How I Reconsidered My View of Parisians

---

Archive note: I wrote this in 2010 about experiences in 2005 and a later three-day return to Paris. I have removed the insults and broad claims I used about Parisians. The useful part of the story is how changing my own expectations changed the interactions I noticed.

It is easier to spot a closed mind in someone else than in ourselves. We may describe our own position as sceptical or settled without examining the assumptions underneath it.

The description closed minded is one we tend to reserve for someone else.

My example is personal. Despite meeting people from many cultures, I carried a sweeping negative belief about Parisians for years.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

9 months in Paris

Back in 2005, I was ready to take on French for the first time, so since I prefer cities it just seemed logical to move to Paris to do this.

I had been travelling for only a year and a half. I arrived with romantic expectations of meeting my own Amélie Poulain, meeting new people every day in la ville lumière, and speaking fluent French within months.

I was disappointed and lonely. Several interactions felt dismissive to me, and after nine months I turned those experiences into a judgement about a whole city. That was the same kind of stereotyping I disliked when people reacted to an Irish person who doesn't drink.

I remember attempts to speak French that were met with grimaces rather than encouragement. I longed to hear even pas mal, “not bad”, from a Parisian.

I stayed for nine months and began speaking French. Things felt easier after I moved to Toulouse and later Quebec. At the time, I blamed Parisians for how hard the early stage had felt instead of examining the mix of expectations, social isolation and learning choices involved.

My newfound devotion to not speaking English had backfired (luckily that's the only place it's ever happened) because it basically meant that I had little options to socialise at all; there were plenty of English speakers around, but I was committed to speaking French no matter what. (Of course, there were actually plenty of options right under my nose; I should have just hung out with other learners, but I was still a long way off improving my learning and socialising methods back then). Since I hadn't really figured out yet how to practise a language away from its home country, I was also quickly losing my Spanish and Italian.

After work, I tended to just retreat back home and watch TV or study, which wasn't helping much. My long-term goal to be a polyglot was seeming more and more impossible and the experience was a lonely and frustrating time for me. Paris is not a time I look back on nostalgically.

5 years of stubbornness

This is where my closed-mindedness came in. I treated nine months of selective memories as proof about Paris and repeated my judgement to anyone who would listen.

Of course, people would argue. Plenty of people love Paris and would tell me how nice Parisians were. This made no difference to my convictions.

I found a way to dismiss every counterexample. I made a sexist assumption about women who reported kind treatment, discounted language-programme students and told short-term visitors they had not stayed long enough to see the “real” city. None of that tested my belief fairly.

I dismissed contrary evidence and welcomed any story that confirmed my view. I could recognise that pattern in other people but not in myself.

This opinion may have continued with me if it wasn't for this blog and a general quest to try to rid my life of unnecessary negativity.

Writing publicly about my missions and unconventional language methods led to disagreements. Those arguments also gave me chances to notice how strongly people, including me, protect long-held beliefs.

A belief held for years can become part of how we explain the world. In my case, defending a crude judgement about Parisians kept me from revisiting the evidence.

Starting with a clean slate and opening your mind

Since my French has gradually and continually improved despite not being in France/Quebec any more, especially through hosting Couchsurfers, I've had the pleasure to meet some really nice Parisians. I had continued to mark them as the exceptions, since as travellers they were “bound to be” more open minded.

But in Bangkok, I realised that I had been carrying this weight for too long. It was time to get over myself and have an open mind about my opinion even if I “knew” it was true. I resolved to spend 3 days in Paris with the mission to leave with a positive impression of Parisians.

Within hours, I had a very different interaction.

I challenged my expectations instead of waiting for strangers to disprove them. One hotel interaction made the shift concrete.

I had just arrived from a 13 hour flight from Bangkok at 6am with no sleep. Usually I tend to sleep at Couchsurfers' houses, but I wanted to have my own space this time and to just chill out by myself for a few days before going home. So I had booked the absolute cheapest hotel I could find (€35/night for an unimpressive roof over your head; far from the luxury I was getting in Thailand), but I was pleased to see when reserving that it also came with in-room wifi.

So when I got there, I really just wanted to check my e-mails and then collapse. After checking in, I asked for the wifi password and the receptionist said that the wifi is down, has been for weeks and won't be repaired until the end of the month. I needed to check work e-mails, I didn't need this problem in my exhausted state; I said that it's false advertising and he shrugged and said (in French) that frankly, it wasn't his problem.

Then I recognised a pattern from my earlier nine months. I had often entered interactions ready for a fight and judged people against the service norms I expected from Ireland and other places.

Look at it from their perspective

I was not in Ireland, Brazil or Thailand. I had also spent more time with French friends outside France and had begun to see assumptions I had missed during my first stay.

I still had much to learn about French culture. The important point was not a new rule about French workers; it was that my assumptions about service and politeness were not universal. I had applied them to workers and potential friends without asking what else might explain an interaction.

My isolated nine months were not evidence of a single fault, theirs or mine. My expectations and choices were part of the picture, as were the ordinary difficulties of settling into a city and learning a language.

This time I changed the subject and tried to relate to the receptionist. I told him about working at a youth hostel in Rome and being blamed for things outside my control. We connected over that experience.

He became friendlier and we chatted for a few minutes. He then gave me a staff Wi-Fi password. One exchange could not prove how things worked across Paris, but it showed how my approach could change the interaction.

After a rest, I had several pleasant conversations during the rest of the stay. Changing my filter helped me notice evidence that my old story had excluded.

On my last morning, I chatted with a man at a boulangerie. Before I left, he congratulated me on my French. I had received compliments elsewhere, but this one mattered because it contradicted the story I had carried from my first stay.

So, what are you close-minded about?

The point is not to explain away every negative experience. It is to ask whether a belief about a whole group is supported by the evidence, and whether you are giving counterexamples a fair hearing.

I had been wrong to turn painful interactions into a verdict on Parisians. Admitting that did not erase the difficult months, but it stopped those months from defining every new person I met.