Friday, August 22 2008

Pas de sou(cis)

Dutch, British, Germans, Chinese, they all want to emigrate to France and this is also a topic for the many nice TV programs. The fact that these emigrants to France think to arrive in paradise and then everything goes wrong you know, fantastic. But French people do not emigrate, so they make a TV programm about all these people who come to France (www.france3.fr, one-off documentary on Friday). Three families were tracked for two hours: a couple of exasperating Englishmen with too much money starting of a chambre d'hôtes (YAWN) - "we're already rich so we're not in for the money" -, a couple from Florida in search of a countryhouse in Sancerre - "the people here are so… human" - and a Chinese multibillionaire who had the Château de Maisons-Laffitte copied and reconstructed in Beijing.

Yummie, I thought, this is again going to be good oldfasioned horrors, but i was wrong. I sat for two hours waiting for the disasters but nothing happened. Even with that lot from Florida that truly directed the whole refurbishing from Florida, everything went smoothly and nothing went wrong: no craftsman that didn't show up, no roofs that fell in and no shortages in the bank. Anyway, France 3 is a cultural channel and which of course does not take pleasure from others ill fate, so life in France was a big party and everybody was happy. Apart from that accident than with the English couple. On the day of their move they tried to bake a pizza in their medieval four à pain. One slight problem was only that it had no chimney. Cough cough.

Anyway, what intrigues me is how France 3 portrayed the Francophiles. Why did they succeed, where many immigrants do not? I cannot help thinking that things were presented better then they actually were. Or was it because they were all rich. Well. We also, only the money is somewhere in a removal box and we no longer know which.

posted by Ruud at 12:46  |  send a comment

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