French comedian Olivier Giraud has been performing his show, “How to become a Parisian in one hour” for 12 years at a theater that’s a short walk from the Louvre. His tongue-in-cheek suggestions include how to look bored and annoyed all the time and what nonsensical sounds you can make to get across your message without saying a word. While arguably an “expert” about what it takes to live in this nation’s capital, the tables were turned on Olivier when someone asked him if he were offered a million euros to become an American would he accept the money. He replied, “yes” as long as he could keep his French benefits and that’s what I wanted to investigate.

Blog readers sometimes send us links to articles about France that they have read in other publications. There’s a French news source, Courrier International, that in a sense does the same thing for us with their section, “France seen from abroad”, that referenced an article in the British newspaper, The Telegraph. Journalist Anthony Peregrine has been based in this country for over 20 years so he has an amazing collection of articles with descriptive headline words such as “loveliest, greatest, most elegant, and popular”. When I saw a mention of “11 reasons why French cuisine is still the best in the world”, I definitely wanted to read about that.