Visit to France

Luc Brunet – 22 June 2023

After a recent stay in France, the first since 2019, I am decided to share my impressions about the country and the changes I have perceived. 

The first part of this letter is making an exception to the rule and is of a more personal nature than usual, with a nostalgic note for a country that I do not really recognize anymore.

The second part shall again be focused on economical and political aspects.

France, where are you?

Many people asked me over the past years if I was regretting France or longing for it, after now 30 years of permanent residence in Moscow. The last visit helped me to find a more complete response to that simple question. The response indeed depends of which France we talk about. There is an invisible factor in my relation with France – time.

The France I love and regret does not exist any more. This is the France of the 50’s to the 80’s, the France of the post-war boom.

I initially lived in Dijon and I am longing for the Dijon of the 60’s, not the present version of it. 

I lived on Louis Blanc street, not in the center but not far from it. I remember the old houses in that street, almost falling apart. 

We lived in a house built by Italian migrants, the Bonino family, themselves living in a house located a few hundred meters away. I still can see, although they died when I was a small kid, the old man and his wife, dressed in black, at the end of a life full of hard work. The wife of their son was the best friend of my aunt.

At that time, migrants integrated easily, and by the way, just deleting the last letter of their name, and you get the name Bonin, a common family name in the region.

I remember how one of our neighbor died in a few months of a cancer, and how I saw him getting yellow, then green, then an absence. He died in the room below another room where my mother died much earlier. 

This very house is by miracle still in place, like an eyewitness of those years…

A couple of house away was living my best school friend, Jean-Pierre. We spent hours discussing the world situation (already!), until his father bought him a motorbike and we could not longer talk on the way to school. But his mother was worried to see him on a motorbike, and bought him a car. Two months later he died with two friends in a car crash, right on my 18th birthday.

Where are they all? 

Where is the Cafe Glacier (now a bank), or the Cafe du Central, where we met every Saturday with a group of friends? Where is Nicolas, my student’s years best friend who left us forever too many years ago?

Even the then largest bookstore in the city closed a few years ago, replaced by a Burger King. Symbolic and difficult to digest.

In 1974, I remember myself helping the Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s presidential campaign with friends of UNI (right wing student group at that time). I did not know he would be the first president to sell national interests, and by far not the last one!

On the country side, where is the farm where I used to buy milk and butter, with its unique smell of milk, cow and cheese?

I then lived many years in Paris, that we also visited this year. The same applies to many places where I lived or worked or had frequent dinners:

Villa Duthy————–Avenue du Maine——-Avenue Philippe Auguste———Rue de Sevres——–

Rue de Lourmel————-Rue Barrault—————Le Palace et son restaurant Le Privilege———-

Le restaurant des Bains Douches——-Rue Nationale——-Rue Tournefort ——Villa de l’Astrolabe—-

Just a few memories

• Meeting with the crowd to celebrate Mitterrand’s election in 1981, not knowing (again!) that he had no power to change the course of the country towards globalization (assuming he had the intention to do so).
• Turning around my home rue Tournefort to park after work (free parking then!!), and park next to my neighbor Denise Glaser’s small car, a retired TV presenter in the 60’s, symbol for me of a “clever TV” where you could learn to think. 
• The weekly sneak-previews of films to be released at the Palace, often followed by a dinner at the Privilege restaurant, a place where you could sit next to Grace Jones, Louboutin or Pacadis. 

Illusions of political parties, TV education or trendy socialization. I do not even want to see those places again. Sometimes they do not exist anymore, sometimes they changed a lot, they changed too much, and they changed without me.

The France I love and regret does not exist any more. This may sound like the ritual complain of a guy getting old, and it is. Life goes one way, and there is no backwards switch.

France economy and society

The first impression after 4 years of absence is quite positive, with many places looking good, comfortable, well organized and beautiful. But if you scratch a bit the surface, the slow evolution downwards is clear.

The most shocking at first is the changes in prices. Almost everything became much more expensive after 4 years, petrol (no surprise), food, rentals, hotels etc. I do not talk about small increases that you do not really notice, but real increases by 10, sometimes 30%. All this is of course confirmed by statistics, to be sure I do not make it up.

The number of “visible” migrants also increased a lot, a feeling also confirmed by statistics.

Especially in Paris, the number of homeless is also on a clear rise, but what is shocking is not so much the number of them, but their physical/mental health. Everywhere, including tourist places like the Opera district, isolated homeless in total despair can be seen lying on the ground, hardly moving, or sometimes completely unstable and agitated. The fact that the Paris bourgeois look at them on the way to their beloved “brasserie de fruits de mer” without problems tells a lot about their nature.

Another change is the death of the small “Cafes”, where you could get a coffee and a croissant in the morning, then have a drink anytime in the day. This is the place where people met and talked together. They are gone, replaced by Starbucks in the center, by nothing in the periphery.

The country side was much more attractive and it is clear why many people in Paris move to the province, a move that was boosted by the on-line working trends developed during the Covid period.

However the country side has also a number of issues that did not exist 30 years ago, mostly due to the closing down of many services like post-office, banks, schools and medical support. Medical appointments, earlier decided next day or two with the local practitioner, need now be done several months in advance and like other services require the use of a car to travel. But cars are not good for the earth… and there starts the ecology song of the Green Khmers!

Anyway, my impression was quite mixed and I hope that the country shall find the strength and the resources to wake-up, recover it sovereignty and be proud again of its roots and traditions. It can evolve again in that new direction, but for me, it shall never be again the France that I knew.

But enough about the past! Let’s spend time on the present, it needs us!