Why I would never want to live in France

Hello again! Here is my new experience with "french culture". Let's start with very interesting and recent survey - 50% of French totally disagree to following statement - "The free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world." Only 36% of French agree. The numbers are even worse that in Russia! The average values from various countries in the world (including USA, China, Canada, Mexico, India, Russia, Nigeria...) is agreement 65% and disagreement 25%. Nice results, French comrades! See for yourself at GlobeScan Report, page 3.

For yesterday we planned a small trip to Parc du Pilat which is close to Lyon. Nothing special, but at least the spare day would be used for something. So in the morning (11am) we get into the car and I headed to Carrefour gas station to get some gas. Oops, it's Sunday, so it's closed. So I tried another one, the small station with higher prices (I thought that they might be open so they can make some profit!). Oops, nobody there, come on who would work on Sunday! In France, only Arabs do in their shops where you buy things from Carrefour at triple price. And also machines do work. The last gas station was equipped only with stands with credit card payment, so we got our gas. Oh by the way, the credit card could be only French Carte Bancaire, a regular international one does not work. Well they can close their shops, I don't care, but gas stations?? What a great progressive country!

In the evening yesterday, we had a small party to celebrate David's (Spanish) birthday. In the party atmosphere, Maria which is living in Lyon asked me, if I could give her a ride next morning back to city. I asked her&myself why, she can take the bus, can't she? I was quite surprised when she answered that on 1st May - Fete du Travail (Labor Day) there are no buses and no subway. Not just Sunday regime with one bus per hour, but absolutely no connection. You cannot get anywhere! (Well you can just call taxi or have a french bank card to get some gas.) Funny thing is, that Lyon's subway is even not human-operated but the driver is a computer - so it's nice that the machines also get some rest to relax and celebrate!

Today we made a small trip as well. Passing Carrefour, we saw something that really made all of us laugh. We came back to take a picture so I can share it here. Let's name the situation "Stupid French." and make it finish this post in which I have explained why I would never like to live in developed Western European but truly Socialist country called France.