The expats’ life can appear interesting, adventurous and can intrigue many people who have never tried to move abroad.
Spending your life or a more or less defined period in a foreign country, where they speak another language, and where you don’t know anyone and find yourself dealing with a completely different culture from yours, may seem thrilling. But when you find yourselves living abroad in real life, it is quite likely that some of the expectations you had will turn out to be… False! And that reality is very different from what you would have expected.
I am an Italian girl and I have experienced this many times, but the biggest “cultural clash” I had was when I moved to France, in Bordeaux. Before that I had lived in Spain, and perhaps the Italian and Spanish cultures are closer to each other, or perhaps it is just that the French are a very special people.
So here’s a list of 5 things that turned out to be different from what I expected before moving to France.
1 : French people and English language
Before arriving in Bordeaux I had been traveling for one year in hostels in Spain, and I also lived and worked in a hostel in Bordeaux. Therefore, I was very used to speaking English, and I had learned Spanish. The French language I studied at school was somewhere in the back of my brain, and especially at the beginning I mixed it a lot with Spanish, given the similarity between the two languages.
As Italians we grow up thinking that our level of English is very low, I had studied it a little apart from school and I had an OK level, but I must say that I was VERY surprised to see the low level of English of young people in Bordeaux. On one hand, they probably don’t teach English very well at school, and they are also ashamed of their strong accent. Also, French people are quite egocentric on a cultural level, therefore the fact of speaking French, for them, is enough (especially if you are in France!).
2 : The “Singing” Accent
For the same reason, French people have a tendency to remark when they perceive a foreign accent. I think that the phrase that has been addressed to me most often sounds like: “You have an accent, you are not French, where are you from?”, Very often even the question came from complete strangers! Once I revealed my Italian origins, the people I was speaking with were ecstatic: many people said that they loved Italy and Italian language, which they define “a Singing Language”, as well as our accent.
3 : The Climate of the Atlantic coast
Bordeaux is a city on the French Atlantic coast, and it is located a couple of hours from the Spanish border (on the San Sebastian side). When I decided to move to France, I expected a windy but temperate climate, with frequent changes in weather due to the oceanic influence. I was quite close to reality, but only partially: it may be true that in Bordeaux the weather can change very quickly, but this is only true for the middle seasons (spring and autumn). In fact, in October the city gets covered by a blanket of clouds and humidity that will remain permanently until about mid-March. The first year in Bordeaux I was told that that gray winter was strange, and that normally the weather was not so bad. The second winter with the same bad weather, they told me it was unusual, again. When I had the third year in a row with gray skies and wet and cold weather I realized that perhaps it is not so unusual and that in fact, in Bordeaux in winter the weather is just bad.
4 : Human Rights and Freedom
Before moving to France I had seen some demonstrations of the “yellow vests” on television, and I had heard about the French “revolutionary spirit”, but it was only after I officially settled in this Country that I realized that this spirit was much stronger and rooted than I expected. The “Gilet Jaunes” marched every Saturday afternoon, clogging the city center. Their demands were various. In short they were asking for a general improvement in the quality of life of the lower and middle classes.
Obviously these events decreased or stopped with the Covid period, but I remember an earlier episode that struck me. In 2019 in France there was a retirement reform: they wanted to raise the retirement age by a couple of years. I remember that for more than a month the workers went on strike, the trains that normally ran every hour were reduced to two per day, there were slowdowns everywhere, great inconvenience for everyone. Remember that during the strike the worker is not paid. But the French people did not give up, they demonstrated and went on strike until the reform was canceled. I found this side of the culture that hosted me very interesting and powerful, and in general, I deeply admired the French welfare state, very attentive to the rights of citizens.
5 : French kitchen?
Perhaps each person believes that their country is the one with the best food, just because it is the one they are most used to. But what does French cuisine consist of? This is a big dilemma. I have been asking the local population, and the answers I got were always vague and fragmented. Almost everyone told me that it varies a lot from region to region. From my personal experience, apart from some baked desserts like croissants, or some sauces or cooking methods for meat, I have never found the French equivalent of pizza or lasagna. The “Raclette”? It’s melted cheese poured over meats and potatoes. And what about the “Moules frites”? Nothing but mussels with fries. Yes they’re good, but is it a typical food? Each French restaurant offered pasta with “Bolognaise” sauce or other dishes coming from other cultures. Despite the many years I spent in France, I was unable to identify French cuisine, which is in fact very well known. I also noticed that there are some “niche” products that are really difficult to find even in big cities, for example the vegetarian cold cuts that I can’t find in Bordeaux (250,000 inhabitants) but I find in the Italian city where I come from (20,000 inhabitants) and in general in every village in Italy.
In short, moving to France revealed some aspects of the local culture that I did not expect, but I believe that this is also the beauty of traveling and moving abroad: the possibility of overcoming the myths you have and discovering how life is in the real (foreign) world.
Photo by Ilnur Kalimullin on Unsplash
