My Completely Reasonable List of French Grievances

From someone who would still choose France every single time

Every so often, someone pulls me aside — at a dinner party, in the comments, via DM — and asks, with genuine curiosity: Is there anything you don’t like about France?

And I pause. I think. I tilt my head like my dog Phoebe when she hears a strange sound.

Honestly? Not much.

But before I get into it, let me wave quickly at the obvious stuff. The administrative burden — every immigrant knows that no matter how many documents you send, they will want more. We won’t speak of it further. Except to say that if you don’t hear from them for long enough, you’ll actually feel a flutter of excitement when the email arrives requesting six more documents. Or maybe that’s just me.

And yes, the lack of ubiquitous air conditioning. Sometimes we get hot, and we sweat. It doesn’t bother me much anymore, especially now that I’ve mastered the art of opening and closing the volets.

So. I present to you my list:

• Upside-down book spines. In France, book spines are printed so that when the book lies flat with the cover facing up, the title is upside down. If you arrange the books so the titles are right-side up, you’re displaying the back cover. It is absolutely destroying my coffee table book aesthetic.

• Missing toilet seats. This one I cannot explain. It is not rare. It is not limited to one region. There are toilets in France — particularly on the autoroute — that are just a porcelain rim and a question mark. I’ve made my peace with it. But whenever an American visitor encounters one for the first time (my mom, with bad knees, at an autoroute rest stop), I feel like I have to apologize on behalf of France. Someone told me people kick them off in acts of destruction, and they just never get replaced — a kind of “if we install them someone will ruin them” fatalism. I find this both plausible and deeply French.

• Toilettes séparées. Many French homes have a toilet room completely separate from the bathroom, with no sink. I understand the history. I understand these houses were built before indoor plumbing was the norm. I still don’t like it. After using the toilet, I would like to wash my hands. In the same room. Before touching the doorknob.

• The lack of washcloths in hotels. I know the French have les gants de toilette, the little terrycloth hand mitts, which are honestly an upgrade. But they are not offered in most hotels, aside from the swanky 5-star joints. So what do people do? I have been here nearly two years, and I still don’t know.

• No window screens. We have huge windows in a very old house in the historic center of town. Screens are not an option, and I wouldn’t want them — I love throwing the windows open to the river. But we get these slow, aimless flies that materialize in the center of the room as if they’ve forgotten why they came inside. And then the mosquitoes. For those, we have an electrified racket and a game we play called seek and destroy.

• The sidewalk situation. Narrow. Uneven. Occasionally becoming stairs up to someone’s front door with no warning whatsoever. Sometimes they simply end. I have flattened myself against a stone wall while a car and a pedestrian passed simultaneously. The etiquette for that level of proximity to a stranger remains unclear to me.

• The dog poo debacle. You really have to watch where you step. We always pick up after Phoebe, which once earned us genuine praise from a French Airbnb host who noted that “nobody does that.” Our town has installed special bins for exactly this purpose. The bins are there. But the problem persists…

• Trash pickup — or not. Per our contract, we have 14 scheduled pickups per year. That is approximately 1.2 times per month. This explains why the municipal bins occasionally overflow with everything from baby diapers to shrimp tails to, once, a mattress. My mayor once described certain offenders as practitioners of olfactory terrorism, which is the greatest phrase I have ever heard and also an accurate description of walking past a public bin in August.

• Grocery stores smell like cheese and fish. This is not a complaint exactly — more of a recognition that has slowly become my normal. The cheese and seafood sections are ambitious, plentiful, and odiferous. I find myself apologizing to visitors before we've even walked through the door. The same problems exist at home, honestly — French cheeses will absolutely take over a refrigerator if not hermetically sealed. But here's the thing: no one will judge you for it. In fact, your French friends will declare that your fridge is now properly French, and you will probably be proud of it.

• Craftsmen who materialize unannounced. There is a tradition among certain tradespeople of simply arriving at your house. No call. No text. They have the address, they have the work order, what else could you need? I first encountered this in Germany, when a chimney sweep called to inform me he was standing outside my house. I was in London. “Guttentag,” he said. “I am at your house.” “Sir,” I said. “I am in London.” There was a long pause. I don’t think he had considered this scenario. Apparently, it follows me everywhere.

• The taco travesty. Real Latin food — tacos, Puerto Rican, Cuban — is simply not done well here. I’ve made peace with this by becoming the person who makes it, and now we host periodic Latin food nights for our friends that have generated what I can only describe as a loyal following.

• The cocktail conundrum. Outside a major city: generous in spirit, limited in ambition. The rum punch is fine. I have leaned into this and developed a reputation as the cocktail queen of Castillon, which is a title I intend to hold indefinitely.

So that’s it. That’s the list. It’s pretty tame, don’t you think?

This is what I mean about the sidewalk turning into stairs…

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A surprise twist.

But here is the thing I did not expect. France has made me, in certain specific and measurable ways, a snob.

I went back to Chicago recently and tried to have lunch. A nice lunch. The kind I might have enjoyed without a second thought five years ago. The starters were $30. I skipped those and ordered an entrée — three scallops, beautifully presented, $42. A glass of water. A 20% tip. I walked out having spent $65 feeling genuinely bewildered, staring back through the window at people sitting at the bar, apparently having a normal human experience.

In France, $65 gets you a long, lovely lunch for two with wine.

I have become the person who winces at American wine prices. Who won’t eat yesterday’s bread unless it’s going into a panzanella. Who got corrected by a cheesemonger — madame, I don’t sell industrial cheese here — bought the supermarket version anyway out of spite, tasted it, and privately admitted he was completely right.

France didn’t just give me complaints. It gave me standards. Which, depending on the day, is either the best thing that has ever happened to me or a mild curse I’ll be living with forever.

I’m going to go with the best thing, snob and all.

Fellow expats, travelers, Francophiles, cheese connaisseurs — what about you? Is there anything about your adopted country, or a place you’ve visited, that you just can’t make peace with? Tell me everything.

À bientôt,

Valérie

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