Some of my favorite moments as a tour leader are watching the expressions of our travelers as they first encounter some of these wonders. There is a particular corner where I like to skip ahead just a little so I can savor the expressions as the group rounds the corner and sees the magnificent Eiffel Tower towering above them in all its glory.
One year I decided to visit a small museum in the Ardèche area of France which documents much of the history of the Huguenot community there. One display featured a mannequin family of Huguenots, all dressed, to my surprise, in blue denim. It was a bizarre juxtaposition of what looked like 80's stone-washed denim set in the 17th and 18th centuries.
It is no secret that the French have always been fiercely proud of their language -- and rightly so. It is truly one of the most beautiful languages spoken. Sometimes the debate has reached comical levels, as when the purists refused to call Sony's groundbreaking Walkman by its English name and instead invented the word balladeur (literally "walker"). Now there is a move among certain elements to offer more university courses in English in order to attract more bright scholars from emerging countries such as India and Brazil. This does not go down well with those who are concerned that, taken to its extreme, English might actually take over as the lingua franca of the French Parliament itself. Not likely, but it will be interesting to see the outcome of this latest episode in the battle to preserve la langue française.
