En France

Or "Je parle Francais en Peu(en petite peu). Which means I speak French a little(a very little).

So if you have been wondering where I have been the last 10 days, yes, you are right I was with my wife and 2 daughters(ages 13 and 20) in France. And yes, I took two years of audio-lingual French in High School in 1964 and 1965, which means I can sort of speak a Parisian accent fairly well. But don't try to talk to me Parisian speed in French because I will have no idea of what you are saying. So, for me, trying to speak French in France, was at best embarrassing for me. What I found worked the best was if I tried to speak French a little and they tried to speak English a little we both were a lot happier. For when I tried to do everything in French it sometimes got weird.

I had heard a lot about "The Ugly American" but since this was my first time in France that is not really the problem. The problem actually is a little different than that. This is what I experienced from a lot of French people in Paris and Nice. Their apparent thoughts, "Well, you American I can see you trying to speak French but you have no idea of the correct pronunciation or the correct polite phrases that accompany the correct pronunciation, which after all is the whole polite enrapturing philosophy of France that seems to make all women want to faint in ecstasy from around the world when they reach Paris."
And this is accompanied by, "And yes, you have everything but you have no culture, you Americans, and we are embarrassed to want everything you have without giving up our wonderful culture that you Americans don't have."

This appears more to be what I experienced. It is less about the French having attitudes against Americans and more that they recognize that their culture is better than ours and that they have better continuity than we do.

In short, to the French, we Americans are rich hicks from the sticks, to be both admired for their wealth and pitied for their lack of culture. I think this expresses what I experienced in France.

But, if as an American you find you love Paris and France and what it all has meant to both European culture and to the world for thousands of years then both you and they will be happy together like a family.

And so even though I made some errors in my early communications, generally, I found most French people to be amazing and warm and interesting. In the end, people everywhere tend to love where they live and want to share what they love with others. And in regard to art, beauty, language, style, food, and culture the French are unparalleled in the world on this level.

If you want to be very American, British or German and see things only as in winning World Wars or battles then you miss the whole point of what it is to be French. For to be French is to be alive, to love, to have culture, to be artistic, to express oneself in interesting ways and not just to win wars and to make a whole lot of people die in the process, even though Napoleon did that too. No, France is culture. I have never seen a culture so well integrated in this particular way. They have continuity like other countries in Europe like England, Germany and Italy which is done in an unparalleled way there just because their cultures are so old and have gone through so many permutations that they have gotten many things right like conservation of resources.

For example, even though I'm not a nuclear energy advocate, still I see its uses as long as you don't have a meltdown or radiation accident. The high speed train(over 200 miles and hour) we rode from Paris to Nice Ville(from the center of France to the French Riviera on the Mediterranean).The world record holding French TGV train has a world record of about 357 miles per hour! This is all powered by Nuclear Energy generating electricity completely. So not one drop of oil or fuel other than nuclear is used in this whole trip for us or anyone else. Amazing!

Also, if you have ever driven on the freeway at 70 miles per hour, you know that you have to look about 50 to 100 yards away from you at the side of the vehicle if you want to be able to visually focus on anything as it goes by. Well, at 200 miles an hour this becomes a block or more away to be able to focus. Otherwise everything just becomes a blur and leads to vertigo unless you protect yourself by looking away at this speed. Also, the sound one hears while traveling on a high speed train is a lot like when you are riding in a hybrid car with the gas engine off and accompanied by a high whine like an electric motor sometimes makes. But there is no road noise like on a regular train with metal wheels. For the high speed train travels on air and on electrical repelling magnetic forces like when you take two magnets and put them together right they push each other away. This force and air is what the high speed train travels on and not wheels, though I believe there are reverse wheels only there to prevent the train falling off the tracks on corners but they are only there for stability I believe not for any weight load. The electromagnetics supply all the force to carry the actual weight load of the train itself.

If you want to know more about high speed trains go to wikipedia.org and type in "high speed rail".