Paris Syndrome

[JoeRobertson]

I have visited Paris for 3 times at last 10 months... I love the City, and want to return here again and again.

 

[Coriolan]

It's paradise compared to London IMO.

All tastes are in nature. I don't really like Paris, but love London.

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[Alcuin]

All tastes are in nature. I don't really like Paris, but love London

London has lots of great museums and galleries and historical sites of interest, but the people there seem much more distant from that heritage than the Parisians and their equivalents

 

[Coriolan]

London has lots of great museums and galleries and historical sites of interest, but the people there seem much more distant from that heritage than the Parisians and their equivalents

I think that's just an impression. How can you truly assess how 10 million people feel about their heritage or museums? Anyway why that matter to you personally? I feel that people in London are more friendly, more polite and more open to foreigners than Parisians. London appears better organised too.

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[Alcuin]

I think that's just an impression. How can you truly assess how 10 million people feel about their heritage or museums? Anyway why that matter to you personally? I feel that people in London are more friendly, more polite and more open to foreigners than Parisians. London appears better organised too

I base it on my interaction with the local people, specifically their knowledge of the local area and its history. People in Paris, Munich and Seville seem far more interested in, and knowledgeable about, their city and its history than Londoners do.

 

[RodneyMoore]

I am very sorry because of the fire at Notre Dame de Paris. Very cult place for Paris.

 

[[email protected]]

I vote New York City and its inhabitants as the rudest, at least compared with the rest of the US. I've never had problems with Parisians, but perhaps my expectations were low.

As Maciamo says, the Japanese are very polite, but they're very remote. I lived in Japan for several years and was never able to get close to any of them, though they were always helpful and smiling.

 

[Jovialis]

I vote New York City and its inhabitants as the rudest, at least compared with the rest of the US. I've never had problems with Parisians, but perhaps my expectations were low.

As Maciamo says, the Japanese are very polite, but they're very remote. I lived in Japan for several years and was never able to get close to any of them, though they were always helpful and smiling.

Chicago is probably worse, if you consider getting shot an act of rudeness.

At any rate, most NYC inhabitants are from somewhere else.

 

[Jovialis]

My grandfather went to Japan in the 1950s, and he said it was his favorite country he had visited. He also said India was the worse country he had been to, because it was unclean.

He was a merchant marine and sea captain that traveled all over the world.

 

[Angela]

Chicago is probably worse, if you consider getting shot an act of rudeness.

At any rate, most NYC inhabitants are from somewhere else.

I've lived with New Yorkers (and I include in that Long Islanders whose families moved out from Brooklyn and Queens, and not the yuppies in Manhattan who just came to get rich and famous) for a couple of decades now, and I don't know if rude is precisely the correct word; maybe direct, no-nonsense, and honest?

In a pinch, when there's a real emergency, they've always been there for me, black-outs, hurricanes, especially 9/11.

They may be less polite than southerners, but they're more genuine, and they're the most welcoming people in the world. The week after we moved in people started coming by the house with cakes or wine, and then the "Welcome Wagon" arrived as an introduction to the "Newcomers Club". They had pamphlets and coupons for any product or service you needed, and an invitation to start coming to parties. Within a year we were totally integrated, not just with newcomers, but also with families who were second and third generation here.

I know people who've been transferred to London who don't socialize with anyone outside of expats or work associates, and some of them have been there for years. As someone else mentioned, Japan is even worse.

Much as Italians are friendly to strangers, in my experience it's not all that easy to become completely integrated there either. It's different for me because I have family and friends I've made through them, but otherwise it can be tough. Outside of family, people have a friendship circle dating back to elementary school. It can be hard to attain that kind of intimacy as a newcomer.

As for vacations, there are whole parts of the world where I'd never go. Heck, we used to go to the Caribbean for winter vacations, and there are some places I'd never revisit. Bermuda is great, and so was Barbados, but in most of the others if you travel outside a certain proscribed area the poverty and dilapidation is heartbreaking. Mexico is much the same, and every time I've been there, I've gotten intestinal problems. They should bottle that water and use it as a weapon. I would never go to China, either. My friends went there and said once you leave Hong Kong and Shanghai the hygiene is non-existent and the food terrible. They'd been warned to bring a suitcase full of food and water for brushing your teeth and were glad of it.

Me being me I'd be bound to pick up something gross, so no thank-you.

 

[pxxlsisk]

This is in all countries, they talk about the kindness of the people, and then when you arrive you see a completely different picture.

 

[Angela]

I don't think that's true. I generally find that the people are friendly in the places where I go for vacations, but then I don't go to places where I know or have heard that
the people will be more rude or impolite or just colder in nature.

The one exception is Paris. I'm certainly aware of its reputation but I go there anyway. The first time was on a trip my husband had "won" through business. He had enough "points" for four people, so we took my parents. We stayed in Monte Carlo for a week but only really spent a day there, spending the rest of the time in the countryside and cities and villages of Provence. We adored it. It was gorgeous, historic, the food was divine, and the people were just like Ligurians. My father had worked there and still knew where to go. He even looked up people for whom he used to work.

We then spent a week in Paris. Despite all we had heard, and my husband's political prejudices as an American, we loved it. Everyone was incredibly nice to us. It's one of the best memories of my life and of my parents. At the time I thought it might have something to do with the fact that we were traveling with my parents. Many people commented on how nice it was to see a loving family group traveling together. Perhaps partly it was also because although I spoke English to my husband, they heard me and my parents talking to one another in Italian, and my father spoke French and did a lot of the translating, and my French at the time was pretty good as well. Perhaps also it had something to do with my mother; she always put out this aura of gentleness and kindness that drew people to her no matter where she was.

The supposedly abysmally rude Parisian waiters would bring her whole baskets of extra Croissants with chocolate because she loved them, and the Chef at one restaurant personally filled my father's plate of eels three times! I think it was that whole-hearted and open, obvious, delight in everything we saw, ate, and drank, that most changed the interactions. I got annual postcards for years from the proprietor of a regional Auvergne restaurant there. We ate there three nights because we loved it so much, and the third night the owner made us an off the menu three course meal of real, original recipes.

I've been back three times since, each time for a week, and always with the wife of one of my husband's best clients, who spoke excellent French and knew more about Paris than the Parisians, and each time we had our museum visits and restaurants and tickets for theater and music all arranged. Again, everyone was very civil, if not always kind, except sometimes on the streets.

So, maybe speaking French, and clearly showing how much you love it has something to do with it, and maybe there's a bit of luck involved too.

 

[Yetos]

Tourism is a blind market,

rude is nothing compare to danger,

so when you go for tourism,
only you ask is to pass safe your time,

think that some people that live there, maybe 100 times per day maybe will be asked, '' Where is Eifel tower? how I go there?''