Ma Vie in France

In this post, I’d like to attempt a humble comparison between what I know about French culture and what I observed on a summer trip to Germany this summer (Munich in particular). grounds of the Schloss Nymphenburg Some of the highlights of our trip were a tour of the Munich city center, a visit to the Neuschwanstein castle and surrounding area, and a visit to the Dachau concentration camp. We also ate a lot of great food, and of course, drank a lot of beer. Although I realize we really ate at quite a few tourist spots, the food was always hearty and filling. We also had a Bavarian breakfast one morning, including sausage, pretzels and beer. For me, the simple goodness and heartiness of the food felt like the mentality around us, people were open, direct and generally friendly. In France, food is such a complex affair, still regulated by traditions that date back to Louis XIV. That’s one of the things I love about France, but I think it also reflects the mentality of the Frenc...

After the all the time I’ve spent in France, teaching French and studying French, I’ve become used to many things that surprised me in my earlier stages of study. Every once in a while, though, I’ll learn a piece of information about France that is totally new and catches me off guard. This week, I had one of these moments. In talking to university students, we were on  the subject of grandes écoles (already a strange concept to non-French citizens). I was asking students to name the different, most well-known grandes écoles. These are our equivalent to Ivy League schools. They listed the names quickly and briefly, using acronyms and single words because the names are so common and obvious to them. There is one school out of this group that really sticks out: Polytechnique, also just called X (which I also learned this week, hence the clever title of this post). Not only is it, from what I understand, the institution for higher education relating to the sciences, but...