Word: frenchman
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...every Frenchman's breast lurks a passion more potent, if possible, than his love of the franc or good food. Its outward and visible symbol is the bicycle, but the emotions that bicycling inspires in France have little to do with transportation or exercise. For priests, market-bound peasants, bankers who would sooner pedal than be chauffeured, bicycling is a way to dream and drift in dignity, to twirl life like a long-stemmed glass of Alsace wine. "Vive le vélo, un ami de l'homme" proclaims an affectionate Norman toast: "Long live the bike...
...popular fiction, France and Vamour are nearly synonymous. A foreigner attempting to enlighten the Frenchman on the subject simply invites the slings and arrows of outraged Gallic sensibility. But in fact, love and its consequences in France have a darker side: there are at least 400,000 illegal (and therefore dangerous ) abortions each year, and many authorities believe that the total is 800,000-equal to the number of live births. Authorities see a significant relation between this high abortion rate and the fact that the prescription and sale of all contraceptives is forbidden by a French law passed...
...that saga goes back to 1793, when a debonair Frenchman named Jean Pierre Blanchard ascended from the yard of Philadelphia's Walnut Street prison in a balloon, accompanied by a small, whimpering dog. While President George Washington and hundreds of Philadelphians craned their necks in amazement, Blanchard panicked a squadron of pigeons and drifted nonchalantly out of sight. After 46 minutes in the air, he plopped down in a woodland 15 miles away and placated the scared natives with wine...
...every taste. "You can get a bit tired of hamburgers and milk shakes,'' said one vacationing Briton. French wine connoisseurs are dismayed to find that so many good French vintages wind up in the U.S. But an even more disturbing discovery is often in store. One Frenchman ordered a vintage red Burgundy with his dinner in a Denver restaurant, to his horror saw the waiter serve it chilled. Other native customs prove unsuspected traps. Male tourists accustomed to leaving their shoes outside their hotel room doors for a free shine, find them still there grubby and dusty...
...Only a Frenchman with an anesthetized palate would dream of setting out on an auto trip without a fat little red book nestled in his glove compartment-the Guide Michelin, France's gastronomical bible, maker and breaker of restaurant reputations from Paris to the Pyrenees. But in the U.S., tourists tend to take better care of their cars than of their stomachs. Four years ago, the dietetically neutral Socony Mobil Oil Co. joined forces with the Simon & Schuster publishing company in a venture to reduce the U.S.'s highway heartburn: a seven-volume domestic imitation ($1 a volume...