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    #26
    Originally posted by EIM View Post

    Liverpool is a lot more friendly. Warmer.

    Aye, Liverpool and Glasgow both have that nosy slightly aggressive friendliness going on. I'd say a tourist is more likely to get into bother in either if they are coming across as standoffish or stuck up.

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      #27
      Not to be snobbish about it, but it is really difficult to judge the "friendliness" of a place without a significant command of the language.

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        #28
        Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
        Not to be snobbish about it, but it is really difficult to judge the "friendliness" of a place without a significant command of the language.
        Granted. But I wasn't meaning to suggest that Napoli and Marseille were unfriendly, just that Liverpool and Scousers have a certain... quality. Though again, I'll admit I'm a hell of a lot less familiar with Naples and Marseille than I am Liverpool.

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          #29
          I find that cities can feel unfriendly for reasons that have nothing to do with the people and more to do with the infrastructure, or lack thereof, and the climate.

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            #30
            I don't have a bucket list or any of that nonsense, but if I end up on my death bed without making it to Treize country for a solid three weekends of French domestic RL, I'll be disappointed. Mainly disappointed that I'd be about to die, but also disappointed at myself for not getting it done.

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              #31
              The sheer awfulness of the New York area airports can certainly put people off upon arrival.

              Including natives.

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                #32
                I won’t be rushing back to Marseilles (or Naples) once we can travel again, but I was just thinking earlier today I really fancy doing a little tour down to Annecy, Lyon and in between soon(ish).

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                  Not to be snobbish about it, but it is really difficult to judge the "friendliness" of a place without a significant command of the language.
                  ursus, by way of exception, is right here.

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                    #34
                    France would be great if it had pubs.

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                      #35
                      Mmm, before I knew any Arabic, the Sudanese were, almost without exception, extremely friendly.

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                        #36
                        Originally posted by Sporting View Post
                        Mmm, before I knew any Arabic, the Sudanese were, almost without exception, extremely friendly.
                        Vietnam and Bolivia were friendly too.

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                          #37
                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                          The sheer awfulness of the New York area airports can certainly put people off upon arrival.

                          Including natives.
                          My favorite Laguardia moment was walking through a food court and encountering a gigantic, utterly stereotypical multi-generational local Italian family eating pizza while having a completely incomprehensible high-volume running argument. Surely they were from the area, I couldn't figure out why they would have a giant meal in the airport if they were coming or going though. Maybe it was an art installation.

                          (Another "local flavor" airport experience was sitting in what my mother refers to as "the Nazi terminal" in the Twin Cities and overhearing a young man talking on his phone to his parents for 45 minutes, with the entire subject matter of the conversation being the turkey sandwich that he had just eaten.)

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                            #38
                            Originally posted by EIM View Post
                            Gert from the Well I love Arpenteur, and I composed my opening mind shite while wearing Armor Lux. Big up looking like a French factory worker/fisherman.
                            I have bought so much Armor Lux stuff over the last decade it's scary.

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                              #39
                              Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                              The sheer awfulness of the New York area airports can certainly put people off upon arrival.

                              Including natives.
                              I was in one of them yesterday. Fortunately I merely had to go from Gate 3 to Gate 5, which made it less hellish than normal.

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                                #40
                                One of the things that language proficiency offers is improved ascertainment of sincerity

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                                  #41
                                  Anyway, I fucking love merguez, but there’s a horrible tendency among up-market places to try and make them in the UK and US and they end up making them out of leaner meat which ruins 90% of the point which is that lovely, spicy, oily stuff seeping out all over your frites or baguette,

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                                    #42
                                    I've been Googling likely cafes and found a Lebanese gaff on Bold Street that does merguez - time to plan in a visit next month I think.

                                    Only visited Marseille for the day during Euro 2016, not sure it's somewhere I'd choose for a non-footballing visit. Wasn't over-fussed on the old town in Nice which I suspect might be similar in mood and character - I don't mind a bit of edge but I like to be able to wander round a place without looking over my shoulder too much.

                                    On the other hand, I don't think I'd ever get bored of visiting Lyon.

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                                      #43
                                      Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                      France would be great if it had pubs.
                                      God no.

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                                        #44
                                        Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                        Not to be snobbish about it, but it is really difficult to judge the "friendliness" of a place without a significant command of the language.
                                        I've been to quite a number of non-English speaking countries, and other parts of France, but never had the same problem as I often have had in Paris. Doesn't stop me loving the city, and the last time that we went the area we stayed in was incredibly friendly.

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                                          #45
                                          i would totally watch Emily in Marseille.

                                          i'm curious about how France is perceived in the cultural imagination, outwith l'Hexagone. Paris seems to have an almost fantastical lure for a certain type of American – Emily being the archetype. There's a great passage in Johny Pitts' travelogue Afropean where African-American visitors on a tour of Black Paris complain that they are being dragged to an African neighbourhood. They came to hang out with the ghosts of Langston Hughes and Josephine Baker. It feels like the corpse of la belle epoque hasn't been allowed its burial. In Britain, the past is safely older.

                                          The English perception of France is more complex and more warped, i think. France definitely feels less far away than it did when i was a kid, it's less held up as an inverted or distorted mirror whose purpose is to tell the English something – often falsely reassuring – about themselves. It has lost some of the mythical quality that it has for Americans and has acquired more of a flatly functional aspect: somewhere to go on a short break, quite like home but with boulangeries and ski slopes and Mickey Mouse. Even the waiters aren't as rude and monolingual as they used to be. At least the good old art of moaning has not been lost! More positively, there's a widespread appreciation for the regions of France and their diversity, and less focus on Paris, which i welcome.

                                          It looks like i'm going to have to vote for Macron again in 2022, perhaps even in the first round, because his Islamophobia is marginally less belligerent than the right-wing parties', and because he's the only figure on the left who doesn't support the Gilets Jaunes and Dr Raoult. i do not look forward to it.

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                                            #46
                                            That fascination and fervent belief in a fantasy version of your home country in general and Paris in particular goes back at least to Benjamin Franklin and is thus older than that Constitution so many treat as a totem. I think that the primary reason the fantasy has lasted longer is that it is still very much the case that a large majority of USians have never set foot in the country.

                                            Emily in Marseille would get me to subscribe to whatever it was on. We need the French (and younger) Jonathan Demme to direct.

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                                              #47
                                              The left in general (and not just that tiresome Gallowayesque Melenchon) still support the Gilet Jaunes? That's really depressing. Raoult sounds a real piece of work.

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                                                #48
                                                This is a lovely thread. One of the things I miss about living in England is the proximity of France. I love so much about it; Paris less so. Calais less so too, but we all know who used to occupy that.

                                                Despite our earliest holidays together being Provence/Cote D’Azur, I don’t think we ever went to Marseilles. Toulon briefly, and Nice. But we enjoyed Beziers, loved Montpellier and what we saw of Bordeaux and Macon. Excuse absences of assorted accents.

                                                God I’d love to be able to visit now.

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                                                  #49
                                                  I am surprised to hear Macron described as a figure on the left. I mean, I know this is a hobby horse of mine and I am an outsider looking in, but he's a free market liberal who is broadly a social liberal. He's on the liberal right, surely?

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
                                                    France would be great if it had pubs.
                                                    French beer is shite, mind. You don't expect much from Kronenbourg or those ten bottles of "Biere Blonde" you get in the supermarket, but even their attempts at brewing craft beer leave much to be desired. They taste as if someone has lightly swished some barley around in some water and that malt and hops are an optional extra they are yet to discover.

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