Être porteur d'espoir

Être porteur d'espoir - To bring hope

I read an article in HuffPoFr about the draw between England and France in the Euros and came across this phrase. I would probably have said porter d'espoir so it's nice to learn the real way of saying it!

The first paragraph of the article:

EURO 2012 - Les Bleus, même s'ils n'ont pas gagné contre l'Angleterre pour leur entrée dans l'Euro (1-1), ont livré un match plutôt solide et porteur d'espoir pour la suite de la compétition. Durant la rencontre, c'est Samir Nasri qui a égalisé côté tricolore d'une superbe frappe à la 39e minute

This blog: moving forward

I've now been back in the UK for nearly month and have been deciding what to make of this blog. I've figured that I will continue to update this blog, but with French related activity - extending to random vocabulary that I've learnt (and like), images of newspapers/magazines, things that have struck me from reading them etc.

Essentially, these are my thoughts and notes - if this sounds like something you might be interested in, you can subscribe to receive emails every time the blog is updated on the right-hand side of the page.

What's the cheapest way to get home?

From Le Mans, there are a number of ways to get to London: I can drive; I can fly; and I can take the train, The first is out of the question since I don’t drive in France and neither do most language assistants. Many assistants will prefer to use the second option, to fly, as it appears to be cheaper. After all, an Easyjet ticket can have a base price of €35 (and rises to about €45 after the additional card fees, discounting an extra €10 if you buy luggage space in advance).

Yet the train journey to one of the nearest cities with an airport (and then the extra journey) will cost at least €30 if you’re lucky, leaving you paying a minimum of €75 to travel back to England. We’re still missing one more factor though, as the airports that Easyjet fly from are generally in random locations, leading to extra costs in petrol. For example, I would fly to Luton and for my father to drive to the airport, and then back again, would probably cost him a minimum of €25. Total cost by flight: €100.

While the train in France is usually exorbitantly expensive, if you have a look on the SNCF website about a month in advance, you can sometimes find pretty impressive deals. To give you an example, for my return trip to England, I found an offer that will cost me €55 to travel from Le Mans to London St. Pancras (which also allows me to carry as much luggage as I can hold). Then we add on the €5 it’ll cost me on the London Underground to get home. Total cost by train: €60.

Warning about taking the train to Charles de Gaulle

If you’re travelling from north-western France, it is quite likely that you may wish to fly from Charles de Gaulle at some point during your stay (either to fly back home or to commence new adventures) as Easyjet often have cheap flights.

Yet if you are flying from the Nantes direction towards Lille (via CDG), take caution!  The journey is rather odd and at the Le Mans station, two trains (coming from different directions) will join, leading to a rather irritating delay – especially as the second train generally arrives five minutes after the trains should have left! With this in mind, you will almost always arrive at the airport 20-25 minutes late. Considering check-in closes 35 minutes before the departure on an Easyjet flight, it is easy to imagine that one hour before you flight would give you enough time to check in. Do not make that mistake, just take the earlier train and read your Kindle while you wait.

Has the baker asked if you want worries with your baguette?

After you’ve ordered something from a bakery or butcher, you’ll often be asked: “Et avec ceci” i.e. Do you want anything else? The reason I’m writing this post is because I initially had a lot of trouble with this question, with just trying to figure out what they were saying. Avec soucis? With worries?  The safe bet seemed: Non, merci. I did not want worries with my food…

So the best way of answering? Ca sera tout, merci. That’ll be all thanks. You’ll often have very irritating shopkeepers who’ll repeat that back to you to confirm that you don’t want anything extra (for a second time). You learn to live with it (or, like me, you’ll find a better baker).

France 2012: The road to Élysée

With the French Presidential elections' first round tomorrow, I thought it might be handy for those interested in French politics to have a breakdown of what's happened so far. It's a pretty detailed piece - and I believe my first Feature article for The Student Journals - but that's because these elections, while perhaps a little dull, could have great significance to Europe.

If, as polls suggest, François Hollande does indeed win the elections, France would see its first Socialist President in two decades. The Left Front candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has also been the candidate with the most supporters at his rallies and his supporters will be demanding of Hollande. Marine Le Pen has of course been stirring up the crowds through fear tactics, spewing the typical xenophobic and Islamophobic remarks we have come to expect of her.

That leaves incumbent President, Nicolas Sarkozy who continues to go further right-wing to capture Le Pen's supporters and is resorting to desperate tactics. With over 10% between him and Hollande in polls for the second round, he claims his best chance is in a national television debate between the two rounds. Hollande's lack of government experience may be telling or, instead, his witty humour may shine through, knocking Sarkozy out of the running for good. Tomorrow will reveal (almost) all.

Do let me know your thoughts under the piece.

So here you go: http://studentjournals.co.uk/features/news/973-france-2012-the-road-to-elysee

Trip to Paris: Friday evening

I will upload (and write about this trip) in three different blogs (one for each day) due to the total length I can imagine this becoming!

Back in October, many of the other assistants and I saw that the French football team were going to play USA in Paris in November (yes, I know, this is a rather delayed piece!) and some of us decided that we would go to the match. While the other assistants decided to simply go to Paris for the match and return early the next morning, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I have friends from Warwick who are nice enough to welcome me to stay with them for the weekend.

Friday

On the Friday night was the France-USA match and this was clear from the apparel sported by trains that there even more full than usual. Red, white and blue were the trend that night. Once we arrived at the Saint Denis station, towards the north of Paris, the crowds streamed out and we had to journey about 15 minutes towards the stadium.

Along the way, we passed food stands, people selling merchandise and we had to walk through an underpass, littered with anti-Sarkozy sentiments scrawled across the walls.  The latter particularly interested me as the echoing thoughts that those who live in the banlieue, or outskirts of Paris, are strongly opposed to Sarkozy due to laws he has introduced, laws that have worsened their situation and have made it more difficult for them to find a job.

Onwards we went towards the stadium until we found ourselves shivering in our seats. In fact, we had to battle for our seats before we could sit down; apparently some people had swapped seats and included our seats in the negotiations leaving us with a struggle to essentially kick out the occupants of our seats.

The match itself passed by without much incident and the final score was 1-0 to France. They should have won by a far greater margin by they appeared to struggle finding the net with their shots. The USA team on the other hand simply seemed like a team that was very tired, with a lack of movement.