Well, the sun is shining, the air is warm, and that can only mean that it's time to sit outside at a café...if you want to be asphyxiated, that is. While I wholeheartedly applaud the fact that France finally, begrudgingly made smoking inside restaurants illegal, the net result of that is that the smokers end up taking over the outside seating thereby defeating the point of eating al fresco.
And I speak from experience. I nearly tried to cancel our move to Paris over this issue. Last May, when Anthony and I were here school-, house-, and neighborhood-hunting, we finished up our trip with a decadent meal at la Cigale Recamier, a restaurant famous for its souffles -- salted caramel in particular -- in the posh 6th arrondissement. We ate outside, our appetizers, savory seafood soufflés, and dessert soufflés in typical French fashion: slowly. Meals here routinely take 2-3 hours and simply cannot be rushed. We were seated at the very full restaurant (reservation only) next to and downwind from a six-top of French twenty-something hipsters who proceeded to chain smoke throughout the entire meal, whenever they were not actually putting a forkful in their smoke-holes.
Back at the hotel, I violently vomited over $100 worth of soufflé. My biggest regret was that I threw up back at the hotel. I would have loved, loved, loved to throw up on the hipsters. Anthony thinks I am overly self-righteous and embarrassingly loud about my contempt for people smoking next to me, since, technically, it is within their legal right to smoke. Well, it's within my legal right to vomit, too. He thinks I am possibly not in my right mind on this issue (among others...). Perhaps he's right. I mean what sane person wants to vomit on a perfect stranger? But I can't help feeling what I feel, and what I feel is that while they may not deserve to be covered in my stinky puke, I definitely don't deserve to be covered in their toxic secondhand smoke.
What saves me is that I don't actually eat at restaurants every meal when I'm living here, versus last spring when we were staying in a tiny hotel-room. It's noticeably better at cafés that are in heavily-touristed zones, since it seems to me the tourists (at least the North American ones) don't smoke as much as the French.
According to the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, in 2009 about a quarter of French 18 year-olds were daily smokers. And it's pretty clear that hasn't been any precipitous drop in the last three years. What is most amazing to me is that you will see groups of students standing outside Lycée Henri IV or Lycée Louis le Grand smoking. These are arguably the top two high schools in France and are very, very, very competitive (both to get in and stay in), so these are France's best and brightest. The students don't hide their smoking; they puff away in large groups right outside the school, with their teachers walking through the group unfazed. One of my friends saw her daughter's preschool teacher standing in sight of the children, but just outside the playground fence, smoking while the children were on the playground. She might as well have been shooting heroin in front of the four year olds, as far as an San Franciscan is concerned.
When it comes to the "modern" attitude on smoking in France, I think this photo, which I took in our room in Strasbourg over Christmas, says it all:
And I speak from experience. I nearly tried to cancel our move to Paris over this issue. Last May, when Anthony and I were here school-, house-, and neighborhood-hunting, we finished up our trip with a decadent meal at la Cigale Recamier, a restaurant famous for its souffles -- salted caramel in particular -- in the posh 6th arrondissement. We ate outside, our appetizers, savory seafood soufflés, and dessert soufflés in typical French fashion: slowly. Meals here routinely take 2-3 hours and simply cannot be rushed. We were seated at the very full restaurant (reservation only) next to and downwind from a six-top of French twenty-something hipsters who proceeded to chain smoke throughout the entire meal, whenever they were not actually putting a forkful in their smoke-holes.
Back at the hotel, I violently vomited over $100 worth of soufflé. My biggest regret was that I threw up back at the hotel. I would have loved, loved, loved to throw up on the hipsters. Anthony thinks I am overly self-righteous and embarrassingly loud about my contempt for people smoking next to me, since, technically, it is within their legal right to smoke. Well, it's within my legal right to vomit, too. He thinks I am possibly not in my right mind on this issue (among others...). Perhaps he's right. I mean what sane person wants to vomit on a perfect stranger? But I can't help feeling what I feel, and what I feel is that while they may not deserve to be covered in my stinky puke, I definitely don't deserve to be covered in their toxic secondhand smoke.
What saves me is that I don't actually eat at restaurants every meal when I'm living here, versus last spring when we were staying in a tiny hotel-room. It's noticeably better at cafés that are in heavily-touristed zones, since it seems to me the tourists (at least the North American ones) don't smoke as much as the French.
According to the French Office for the Prevention of Smoking, in 2009 about a quarter of French 18 year-olds were daily smokers. And it's pretty clear that hasn't been any precipitous drop in the last three years. What is most amazing to me is that you will see groups of students standing outside Lycée Henri IV or Lycée Louis le Grand smoking. These are arguably the top two high schools in France and are very, very, very competitive (both to get in and stay in), so these are France's best and brightest. The students don't hide their smoking; they puff away in large groups right outside the school, with their teachers walking through the group unfazed. One of my friends saw her daughter's preschool teacher standing in sight of the children, but just outside the playground fence, smoking while the children were on the playground. She might as well have been shooting heroin in front of the four year olds, as far as an San Franciscan is concerned.
When it comes to the "modern" attitude on smoking in France, I think this photo, which I took in our room in Strasbourg over Christmas, says it all:
1 comment:
As someone who deals with asthma, I truly understand how much you are frustrated with smoking at restaurants there. We still allowing smoking in bars in Atlanta, which is also frustrating. I've put off a much longed for trip to Barcelona only because I know they smoke even more there than in Europe, or at least that's before any recent laws in Spain I'm not aware of.
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