A Dubliner returning to France after 15 years away: ‘Here are some of the many changes I noticed’

I left France in 2006 after 12 years living there and moved back towards the end of the Covid-19 restrictions. Quite a few things changed in the 15 years I was away.
Initially slow to adopt the internet – after all, they already had Minitel (an interactive videotex online service accessible through telephone lines) – France has caught up. And how. In 2006 no one owned a smartphone. “Social media” wasn’t in the dictionary. You couldn’t email a government department but you could send a fax. Supermarket prices were still displayed in francs as well as euro.
In the France I left, people often only spoke French. Bilinguals were mostly products of immigration. In the late 1990s, when France introduced English in primary schools, I was one of the native speakers recruited. The generation I taught are in their 20s and 30s now and have a reasonable level of English.
The France where asking directions in English would elicit blank looks no longer exists.
Now there is more English in advertising, brand names, headlines, even everyday speech. The French talk about the “self”, but not in the existential sense. Instead, it means a canteen, deriving from “self-service”.
I don’t like to side with ideologues who talk about linguistic purity. Language is meant to adapt and evolve. But I flinch when I hear people mention “un burnout” or “des news qui donnent le smile” (news that makes you smile). Clearly, I have become middle-aged in the years I have been away.
English isn’t the only language to introduce new words. France counts between three and four million Arabic speakers. “Kif”, meaning to like, in the French context, is just one of many words of Arabic origin that have gone mainstream.
The broader Islamosphere increasingly influences how some of the younger generation choose to dress. It used to be relatively rare to see a young woman wear a headscarf, even less the long flowing abaya. Now the abaya is so commonplace that recently a former education minister made it his personal crusade to ban girls from wearing it to school.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’m of the opinion that a woman should dress, or undress, as she pleases. France’s beaches used to be de facto topless zones. This is no longer the case, especially for young people. I suspect social media and cameras being everywhere have had a chilling effect.
The France I left had smoky bars. Now the streets are filled with cloying bubblegum clouds billowing from countless disposable vapes.
[ Vaping: What are the Irish Government’s planned restrictions and will they succeed?Opens in new window ]
It is still de rigueur to say bonjour, but Covid has removed some of the intimacy of la bise – the greeting kiss – or the formal handshake, both now often replaced by a casual fist bump.
Bicycle lanes are much more common. Some even protect cyclists with more than just paint. Public transport has improved too, but the rail service is more costly than I remember and in need of rejuvenation.
Service, traditionally never a strong point in France, has vastly improved. Even my inevitable dealings with French bureaucracy, while never simple, have been efficient and almost pleasant. I had some minor surgery earlier this year. Despite complaints that the medical system is a shadow of its former self (not the canteen kind of self) the standards are still excellent.
While France’s housing crisis is nowhere near as severe as Ireland’s, it is still very real. Compared to 2006, people find it harder to make ends meet. Prices keep increasing, but wages don’t, or when they do, they don’t match inflation. But the rich are most definitely getting richer. France had 14 billionaires in 2006. Today there are 147.
Supermarkets offer more variety these days. I still order my tea bags from Ireland, but if I ran out I would no longer go tealess. It used to be difficult to buy a kettle. Not now. It is also much easier to find fresh milk, an improvement on the dreaded UHT milk that was often the only option.
[ Irish consumers paying 42% more for goods and services than EU counterpartsOpens in new window ]
I appreciate good fresh bread from the local boulangerie as much as the next person, but sometimes I just want a slice of toast. Sliced bread used to be a rarity that boasted all the flavour and texture of sawdust. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.
In 2006, the average French adult drank 50 litres of wine a year. Today that figure is barely 24 litres, with almost half of that consumed by people over the age of 55.
Vegetarianism, while still far from mainstream, is – for the most part – no longer viewed as an irredeemable form of social deviancy.
Moving back and readapting to a changed and changing France has been a somewhat disconcerting but ultimately positive experience. I have lived here long enough to know that France is not perfect, but for the moment I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather live.