Bristol through the eyes of a Frenchman

As a French guy studying in Bristol, I get a once in a lifetime chance to take a peek at your weird British culture. In between croissants and glasses of red wine I’ve come to this startling conclusion: you roast beefs sure have some odd ways.

You love clubs way more than you should

The only place fuller than Bunker on a Monday is the ASS Library during exam period.  It’s like being in a can of sardines and you can’t actually dance because everyone’s too busy trying to get past you for a smoke.

If you’re dancing, you’re probably too drunk to realise you’re actually just bobbing your head off-beat to Wiz Khalifa or that you’ve managed to push everyone around you away with your “signature dance moves”. You people just aren’t smooth like us Frenchies.

Despite this, you crazies go clubbing every other day of the week and then spend most of the day telling everyone you had the best time. (You didn’t.)

Let’s be serious. My best nights at clubs are nights I don’t remember and yours probably are too.

You’re trying too hard with the recipes

Aside from the stereotypical fish and chips, most of your cuisine is made up of beans, potatoes and meat. It’s boring but edible.

Unfortunately you lot always pour a ridiculous amount of sauce and gravy over everything. Mon dieu! You don’t know when to stop and it makes me miss my snails.

You even call dessert pudding even though pudding is a type of dessert. Let’s all remind ourselves the two are not mutually exclusive.

And sure, Bristol has got some great places to eat, but they’re all foreign food places. I definitely won’t be bringing mum back for one of your recipes. Sorry.

You all dress funny

You’re all so obsessed with looking edgy, hiding your private school roots or showing you took a gap year in Bhutan to realise nobody is impressed.

It’s like someone got Brad Pitt’s character from Snatch, threw them in a Thrift Shop and then told them to spend a weekend of spiritual awakening in a closet. Macklemore was being ironic, please tell me you are too.

You love pretending you can speak French

I know you took French in GCSE and loved Intouchables with subtitles but there’s really no need to prove to me you remember how to say bonjour and j’adore le poulet.

A wise man once said: “it’s not until you stop trying to prove yourself to others that you can finally prove something to yourself”. I’m not going to be the one to tell you it’s time you take a trip to France to find out the cold hard truth. You’re just not that good at French.

British culture isn’t better than French culture

You like shoving it in our faces that you have Shakespeare, rock music and Hitchcock but you’re yet to get with the times. Your football is falling apart, you’re catching up with the US in obesity and now even your doctors are going on strike. It’s as if you’re caught in limbo, undecided whether you’re wannabe Frenchies or wannabe Yanks even though you hate both. Maybe that’s just typical British irony.

We might seem lazy but really we just know how to enjoy life à la française, whether it’s good food, a great book or just having a nice glass of wine.