Comment on People are sitting on the bike lane or parking on it. Saint Denis, France

• rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Beautiful country, good food, strong on protests. The car situation is a bit strange. The service industry was a bit off-putting, but I was a tourist and well, most US tourists are awful. Maybe half the people there were nice and helpful.

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  • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    When I was in Paris some years ago, I was amazed how anti-foreigners it felt when it is easily top 5 international tourist destinations in the world. No public bathrooms anywhere, do the French never need to go?!

    I went to the louvre and wanted to buy the 3DS museum guide software. I looked for it in the gift shop, it was available in one or two languages but not English. When I asked, the seller laughed at me like I’m an idiot, “oh we haven’t had English copies of it in months! what did you expect?”

    What did you think I expected? I expected the most famous museum in the world to keep stocking something which is clearly selling out frequently!

    The whole city felt like it didn’t want tourists there. It was such a strange feeling.

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    • Rekonok@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      As a born and raise parisian, public bathrooms was an issue to us too. Lot of right wingers where against because drugs addicts use them, apparently it was better to see peoples urinate in publics gardens.

      Finally the city council started building new sanisettes paris.fr/…/les-toilettes-publiques-a-paris-27216

      There are very nice if you have a penis otherwise god bless you if you need to sit on this. The propreté de Paris clean them twice a day but we are french, we love to turn things dirty… Still better than the public garden.

      I am sorry you have a bad experience I have family that visit almost every years and it is luck related, most of them have meet very nice peoples but I know we can be jerks…

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      • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Thanks. Honestly the people weren’t the problem, it was moreso the way the city was managed and regulated. Again, it is in the top 5 (potentially top 1) tourist destinations in the world, you’d think they city would make it a priority to make tourists feel welcome from the infrastructure up. Again, pubic toilets alone can be the first and last straw. Every tourists needs to go at some point, it should not be a pain point.

        Maybe I had inflated expectations, I don’t know. I’m not much into traveling anyway, I was with family and enjoyed my time with them, but everywhere we went felt surprisingly less welcoming than I expected. Except Disneyland, but that’s neither here nor there :P

        It has been long enough that I don’t trust my memory on this, but I think it was really common to have no English signage anywhere…? This is not the Parisian people’s fault, this is the fault of business owners bafflingly choosing to alienate tourists, and the city regulators not caring either. In any other city I’d accept it, local businesses might not want the tourist traffic for plenty of good reasons, but this is freaking Paris!

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    • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      French people seem to be extremely hostile to anything and anyone remotely not French.

      In their defence, though, they also seem to be extremely hostile to anything and anyone remotely French.

      Maybe it’s not much of a defence, now that I think about it.

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    • freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The french have always been very chauvinist about their language. They do not like English, as they view french as an equally great world language. It was likely somehow obligated to have an English version, and subsequently a somewhat conscious choice by some employees or board of directors to not keep it stocked as well as the French version.

      Also, it is over tourism. There are so many tourists people are sick of them. It’s not a french but a human thing. I’ve seen “touris raus” in Berlin too… The downside of raising housing prices etc are by a significant part of population valued more than the economic advantage of more local consumption (and I get that).

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      • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I can totally accept the over tourism argument. In that case I’m doing my part, and telling people NOT to go there! :)

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