What made us choose France as our study abroad destination? The language was the main reason as we both wanted to improve our French skills. The other reasons were the weather, cuisine and wine as well as the opportunity to travel easily in Europe. Most importantly, we could imagine ourselves sitting in a terrace drinking wine in a small street of a beautiful old town in France. So after a year, did all of our dreams come true and how much is true about the French stereotypes?

Let’s go through some typical French stereotypes and see if we can agree with them or not.

French people are snobby and rude

If you have only visited Paris, we can easily understand why would you think so. However, we don’t think this is true. We actually think that most of the French people are very friendly. Of course, we have had our own share of extremely rude customer service, but all the good experiences outfight the bad ones.

”I have some French friends and they are kind and nice people. Also, my experience of visiting them in France is that they are always very hospitable. Additionally, French are helpful. Once, I tried to find a room in our school and asked for help from a French student. In the end, I had four French students helping me to find the room. And when I tried to terminate my mobile contract and had troubles with understanding the French customer service on the phone, I got help from a waitress in a cafeteria.” – Sini

The typical mistake, that foreigners do in France, is that they are not polite enough according to French standards. Learn to greet in French (Bonjour/Bonsoir), say goodbye (Au revoir) and thank you (Merci). And always choose the more polite form ”vous” instead of ”tu”, when you are addressing to person, who you don’t know. Especially for us who come from ”more casual” countries, like Finland, the official and respectful language can sometimes be difficult to master. In France, they are shocked to find out that we call our professor by their first name instead of addressing them as Madame or Monsieur.

It is also important to understand, that French people are proud of being French. They regard themselves as country of history, art and culture. They do joke a lot about themselves and have a quite dark sense of humour, but they don’t like to hear foreigners dissing their beautiful country. However, topics like the French Bureaucracy or snobby and rude Parisians are normally free topics to moan even for the French people.

French can’t or don’t want to speak English

This is mostly true. Of course, there are many French people who do speak English well or at some level, but you will come across many French, who don’t. French people aren’t ashamed to admit that they don’t speak English. If you ask them politely in French: ”Vous parlez anglais?” They will just simply answer you with proud in their voice: ”Non”. It is also true, that many French just don’t want to speak English, even they could. Somebody explained to us that French just simply find speaking English too tiring or difficult. Additionally, French aren’t always that patient or understanding for foreigners who are trying to speak French. Especially, compared to Finnish who are always eager to see foreigners trying to speak Finnish. This might be sometimes frustrating when you are trying your best to learn the language. Therefore, always focus on your French studies the correct pronunciation as otherwise, the French won’t understand you.

French smoke a lot

Yes, so true. Despite the fact, that tobacco is very expensive in France.

French drink a lot of wine and eat a lot of cheese

French people do love both wine and cheese. For French, there is no time, when you couldn’t drink wine and nobody will judge you if you decide to order a glass of wine before noon. What would be dinner or lunch without wine? Cheese also works perfectly with the wine. There is no better thing than going to a wine bar in France and ordering a cheese platter with the wine.

French walk around holding baguettes

This is also true. French cities are full of bakeries (boulangerie), where the French people like to buy their bread and croissants from. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see French people walking in a city a baguette under their arm wrapped in a brown paper.

French are skinny

At least after our year in France, we truly believe so! Despite being the country of cheese, baguettes, pastries and wine, French people tend to be skinny. This is probably the reason, why there are books of ”the French diet”. The main reasons may be that French people eat only small portions, they don’t completely deny anything from themselves, and they walk everywhere. French typically eat some small sweet pastry in the morning, a good lunch, something sweet with coffee in the afternoon, and a good dinner in the evening.

France is bureaucratic

Yes, million times yes! Before moving to France, practice some mindfulnesses and meditation. You are entering the world of printed documents. For instance, if you want to make a rental agreement, prepare to read and sign dozens of pages of your lease and sent them by post. You might ask yourselves, why I cannot scan them and send them by email? You just simply cannot. Even if you want to end a contract, such as a lease or a mobile contract, you cannot just simply inform your landlord by email or march to the store where you bought your mobile subscription. No, you need to send them both an official letter, where you inform that you want to end the contract. These are also situations when some level of French skills might come useful or are absolutely necessary.

”I needed to end my contract with my electricity company. They did have a customer service in English that helped me to make the contract when I moved to France. However, English speaking customer service doesn’t support in terminating a contract. Luckily, my French had improved enough, so I was able to call the customer service and explain in French that I wanted to terminate my contract. We seemed to understand each other. However, I still needed to send a couple of emails before my contract was actually terminated.” -Sini

After a year, what we think about France?

France was definately as beautiful country as we imagined. We did spend many afternoons and evenings sitting in a terrace drinking wine in small streets of Bordeaux. The weather was not always good, but we did enjoy a lot of French cuisine and wine. We did some travelling. Mostly in France, but we also did some trips to Spain and Portugal. We also learned a lot about French culture and found that some of the stereotypes of French weren’t true and some of them absolutely were. We both fell in love with Bordeaux. We honestly think that it is the most beautiful city in France. However, there were also moments when we were frustrated and complained, why everything has to be made so difficult. We also said too many times: ”In Finland, we have/do…”. But we did have an amazing year and are both truly glad that we chose France as our study abroad destination.

Sini & Mari

Do you agree with us regarding the French stereotypes? Share with us your experiences about France and French people!

Also, remember to check our Instagram account, where we share more content about our year in Bordeaux. @projectdoubledegree

This post is dedicated to those of you, who are interested in doing an international double degree in France. KEDGE Business School is the international double degree partner of the University of Vaasa in France. You can choose from their two campuses in France: Bordeaux and Marseille. Bordeaux is located in Southwestern France and Marseille in the Mediterranean coast of Southern France. In this post, we will go through the requirements for receiving a diploma from KEDGE Business School. We will later share our personal experience of studying in Kedge in another post.

The program, which double degree students from the University of Vaasa, take is called Master in Management Grande Ecole. There are some differences in the course offering depending on the campus which you choose as different campuses are specialized in different topics.  In Bordeaux, you can study at least management, international business, marketing & brand management, supply chain management, finance, and wine & spirits management. Courses are offered both in French and English.

Online Core Courses

Kedge has six online core courses that are mandatory: Human Resource Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Complexity and Management, Finance, Marketing Management, and Corporate Strategy. It is possible to do three online courses in one semester. You are allowed to have two waivers, but you need to compensate them with extra elective courses. We were able to get accepted the courses we had done in Vaasa for Marketing and Management as well as for Corporate Strategy.

The online courses are demanding. Normally, we had one week to study the topic and then we had an online quiz. To get good marks from the quizzes, you actually need to spend time to get familiar with the different materials that teachers provide you. Depending on the course, we had to watch videos, get familiar with lecture notes, read articles or book chapters. Additionally, we had group works. At the end of the course, we had an online final exam.

Elective Courses

There are three cycles in the autumn semester and five cycles in the spring semester. It is possible to take three courses in one cycle, but two is the recommendation. The elective courses can be freely chosen depending on your personal interests. Normally, you need to take in total six elective courses, but we had to take eight to compensate the two waivers we got from mandatory online courses.

One course lasts about a month, except intensive courses that last only one week. Depending on course there are group works, presentations, simulations/games, and business cases. At the end of the course is an exam. The workload and complexity of the course vary a lot depending on the course and the teacher.

Proact

Proact is a project which students need to do in Kedge to acquire project management skills. Students can choose the project themselves, but it should last at least four months. The result of the project should be something that can be evaluated. For instance, we are doing the Project Double Degree – blog and Instagram as part of our Proact.

For the Proact, you are assigned a supervisor, who you will present your idea, your personal educational objectives, your action plan, time schedule, metrics of the project and in the end the results of the project.

Internship

Only requirements for the internship are that it must last at least six months, it should be in the business field and it has to be done during your studies in the Kedge. So, previous working experience is not approved as an internship. Most of the double degree students do the internship after their studies in Kedge. The job does not actually need to be an internship position. You only need to get a six months work certificate from the business field. Therefore, you can also easily apply to permanent job positions after your studies in Kedge.

English Language Test

Kedge demands English language test from their graduating students. The test can be either IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC.  You can register to TOEIC through Kedge’s language services. The test is taken on the campus, it takes three hours and costs 85 euros.

We hope this post will be useful for those of you, who are considering Kedge as your international double degree destination. In this blog, we are trying to provide you with the information that we did not have access to before our year in France. Please leave a comment in case you have any questions or reach out to us through our Instagram.

Sini & Mari

Go follow us on Instagram: projectdoubledegree  !