Day 5 of 20: A Letter to France

Nation states should have their own email addresses where visitors can conveniently send messages and feedback regarding their visit to the country. I’m thinking something like feedback@Country_Name.com or some easy-to-remember variant where “Country_Name” is replaced with the name of the country visited.

My immediate problem is I have a message for France and I don’t know how to send it to her. I tried info@france.com, france@gmail.com, gmail@france.com and a bunch of others but I didn’t get any responses. Right now I think I’m going to just post it here on my blog and hope that one of my readers who lives in France passes it along.

Dear France,

thank you for very much for hosting me during the past four and a half days. I had a wonderful time in your beautiful country and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you personally about some of the highlights of my journey.

First up, I do have to admit that (at the beginning) I found it difficult to get used to the French custom of kissing (twice!) all the people I was getting introduced to. We have lots of French culture in Canada and we use this greeting often – but only with women. But then, after a couple days I remembered my experiences with the traditional Finnish getting-to-know-you custom (sitting naked in a super-heated room with the male members of your girlfriend’s immediate family that you just met a few hours earlier) – and I realized how compared to Finland, the French greeting is actually pretty cool – like a high-five or fist-bump (but with kissing).

This kissing of strange men aside, the thing I like most about your country is the hilarious and sexy names you have for many of the things one encounters on a given day touring around France. I even made a collage of my favourites from this trip.

I hope you like it.

Yesterday when I was walking around your capital, I noticed that your 300th birthday is coming up in a few years. Now I know it’s not for a while but if you want, I can help you set up for the party – I’m pretty good at that sort of thing.

And let me know if you need me to bring my turkey deep fryer.

So that’s it for now – I have to run. I’m meeting some friends in Siegburg in a few hours and I have to check out something in Bonn beforehand. Oh, and before I forget, you have a leaking pipe at the corner of Rue de Sophia and Rue de Clignancourt in Paris (arrondissement #10) and the cliffs at Cap Canaille are in serious need of some guardrails.

Again I would like to thank you for the wonderful visit, I hope to return sometime soon.

Kindest regards, your friend always,

Jason

PS: I saw that you are going to be hosting that Star Wars Identities Exhibit thing next month – just a heads-up: it has nothing to do with the real Star Wars – it’s about the movies.

PPS: I studied French in school for fifteen years so I took it upon myself to translate this letter (to the best of my abilities) so that your citizens who do not understand English can also enjoy it.

<Traduction Libre>

France,

merci pour les vacances. Votre pays est belle.

Merci encore,

Jason