This is a join us in France episode 9.

Hello, I'm Annie.

And I'm Elise, and we welcome you to the join us in France podcast,

the show where we share the best of France. Elise is a professional tour guide and art historian.

And this is the podcast where we'll help you prepare your trip to France

and tell you everything you need to know to have a great time in France. We're calling today's show

French and American face-off because we're going to be talking about cultural

differences between our two countries. We're going to start with politeness,

and let's see if we can do it politely, shall we?

Yes, let's see if we can do this politely.

I'm laughing because I have already

decided that you're going to take the defense of the Americans

and I'm going to take the defense of the French.

And there we are.

We're starting off from the beginning, reversing roles.

It's possible, yes.

It's really interesting because when I work in Paris, a lot of times I work with people who are on a first trip to France or to Paris particularly and very often I hear people say to me who, I was told that the French are really not polite, but they actually are.

And I say, yeah, I know that there's this very old stereotype of the French particularly in commerce being a little

bit gruff and not too to smiling and friendly but of course number one things have

changed a lot I think in the last 30 years and number two it made me think about it and that's why I said I told you I thought it would be a really good topic for today that there really is a difference between being polite and being friendly.

Aha.

You're right.

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