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Ms Crocodile Dundee Wrestles Paris

Almost French, by Sara Turnbull – A Review

By David Currier

When Ms Crocodile Dundee, in the guise of Sara Turnbull, was doing her walkabout in the outback of Romania in 1985, little did she know when she met a handsome Frenchman vacationer that she would soon be off on a love-struck expedition to that great city. No, not New York, but Paris, France. 

Sara's adventure with a lover-turned-husband with whom she did not share a common language or culture is a test few of us would pass. Her critical journalist’s eye, his unwavering support (and perhaps smugness) and her Australian tenacity (not unlike THE Crocodile Dundee’s) kept them together, successful, and provide us with a warm, terrifically funny tale.

Her romp through four years of frustration with her new extended French family and with herself rolls from her pen with a wit and rhythm that keep you laughing and reading non-stop. She casually injects French phrases in a way that amuses us French-as-a-second-language-ophones.

Her experiences with the haughtiness and extravagance of the French haute couture industry, French puppy etiquette and even puppy psychologists, and street peoples’ chosen spot for their public toilet, are funny in themselves. But they are great lessons on what you must do to survive when the foreign social fabric performs perfectly well for the foreigners while you go to bed every night totally, well, emmerdé (P. O’d.).

If your boss just told you that you are being sent on special assignment overseas for an extended period of time, the first item you would add to your to-do-list, “buy Fodor’s”, is followed by the second, “buy Almost French”. Even if you’re not being sent to France, Sara Turnbull’s Almost French is a must read for those of us who are being forced to integrate into another culture. Be it French or Japanese or Arabic or whatever; even for Americans moving from Boston to Dallas, or from Palm Springs to Cincinnati; Sara’s tales are representative of what one might experience in any unfamiliar world.

Not only is Almost French a fun-read, above all, it may even teach you to laugh at yourself on those unavoidable occasions when you learn that there is another way to do what you’ve been routinely (and quite successfully) doing for years. For those of us who’ve done the student abroad thing or who’ve already experienced (suffered through and survived) that foreign work assignment, Almost French is a hilarious reflection of our former lives.

Sara Turnbull's revelation that her neighbors used to sun themselves, topless, on the roof of a vacant convent in the middle of Paris took me back to 1975. I was a naive American farm boy in Paris when serendipity introduced me to what is known locally as Tata Beach - the quai on the Seine next to the Pont des Arts where mostly gay men go sunbathing on warm spring days, occasionally completely nude. (Yes, a nude beach in the middle of Paris.) Their antics often became a Follies Bergere-like spectacle for tourists sailing by on the Bateaux Mouches. Ooh la la! Only in France!

I loved Sara's book. As the pages turned, I ran to my bookshelf and withdrew my diary of my student year in Paris and that of 10 years later as an expat of a major American airline. Her experiences mirrored my own. I half considered charging her with plagiarism! However, I reveled in the fact that my own frustration with that je ne sais quoi that limited my blending into the French social fabric was not unique to me and has been validated by another world traveler.

It was true “shock and awe” when my first flight (Air Canada, tourist class) to Paris arrived  at the newly-opened, space-age, flying-saucer shaped home-nest for Air France’s Concorde at Aéroport Roissy Charles de Gaulle, with its escalators climbing through glass tunnels while fountains shot sprays of water over their outer shells. How my experience contrasts with Sara’s later encounter with the dirty, dilapidated condition of this aging, smelly Camembert (as the French now deride it) – a ghost of French ingenuity run amuck.

She and I sat for hours (albeit 10 years apart) waiting for our respective French host to meet us: our first introductions to the new, not-so-prompt, rude(?) culture.

And, all too soon, both Sara and I impressed our new friends with the speed with which we conquered their complex language. Our stories are hysterically similar.

During my own second week there, while enjoying a family dinner at the parent's of my landlord, I made the gaffe of using my best beginner Sorbonne French (that I had proudly learned from their son) to tell them that I did not want second helpings of the truly delicious horse roast. I politely said that I had already eaten too much. What I unknowingly said was that I had just had too much oral sex, thank you! 

The elderly couple, my gracious hosts, was mortified. My friends gasped and laughed at me. I survived. I was invited back.

As Sara related an anecdote of a lunchtime rendezvous with her boyfriend and his work mates, the scene was all too familiar. I instantly knew she was about to replicate my own faux pas. As I read, I could hear Sara’s grammatically correct basic schoolgirl French with a sweet Aussie accent…. But, I’ll let her tell you that story.

We travelers soon learn that just because “we do it that way in America” does not mean that someone in another country will not have a totally different, and ultimately as correct an approach to a situation. Like Sara so amusingly recounts, we often take our bad experiences too personally.

I’m sure she had conversations like, “You won’t exchange this dress? I just bought it here yesterday. It’s not well made. You wont refund my money?”

“I’ve been to this same government office three times, and each time I have been advised that I am missing such and such a document. Will somebody please provide me with the complete list?”

Then there is the s’arranger story of how, against all odds, legally (?) and architecturally correct, Sara and Frederic arranged to have a new window constructed in their city apartment - a lesson in conducting business in a land where getting simple things done does not always follow the logical (legal?) plan we foreigners might devise. Again, Sara tells it best. Let it be said, however, that if you want to immerse yourself in the new culture, to learn how to live and work with your new colleagues, friends and maybe family, then don’t take up residence in suburbia. Jump into city life (and its doggie-doo on the sidewalks) from the get-go.

Thus go the awkward trials of expats learning to live in their new, often unforgiving and uncompromising country. These experiences often make fools of the outsider, but the lessons learned in understanding linguistic differences or social protocol are invaluable to our personal growth and provide rich memories for a lifetime; memories upon which we reflect and knowledge we apply to new challenges faced when we’ve long returned home.

Sara’s book is about France, but it’s about the global experience of diversity, too.  Like Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence or Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan sun, Almost French treats the reader to an insider’s view of the challenges of integrating oneself into a totally different culture. But what makes us laugh and cry at Sara's mundane daily routines is the way she approaches each affair as if the Australian paradigms she learned at home will guide her perfectly in her foreign encounters. 

Wrong!

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