| 1. Any food described as 'Goute Mexicaine' (mexican flavor) - including Doritos - if you expect Tex Mex or something really spicey - you will be disappointed. This phrase seems to mean 'lightly sprinkled with paprika or other reddish dust'. 2. 'Tex Mex' restaurants don't serve beans in any way shape or form - we don't get it? 3. Amore brand 'Sauce au Curry' - This had not a drop of curry in it, but did contain bananas and pineapples amongst other bizarre ingredients!! 4. Trails littered with cigarette butts and wine corks (could be worse, I guess - we haven't come across a lot of plastic bottles, diapers or Budweiser cans) 5. Asking 'does that have meat in it?' using the french word 'viande'. Apparently pork and chicken are not considered 'meat' around these parts .... veggies beware 6. Coke or any soda costs more than wine in most restaurants 7. If you are attempting to speak French and learn it, as soon as many people realize you are an English speaker, they stop speaking to you in French and switch to English. (Worse in tourist season). 8. The refusal to name numbers between 60 and 100. 70 is said as '60 and 10' and 80 is '4 20s' and 90 is '4 20s and 10'. The Swiss French have a much better handle on the counting thing, having come up with septante, huitante and nonante to join the rest of the world in mathematical practices. Must be the influence of the banking industry....or the Belgians? 9. Chinese restaurants offering 'Thai' dishes. These are inevitably cooked Chinese style by someone who maybe read a Thai cookbook once, meaning your imagination of a lovely Thai curry or satay will be in reality an unrecognizable glutinous mass when it arrives. 10. English-owned businesses (especially ski tour companies --- you know who you are) which pay lower wages than the legal French minimum. A pox on them. Why isn't the EU jumping on this sort of thing? 11. If you have a hang-over and hoped to do some shopping when you woke up at noon, you'll have to wait a few hours as everything is closed. Go back to bed (hmm, maybe this belongs on the 'things we love' list instead). 12. Renters insurance doesn't cover your belongings if you leave the house with them (as US or UK insurance would). 13. Dating scene for straight men: ratio of women to men is 1 to 7. 14. Dating scene for non-hets - small and not too open. Still under investigation by our intrepid reporter..... 15. What is the deal with smoking anyway????? Are you all dupes of the tobacco industry or what? We can't understand why it must become so smokey that it's impossible to breathe properly in most restaurants or bars (especially in cooler weather when doors and windows are shut) in a town so reknown for healthy and lung-requisite activities like moutaineering, mountain biking and skiing. Helllllooooo - the venues are small, so can't you all just be revolutionary and share a single cigarette in smokers a menage � trois or something??? Or be a real rad cool dude and QUIT! 16. Small dogs still manage to make a lot of poop. Dog owners don't seem to think it's their duty to pick this up, but hiking boots do.... 17. Les impots (taxes). 18. Every 'entrance exam' seems to involve a race of some sort to get rid of 'extra' applicants, even when it has little/no/opposite relation to what is being tested for..... |