French time

The French do not see time the same way Americans do. I believe this is pretty general knowledge, but you really cannot appreciate what that means until you are here. Yes, France takes August off. And I mean off--administration offices are closed, stores shut their doors, French people disappear and British and American tourists take over the cities. But did you know about 12-1:30 everyday? Yeah, they take that off too. Banks, the post office, everywhere you might possibly need to go during your lunch break? Closed. You can only get food during eating hours.  But there are a lot of eating hours. Take, for example the two hour lunch break you get on workdays. Wow... and they actually manage to spend a good part of that time eating, which I find quite impressive.

I think though, that the French have some deep-seeded desire to think of themselves as workaholics.  See, take this place. They serve food for a whole 4 hours NONSTOP. What working machines!

The use of nonstop, like above, is common. Another one? 7j/7j. That means open seven days out of seven (j=jour=day), like our 24/7. But since nothing in France is open 24/7, they just use 7/7 a lot. Or even 6/7, since most things are closed on Sunday.  That one's particularly funny.

It's a different experience. Being a good American I feel panicked spending more than 30 minutes eating lunch, and when you have a two hour lunch plus several long coffee breaks in a day, I feel like I never get anything done. And the amount of time it takes for a waiter to come to your table in a café? You'd already be eating in an American restaurant.  But while this is completely against what I'm used to, I think it's good for me to be forced to sit back and relax a bit. My French colleagues get lots of real work done, so maybe all that time spent clearing your head really lets you focus and bang it out once you are in the zone. So I'm trying to embrace it and just chill out. Hah we'll see how this goes for me once I get back to the States!