David Jaggard
Strikes in France: Another Day, Another Delay
They’re Just Trying to Get to Work!
Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Paris Update on February 10, 2016, but seems even more pertinent today after the latest round of transit strikes. All right, all you youngsters out there, gather ’round and listen: when I was … Read More
The Good Old Days in Paris — Or Were They?
It Depends on What the Definition of “Good” Is
My wife Nancy used to be close friends with an American woman who had lived in Paris in the late 1940s and early ’50s. One day they were talking about what the city was like back then, and the older … Read More
French Wine Tasting: How to Be (or Sound Like) a Wine Expert (or Snob)
Lesson 1: Left, Good. Right, Bad.
For my most recent birthday, a friend gave me a bottle of a Pauillac grand cru classé from 1986. If you don’t have a friend like that, you should get one. It’s not the kind of wine that I drink … Read More
French Bashing Again: The Wolf Is at the Porte (de Clignancourt)!
Stroll for Your Lives
As though we didn’t have enough problems in Paris already, what with facing a cold snap, eyeing a presidential election in May and stomaching a surge in the rat population, now we have wolves roaming the streets. Or at least … Read More
Weird English Shop Signs Part 18, Special Guest City: Rome
The Good, the Bad and the Incomprehensible
I hate to say it, but if Paris and Rome were pitted against each other in an all-out, go-for-the-jugular cultural history smackdown, Rome would win. It’s true that Paris has the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, Notre Dame, 1.5 godzillion other … Read More
Christmas in France: The Spirit Gets Lost in Translation
No Country for Gold Diggers
Like all people of any nationality, the French are associated with a number of stereotypes based more on assumptions than facts. The natives of my adopted country are supposedly great lovers and terrible soldiers, well dressed and ill mannered, with … Read More
Extreme Sports in France: Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Beautiful Video
It’s a Matter of Perception...
Paris has long been a magnet for dreamers of all kinds: poets, painters, composers, philosophers, wisenheimers… Oh — and people who are intent on killing themselves in the dumbest but most mediagenic way possible. I was reminded of the last-named … Read More
The U.S. Election: A Clear-headed Assessment (Isn’t As Much Fun As Weird English Shop Signs)
This Pretty Much Sums It Up
As I write this, there is an elephant in the room. And a donkey. And an ass. Like so many people, by mid-October I had grown weary of all the scandal-mongering, vicious accusations, desperate rationalizing, empty promises, name-calling and lies. … Read More
Fighting Waste in France: I Do My Bit to Denounce the Squandering of Resources
Is There a Message Here?
Due to humankind’s profligate use of natural resources, the world now teeters on the brink of a planet-wide disaster with no precedent in all of history. Unless of course you count when my first girlfriend in junior high dumped me. … Read More
France’s Reputation in the World: The C’est Ironique Paris Visitors’ Satisfaction Survey
Otherwise, Kim, How Was Your Trip?
Like everything else in the universe, the Internet has its advantages and disadvantages. Its main advantage, of course, is that it vastly facilitates communication, making it easy for me to harass women I barely know with “sext” messages. Oops — … Read More