Eight fun facts about France

1. O fellow Americans: Orangina, it turns out, is terrible. In France, Schweppes sells an orange drink called Agrum' (the apostrophe is part of the name) that is way orangier and way yummier. Oddly enough, you must ask for the drink by its complete name: Schweppes Agrum'. If you just ask for "agrum", the nice person behind the counter may ask you to confirm that Schweppes Agrum' is what you want, even if cans are sitting right there. The "u" has an "ooo" sound.
2. In English, correcting another adult's spoken English means "Shut up." On the other hand, when you start speaking French, almost every interaction with French people will involve them correcting you. Are they doing that because they want you to shut up? Unlikely; if they wanted you to shut up, they'd just ignore you. Instead, they've probably concluded, based on the fact that you are trying to speak French, that you want to speak French. Lunacy, eh? These corrections are offered in a positive spirit, and if one can hear them that way, they are gold.
3. Being in a country with a national problem of dog owners not picking up their dogs' poop really adjusts your feelings about the old "five-second rule."
4. Although France has a vast history of Catholicism, today it is officially a secular republic. But there are still peculiar protrusions of the faith into France 2012: the official France weather website will tell you, for example, which saint's feast day it is. I am writing this on St. Firmin's day, for example. He converted 3,000 people to Christianity and then was beheaded. Um, also, partly cloudy, rain in the afternoon.
5. One odd adjustment Americans must make abroad: coins. Sure, the United States has coins too, but mostly they are nuisances, except for quarters on laundry day. In France and other Eurozone countries (and Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland too), coins are real money, and people expect you to spend them. If you always proffer 20-euro bills at stores, people will look at you funny (once a guy at a wurst stand in Germany glared at me and said "Ich bin keine Bank"). You'll also wind up with a small fortune in the coffee can on your dresser.
6. I'm told France is McDonald's second biggest market worldwide. Is this because French people's appreciation of fine food is overrated? Or is McDonald's somehow haute-ier in France? No and no. I am not sure why "MacDo" is so big here, but I have one theory. Almost all French restaurants have a rather rigid daily schedule: for example, a restaurant may be open all afternoon, but all you'll be able to get until mid-evening will be coffee, ice cream, and crêpes. If, for some reason, your circadian rhythm happens to be off-kilter today with respect to the rest of the country, MacDo is there for you.
7. Chopsticks are called "baguettes."
8. Speaking of baguettes: an iconic scene of France is someone bicycling down a road with a baguette in the bike-basket. Once we Americans wrap our heads around the idea of someone having gone out for a purchase and not brought it home in a car, we have one question: "Why isn't that bread in a plastic bag? Isn't it going to go stale?" So, as an experiment, I put a baguette in a plastic bag.
   
   Normally, a just-bought baguette has a delicious crispy crust and a distinctive interior, neither too moist nor too dry. (That's why people buy them daily.) But my plastic bag distributed the bread's moisture evenly throughout the loaf. Now the crust was squishy, the interior was gummy, and the whole thing was unappealing. It seems that Monsieur le Boulanger has a few tricks up his sleeve. So I'll be going back tomorrow for another baguette.
   
   No, the first one was not free.