A noticeable critical incident that I encountered in France happened on my first full day here in Tours as I was walking to class. I was running a little later than planned, so I was walking very quickly, at about the same speed that I do at home in New Jersey or on Notre Dame’s campus. I was struck by how I seemed very out of place, because I was walking significantly faster than everyone else. While not a particularly problematic critical incident, it was something that I would not have expected. The sidewalks in Tours are very narrow, and often only two people at once can fit on the sidewalk. This meant that I had to pass a lot of people if I continued at the speed I was walking. Additionally, I noticed that other people were almost never passing each other on the sidewalk. Most of the time, someone would simply slow down their pace, and in the rare chance that someone did need to pass another person, they would actually cross the street to walk on the other side. This was something I certainly did not expect.
When I came to Notre Dame, I was surprised initially by the same thing: the differing walking speeds of students. I found pretty quickly that myself and my other friends from the northeast or the west coast tend to walk twice as fast as my friends from the midwest or south. However, I was still surprised in France, especially by the norm that people really never seem to pass each other on the sidewalk. This was initially frustrating, particularly when I experienced this in the morning as I headed to class, but it became something that I was able to adjust to pretty quickly, either by learning to follow the road rules in the same way the locals do or by giving myself a bit more time in the morning so that there is no need for me to rush.
I think the walking speeds demonstrate a large difference between life in smaller-town France and the United States, especially the New York City/New Jersey area. Life is much more rushed and fast-paced. People power walk everywhere, meals are eaten very quickly (to the point where breakfast is often just a coffee one grabs as they run out the door), and the mentality is very “go, go, go!” all the time. In Tours, life is slower. People take their time to get places, and dinner often takes over two hours (though I do love the amount of French practice this gives me!). Things take the amount of time they need to take, rather than being crammed into a narrow window in one’s schedule.
The fish bowl metaphor fits very well here. I am from one fish bowl, which has a much quicker and stronger current, and I was surprised to be thrown into another fish bowl, where the water is a bit more stagnant. People in Tours appreciate things for more time and more for what they are. I experienced this with water too: in the United States, we drink lots of water all the time; in France, people only drink water when they are thirsty, and they enjoy it slowly rather than chugging it. People’s lives, and overall ways of life, move at different paces, and one way is not inherently better or worse than the other. Despite the fact that this critical incident was a very easy fix, it has helped me slow down and stop and smell the roses a bit more in my day-to-day life here in Tours.
