France... Not So Much...

So, how am I doing so far?

 

Well, Le Tour De France I'm enjoying quite a bit...

 

But France... Not so much...

 

First, there's that language thing I mentioned in a pervious post - and I'm willing to accept all of the fault on that one.  I'm an Ugly American who never took high school French, and I knew that when I came here...

 

But it's really the little things that I'm having a problem with - and a lot of that is really more my having been spoiled by having lived in a neat and orderly Germany for three years a lifetime ago.

 

Example. 

 

They're a bit lax on their schedules here - and anyone who knows me knows that I'm early infinately more often than I'm late, and I really hate to be kept waiting because someone else doesn't know what they're doing...

 

On a German railway schedule, for instance, they post the train number, the time it arrives, the cities it's going to, and the track it'll be arriving on.  All of this is very important, because their very punctual trains typically only spend a minute or two in the station.  Blink and you miss it, so you really need all of this info at the ready...

 

In France, the schedule doesn't include the track number.  Sure, it's a tiny detail - but what the hell, it's not like the train to Lyon is going to be stuck in a holding pattern because of a weather delay and end up arriving on a different track!  I'm catching the 07:13 train to Lyon tomorrow, and I want to know where to be ahead of time...

 

It's the little things... like being turned away from one of the few open restaurents in Mulhouse at 5:35pm because they close at 6:00pm - apparently the French round upwards when closing time is near...

 

The fact that restaurents are closed at all - even on a Sunday - in a nation supposedly obsessed with fine cuisine is something else all together.  Having to eat McDonnald's is bad enough - eating it in France is just wrong...

 

And in Germany, they'd at least offer you some beer with your Big Mac - the French don't serve wine with their Royal with Cheese...

 

Fine French cuisine my @ss...

 

Tomorrow I'm catching a train to Lyon, and then into the Alps to position myself ahead of time to hopefully see Lance retake the Yellow Jersey - maybe even in a breakaway - up Courchevel.

 

Camping in the Alps - it' not likely I'll be e-mailing for a while (in fact, I haven't seen an i-cafe since I've been in France.  They just happen to offer free internet at my hotel).

 

By the way, I was on the left side of the finishing approach at about the 250m mark at today's finish, for any of the guys looking for me on OLN - right on the barricade, and I think I got a good shot of Rabobank's Michael Rasmussen on his solo through breakaway stage win...

 

So Le Tour...  Yes, very much...

 

France...  Not so much...

 

SPB