If you live in a village in France, you have already realized that things happen there that you never see in big cities. Conversely, we often witness snobbish, even completely stupid behavior when we live in the city. We all live in the country of the baguette, but we really don’t have the same daily life and that’s why we recognize Parisians from afar when they’re on vacation.
1. Say hello when entering a supermarket
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In the countryside or in a small town, people say hello to other customers when they enter a store and I think that’s the least you can do. Sometimes they even say hello to all the employees in the supermarket. If you do that in a big city, people will look at you weirdly.
2. Not locking your car
It’s a luxury in the countryside to be able to park without locking your car, even if it’s to buy bread or drop off your kid at school. For people who have always lived in the city, it seems completely unconscious.
3. Type the chat at the tobacco manager-PMU
When you live in a village or a small town, you often see people discussing the rain and the good weather with Michel from PMU. When we pass the license in the countryside, the instructor even allows himself to do that while you are waiting in the car and everyone finds it normal. In town, it’s already not bad if the tobacconist says hello to you.
4. Know all your neighbors
In an excellent series of TF1, we often hear the phrase “Do you really know your neighbors? and when you live in the city, the answer is “No, still happy”. People who live in a house know their neighbors and very often they get annoyed. They fight over a parking space, they call the cops when a teenager is having a party and they kindly say hello in the street with a forced smile.
5. Kiss the mayor
If there is one thing that I find difficult to understand in the villages, it is this admiration that the inhabitants have for the mayor. Sometimes the mayor walks into a café and says hello to all the customers by shaking their hands or even giving them a kiss. I imagine Hidalgo’s face in Paris if people tried to kiss him in the street.
6. Chat in the middle of the supermarket aisles
In big cities, people are always in a hurry. This is the case in the metro, on the street and even in supermarkets. So inevitably, if someone blocks the beam, he will be entitled to a “PARDON!” exasperated with a sigh of annoyance. In small towns, people are always happy to meet old acquaintances on the shelves and chat for 10 minutes over yogurts. “Say hello Timothée, he’s a childhood friend of dad! »
7. Recognize parked cars
There are people who recognize their buddies’ cars when they are parked in the street and say to themselves “Oh hey, it’s Stéphane’s Laguna! “. When they live in small towns, they are people with a good sense of observation. When they live in big cities, they’re crazy people who stalk their buddies all day.
8. Learn gossip about a butcher or a schoolteacher
Imagine for a second living in Marseille or Lyon, entering a random shop and hearing a customer say “You don’t know the last one? The son of the baker on the street next door is going to divorce”. It would be weird, we agree. So why is it normal to hear this kind of gossip in small towns? No, Monique, I don’t want to know the private lives of people I barely know.
9. Have colleagues who know your family well
The advantage of living in a big city is to be able to easily separate your professional life from your personal life. Your family and friends don’t know your co-workers and vice versa, that’s pretty logical. In a small town, it’s quite the opposite: your employer asks you about your parents, your colleague is dating your best friend and everyone knew before you when your brother was dumped.
10. Say “Oh yeah I see who it is, I already slept with him”
If one of your friends answers you that while you show them a photo of someone you met on Tinder, it means that you necessarily live in a very small town. Otherwise, it’s really, really weird.
11. Spend the day in a skatepark without skating
When you live in a small town and you are 14 years old in the 90s-2000s, there is not much to do after school. So, like any self-respecting rebellious teenager, we’re going to hang out at the skatepark with our friends because it’s the only slightly cool place to go. In big cities, a skatepark is a place taken over by riders and you better get out quickly if you’re only there to get in the way.
12. Celebrate the New Year in a party hall rented for the occasion
The evening in the village hall is a typical event of country life. When you think about it, it’s strange because the smaller the town, the bigger the houses. Why rent a room when you can have a nice evening at home?
13. Get stuck behind a tractor on the road for 20 minutes
If you get stuck on a country road behind a tractor, you take your troubles patiently waiting for a broken line. If you get stuck on the Champs Elysées behind a tractor, maybe it’s time to call the cops.
14. Buying a house before age 25
In France, the pace of life is very very different depending on where you live. Often, young people from small towns marry very young, have children very young, take out credit very young and buy a house and two cars. In big cities, young people of the same age often live in 25m2, do a second license and hesitate to adopt a cat.
15. Crossing dogs that roam free
Parisians on vacation are often surprised to see dogs roaming free in small countryside or mountain villages. In fact, they often live nearby and go about their dog business.
16. Offer food that you have too much at home
Have you ever gone to see neighbors or friends and said, “Hey, I brought you some apples / gratin / tiramisu because I overdid it? “. Yes ? It’s probably because you live in a small town. In big cities, it’s rare to be offered food, we prefer to pay super expensive for take-out meals.
17. Know where everyone lives and how to get there without knowing the address
When I lived in a very small town, I knew where all my friends lived and I could go there by car or by bicycle without any problem, but I would have been unable to give their address. Since I’ve been living in Paris, it’s the opposite. I know people’s addresses and I check maps for the best route every time I go.
18. A bar where half the customers are 16 and the other half are 65
In large cities, there are many a lot of choice in terms of bars. Do you want a bobo bar? A cheap student bar? A PMU bar? A karaoke bar? A dance bar? There is everything you need. In small towns, people go to the local bar where the entire population aged 7 to 77 meets three times a week.
19. Leaving home at 18
When you grew up in the countryside and you want to study or find work, you don’t really have a choice: you have to leave. On the contrary, people who grow up in the city very often stay with their parents until the end of their studies. And they wait until they want to go on a weekend in the countryside to pass their license.
20. Talk to homeless people on the street
It doesn’t happen often in big cities unfortunately… (yes it denounces)