorry, they just aren't.

All the politicians are MASSIVELY bent (for a developed western country) and often openly so, especially at local level.

The Bordeaux ring road.

The Tour de France, which sums up everything wrong with France in a single whistlestop tour.

Patisserie.

[Magic]

Bistro. :drool:

[Shindig]

I still find it amazing you can reach that landmass via a tunnel under a body of water. Everybody into the chunnel when the bombs hit.

[Mazuuurk]

Cultural superiority complex. I've touched on this a few times but it pervades everything. This isn't 'patriotism' or xenophobia which exists in every country, it's a peculiarly French conceit that French culture is innately superior to other cultures, which must be sneered at. This has had extremely damaging consequences throughout history. In the British Empire, we basically showed up in places, found the bloke who sucked up to us, put him in charge, then basically left him to it and returned every so often to collect our taxes. Not great but then there's the French version. You show up in Dakar, and instead of doing the above you decide no, everybody must be taught how to be French. They must learn from textbooks from the Académie (the biggest set of wankers in all France) and be taught how to cook with garlic and make pastry. If you go to Pondicherry, the only part of India which was French, they still have fucking bakeries and terrible food against all odds.


I've thought about this a bit since it's so much like America. The americans express this sort of superiority through patriotism, and the french through this cultural snobbism. One thing both countries have in common is that you never really need to leave them to go on vacations. Wanna go skiing? Apsen or the Alps. Want a sunny vacation? Florida, California or the French south coast will do. Surfing? Biarritz, or California. Mountain walking? Grand Canyon, or Pyrenees. Wine tour? Stay domestic.

What both countries do seem to have in common is a shitload of domestic tourism. Obviously meaning you never go anywhere else in the world and appreciate that for having something your own country can't provide.


Of course it's probably deeper rooted than that at heart, but still I'm convinced it plays a part.

[Henry]

That's an amazing post from Jimmy. We need to do every country in Europe just so we can have more of those...

[ItalAussie]

Cultural superiority complex. I've touched on this a few times but it pervades everything. This isn't 'patriotism' or xenophobia which exists in every country, it's a peculiarly French conceit that French culture is innately superior to other cultures, which must be sneered at.
This is literally what bothered me most about living in Britain.

[Mazuuurk]

Why did the French cultural superiority complex bother you in Berlin but not back in Australia?

[ItalAussie]

Why did the French cultural superiority complex bother you in Berlin but not back in Australia?
To be clear, I would replace the word "French" with "British".

[Pepe]

The French cooking thing is more about the fact that they developed some techniques and stuff, more than about the food itself, no?

Wine is cheaper in France than in the US. French wine is only overpriced abroad, where idiots fall for it.

[Mazuuurk]

To be clear, I would replace the word "French" with "British".

You would, would you.

[Jimmy Floyd]

This is literally what bothered me most about living in Britain.

I'd argue we are very well aware of what we are good and bad at, if not on the self-deprecating end of the scale. Nobody is walking around here proclaiming beef wellington to be some higher art form.

[ItalAussie]

I'd argue we are very well aware of what we are good and bad at, if not on the self-deprecating end of the scale. Nobody is walking around here proclaiming beef wellington to be some higher art form.

You do self-deprecate, but I don't think it gets in the way of the quoted section being very much a British trait as well as a French one. :sorry:

[igor_balis]

Best: Serge Gainsbourg, wine, l'escargot, retro porn

Worst: Me and some mates went to visit our French friends in Tours, and it was shit, so that holiday specifically.

[Offshore Toon]

That's an amazing post from Jimmy. We need to do every country in Europe just so we can have more of those...
Agreed. It was great. Jimmy should do a Rick Stein-like show.

[Spoonsky]

Hadn't the Africans ruined France before the middle east got anywhere near?

:face:

[Magic]

:face:

I'm on about within the last 150 years not the days of Martel ffs.

[Spoonsky]

The French contribution to the artistic and intellectual 'heritage' of the past few hundred years is hard to beat. This is probably partly to blame for the superiority complex.

Anything good about France you can find in Italy but better. The difference is that Italians for the most part are great people, and at least in their faults they're very passionate and human. The country was summed up for me the night after the Euro 2016 final (which was won and lost by the Portuguese and French fans in the Stade de France imo), when a French man, seeing I was a tourist, said to me, "There is football match tonight..." (puffs cigarette) "...we lost..." (puffs cigarette) "...doesn't matter."

[Spoonsky]

You were referring to Algeria right?

[Magic]

That's Africa isn't it. Note I didn't say Muslim. Religion isn't important here, his is just good old fashioned racism.

[Lewis]

The French contribution to the artistic and intellectual 'heritage' of the past few hundred years is hard to beat. This is probably partly to blame for the superiority complex.

Britain and Germany have them there, and America has joined the party more recently. Maybe that's why their complex is strongest when it comes to those countries.

[Spoonsky]

To be fair though, Britain and America have their own superiority complexes, and the Germans, well...

[Lewis]

Britain is Liverpool fans (the sensible ones that must exist somewhere), Americans are those Madrid fans who boo Ronaldo, Germans are Bayern fans, and the French are Nottingham Forest fans who taunt Barnsley fans with chants about the European Cup.