Hello and welcome to We Live In A Society
today I'll be talking about the cultural
differences between France and Australia
from the perspective of an Australian
who's lived in France now for
just over two years. So one of the
biggest cultural differences
is food and France boasts like a
rich gastronomic tradition and is
internationally recognized for
food being a way of life, but since I
arrived I've really struggled with food
I miss food so much and I pretty much
eat now just to stay alive than for the pleasure of it um and I think
my reaction to first trying snails
um kind of sums up my food experience
here in France and I will insert that
that clip in here now
You can do it just eat it you got this
it's an acquired taste
it's really chewy
I really don't know how to describe the flavour (laughing,  describe it)
Is it garlic-y
Yes its garlic-y and cheesy and parsley-y
laughing
..and it tastes a little like dirt, a bit of dirt flavour
How prominent is the dirt flavour?
It's actually quiet prominent
So when I first arrived in France I was
looking really
forward to trying all the new foods and
the local dishes of all the little towns
you know just like I do when I visit any
other country
but i've just been really disappointed
since arriving in France I think there's
a bit of a difference being a tourist and and just traveling
around the country for a month or two
and
you know experiencing their local foods
compared to living here
long term and not just being able to get
the variety and the freshness of foods
that you're used to it is a real struggle.
So one thing I really love here is the baguettes um they're quite
delicious I've already eaten this one there's some
remnant in the packet yeah the baguettes are really good
they're crunchy delicious baguette-y
goodness they're really
really delicious and I really love the
bread here. Um one thing is though they
don't use preservatives in the bread um so
you have to pretty much eat it on the
day you you buy it if you leave it
overnight and actually one of the one of
the cultural um
things they do here is they'll have
bread with their dinner
but and then they'll have like a bread
box and they'll put their remnant
baguettes in there and they just go, in the
morning it's just hard as shit like it's
a rock you can't eat it but what they do
is they for breakfast here um they have
baguette dipped in coffee or or a hot
chocolate and so they'll sit there
with their bowl of coffee and yes bowl
of coffee here they don't drink coffee
from  a cup and I was quite surprised the first time
only for breakfast though
all other times they drink out of a cup
but for breakfast coffee or hot
chocolate must be consumed in bowl form
and they did their their baguette in
there and eat it and then they drink
their bowl of coffee
um bizarre tradition um
but yeah baguette's awesome and I felt
as if my transition to becoming like
French was complete when i like you know walk home
or like cycle home with a baguette in my
in the basket of my bike
or like you know with a baguette tucked
under my arm walking home
and generally it's um tradition that you
you break the top of the baguette off
and you eat it before you get home
this is done all the time this you see
people walking around with the tops of
their baguettes missing
and it's actually on the subway and my
partner Josh he
a little boy just you know he was six so
I think old enough to know better
just came up to Josh broke the end of
his baguette off and started eating it
and like the parents are just you know
laughing and and
muttering in French and yeah I just I
just
yeah this was before the whole um uh
COVID apocalypse um
it's like last year but yeah it's just
it's just bizarre
So one other one other kind of food I
really love here in France
I like the baked goods so I don't really
tend to eat
cakes or biscuits or anything like that
and prior to coming to France I actually
had like an intolerance for egg I wouldn't go into anaphylaxis or
anything but like it just gave me
digestive distress for like
up to eight hours after the consumption
of an egg it must have been the hormones
or the antibiotics or something
that they give the chickens because here
in France I haven't had that problem and
I live
lived here for two years before trying
anything, any of the bakery goods because
I was you know they obviously had egg in them
it was only when I accidentally had
something with egg in it and realized I
didn't react and then you know I
actually ate
an egg, like an omelet, and I was
completely fine so now i've been able to
try all the delicious bakery goods and
they're amazing i'm just going to get
this box now and just show you some of
the delicacies that are on offer here in
France
everything's melting together it's quite
hot here this is a snickers
tartlet as you can see and it is the
most delicious thing
inside is just full of gooey caramel
peanut goodness
and it's like fancy very fancy
this is like a thong um
it's it's white chocolate and then it's
got like a custard layer and a fruit
layer and a biscuit layer and just look
at the amount of detail that goes into
that, it is absolutely delicious
of course French is well known for its
eclairs
this is a nutella eclair again
absolutely delicious
so this may have been a poor choice
everything's melting and falling apart
but look at this I don't even know what this
is but it's some chocolate biscuit
crumbly goodness and they're just so so
pretty and so much detail goes into the
bakery items I just they're so good
I can see this falling down
everywhere but this is like a little
cheesecake fruit concoction delicious
So another thing I was really looking
forward to trying when I came to France
was cheese I love cheese and I was
looking forward to coming here just
sitting on the couch in my underwear
eating a
giant block of cheese and yes I equate
eating a giant block of cheese in my
underwear to some sort of french
paradise
but I was really looking forward to this
um unfortunately
um I thought I liked cheese but the
cheeses here are just they're so strong
and a lot of the time um yeah I just the smell I just I can't I
can't abide the smell
um um but they have all different kinds
of cheese they have like all the soft
cheeses like your brie and your camembert
which I really love and then all
different kinds of
of hard cheese with like one I
particularly like i have no idea what it
what it's called but it's um
it's got like an ash ash coat and it's
just it's so good
um um also
of note that um the pasteurisation
process was actually invented in France
by a frenchman um
Louis Pasteur in uh 1865.
and so here in France the french eat
cheese like they would an apple they
just take this giant hunk of brie
and just eat it like it's an apple like
I have to at least severely dilute it on like crackers
and crackers aren't really a thing
here in France you can't really get
crackers so you have usually cheese on bread so I
have to like just have the tiny thinnest
layer of like cheese on my bread but
here they just sit there and eat like an
apple
like giant hunks of it and yeah there's
no way I could do that here
and so another thing i've learned
when coming to France
is that each course of a meal
has to be consumed in a particular order
um you must respect the order as they
say here
um or otherwise they get really
uncomfortable and
really horrified and so you know when I
go for lunch here so once just you know
in Australia you might grab a sandwich and a drink
not in France, it's a five-course two-hour affair
every day, every day!  I cannot eat that
amount of food
and even when I ask for smaller portions
and so normally
you know you have your cheese and your
bread and then you'll have your entree
and your main and then you'll have a dessert and then
you usually have some fruit and so
I would just eat the cheese and the
bread first because that's
my favorite thing I will eat that would
eat that first and then
you know eat a bit of my main but then
go to the desserts and the fruits and
then go back to the
main meal but just the look of horror on
like my co-workers face i've just i've
stopped doing it and i've had to respect
the order because they just they can't
they can't cope with eating things in a
different order it's just
yeah i don't understand it
