23-05-2025
Has Paris finally become friendly? I posed as a clueless tourist to find out
The aloof Parisian stereotype has been around for decades, with Paris often voted the most unfriendly city in the world. But lately, something strange has been happening. Parisians haven't started sparkling in the sunlight, but they have, dare I say it, become rather personable. Friends and colleagues agreed. Were they basking in an Olympics afterglow that made it impossible to be mean? (Even though, ironically, there didn't seem to be a Parisian left in the city during the Games.)
I decided to put the friendly Parisian theory to the test. I felt like a spy. My partner is Parisian, we speak French at home, and I live in Lyon, but for the purpose of this experiment I decided to channel my inner Emily Cooper from Emily in Paris. I boarded the train pretending that my linguistic skills were limited to 'merci beaucoup' (pronounced like 'merci beau cul', or 'thanks, nice arse').
Innocent and slightly bemused tourist mode activated, I made my way to Le Marais. The variables were in favour of a positive result. Paris basked in 25C bright sunshine, the kind of weather where toes poke out of Juliette balconies and even the grumpiest Parisian is at least 50 per cent sunnier in disposition.
Since I was here to observe Parisians in their natural habitats, I skipped sightseeing in favour of a café. Disappointingly, the woman who served me was American. It's ironic that we have so many preconceptions around Parisians when many people living there aren't Parisian at all. But perhaps it's like the Berlin effect. Take a nerdy kid from rural Shropshire and drop them in Berlin and within a few months they'll have a shaved head, a tonne of tattoos and a love of techno. Do the same in Paris and they become aloof and solely dressed in monochrome.
Two other variables were in my favour. I was alone, and from experience seem to always give off a 'please-talk-to-me-no matter-how-weird-you-are' vibe (a nightmare on buses). Sure enough, it wasn't long before a Frenchman struck up an unsolicited conversation with me.
'I was at law school with Marine Le Pen,' he said. 'She was brunette then, so as you English say, you can be sure the carpet doesn't match the drapes.'
Eccentric, yes, but I couldn't fault the man for his friendliness.
I crossed Place des Vosges, a mass of bare skin and pigeons in the sunshine, to look for a bistro for lunch. Rocking up at a bistro at 1.30pm, the end of lunch service, is already taboo, doing so with a big grin and an emphatic 'bon JOUR!' even more so.
'Do you have a menu in English?' I asked, but it was already there, a scannable QR code with (almost) entirely accurate translations of the dishes. I eavesdropped on the conversations around me, wondering if anyone would comment on this annoying, too loud British woman. Nothing. The waiter replied to me in very passable English, and was all smiles.
I was 15 the first time I came to Paris, on a school trip. One of the girls in my year was half French, and I remember her raining a torrent of choice French swear words on two middle-aged women on the metro – words I didn't understand then but would now – and our flustered teacher trying to repair the damage. Sharing their coach with a gaggle of loud and overexcited schoolchildren had brought out all their Parisianness, and they'd said some pretty rude stuff. In hindsight, who could blame them? No-one relishes sharing their coach with a eurotrip.
My food arrived almost alarmingly fast. I dropped my book on the floor – accidentally I might add, this wasn't a Michelin fork test, and the person at the table next to me scooped it up straight away.
Remember when the New York Times wrote that Paris had really bad coffee? It was such a slight that the city yo-yoed the other way, and now you can't move for bean-to-cup roasters with a library of plant milk. Perhaps this new-found friendliness is less Olympic hangover and more a matter of pride.
Outside Hôtel de Sully, I asked a woman to take a photo of me (for this article of course). She had headphones in, but Anna in Pariswas obnoxious. She also didn't speak any English, so I acted out my request like a game of charades, getting her to take horizontal and vertical shots. She wasn't only obliging, she smiled.
On the metro, I saw someone help a woman with a pushchair unsolicited. As I boarded the train back to Lyon, I even overheard someone helping a fellow passenger with their luggage say 'avec un sourire, on arrive à tout faire' ('we can do anything with a smile'). Was I on the lookout for positivity? Definitely, but perhaps by damning Parisians with a cold reputation we've been predisposing them to live up to it.
Who knows whether all these friendly Parisians were radiating post-Olympic bonheur or whether it was simply a sunny day in the City of Light, but this Briton was greeted with nothing but warmth. I'll have to reconduct the experiment in the rain to be sure.
