Living or visiting France is a little slice of heaven, and sometimes when you need to return back home (i.e. reality), you’ll try your best to recreate those idyllic days, months or years. Folks who miss the land of wine, cheese and 35-hour workweeks can get a little crazy sometimes — there are often tears, diatribes, and bizarre habits. Here are 17 of those things that people do when they’re missing their beloved France.
1. Inch closer and closer when you hear people speaking in French. Make knowing eye contact and laugh at their jokes, even when you’re 100% not part of their conversation.
2. Scoff at American small coffees because they are, like, enormous. (And taste like water.)
3. Go on rants about supermarket baguettes. And supermarkets.
4. Cry about the €2 bottles of Bordeaux you miss, as you drink your 5th glass of $14 wine.
5. Force your friends to picnic outside, even during when it’s cold out.
6. Stay up late watching French YouTube comedians and laughing/crying by yourself.
7. Drop random French words into conversation du coup they’re just so part of your brain at this point… c’est pas ta faute!
8. Count out exact change at the store to pay, even if there is a line behind you.
9. End up bringing French culture/politics/food/wine into every conversation because, did your friends know, you used to live there???
10. Google “cheap flights to France” and peruse Airbnb rentals in Paris. Daily.
11. Online window-shop at Galeries Lafayette and your favorite French boutiques… even when they don’t deliver to the States.
12. Gorge on macarons, pain au chocolat and other French viennoiseries, even though they don’t taste the same.
13. Buy stacks of French literature that you may or may not ever read. You will definitely bring them to a cafe and stare pensively out the window as you hold them.
14. Invest in a VPN just to watch your favorite French tv shows and movies.
15. Cover your walls with black and white posters of French cafes and celebrities, because France is just so… timeless, y’know?
16. Make every Instagram post a #TBT to France. Even when it’s not Thursday.
17. Purchase Rosetta stone, because this time, you’re really going to perfect your language skills. Really — it’s different this time.
