Air conditioning in France

Even the cinemas in France aren’t air-conditioned! That’s what an American with us the other day watching “The Interpreter” would surely have said. In fact, they usually are air-conditioned; it just happened the air conditioning wasn’t working in that cinema that evening. Interestingly, this didn’t bother most people, who went in anyway.

Southeastern France has just been through ten days or so of this-is-as-hot-as-it-gets. Temperatures have been in the mid-90’s (33-36°C). Yesterday the mercury allegedly hit 38°C (100°F). People seem very stoic about it, especially when you consider that the last time it happened in June (2003), August was even worse. For the most part, though, people also know it won’t last, in contrast to many regions of the US, where it’s this hot from May until September. Nevertheless ....

Air conditioning is a complicated business in France. Office buildings constructed within the last 10 years are often, but not always, air conditioned; older ones rarely are. Schools, many government buildings, museums, some stores, and – as we all know since the summer of 2003 – many hospitals, are not. Apartment buildings, even newly constructed ones like ours, almost never are. An air-conditioned apartment building in France is the lap of luxury.

In the US, even if your building has no central air, putting in your own (window) air conditioner is easy. You open the window, position the air conditioner, being careful not to drop it onto the sidewalk below, pull down the window, tighten a couple of screws, and you’re in business. In France, however, ….

To begin with, there are no sash windows in France (they’re called fenêtres à guillotine here!), only – you guessed it – French windows, those lovely, floor-to-ceiling affairs that let you gaze out onto the countryside or cityscape and take in the fresh morning air. So you’d have to use a free-standing unit with a tube sticking out the (open) window. Then as much hot air comes in as is evacuated by the air conditioner. When the wind blows, the very air you’ve just sent out comes blowing back in.

If this is unsatisfactory and you want to install a central air-conditioning system in your city apartment in France, you first have to deal with your neighbors. Air conditioners are noisy, especially someone else’s, and noise is one of the chief complaints of the residents of French apartment buildings. Not that French people are noisier than, say, Americans. On the contrary, they’re quieter. While Americans are taught as they grow up to speak loudly and clearly, that it is impolite to mumble, French children are taught to speak softly, especially in public. So the slightest noise bothers them: children playing in the courtyard of an apartment building, someone speaking into a cell phone on the train, etc. Even if you are installing central air conditioning in an unattached house, you should make sure the compressor unit in the backyard isn’t too close to the neighbors’ property or you will get complaints about the noise. (Funny, in our apartment building, people seem to object to the hum of an air conditioner, but not to people partying on their balconies until midnight or so, with the accompanying bursts of laughter, but I’m digressing again.)

To complicate matters further, in France you are generally not allowed to install anything in your apartment that changes the outside appearance of the building, and air conditioners do. Things that change the outside appearance, such as shutters, must be approved by a majority of the apartment owners in such a way as to give the building a uniform appearance. In other words, everyone must select the same shutters. Now in a building like ours, where most apartments have balconies that face the courtyard, not the street, it is unclear to what extent this rule applies. There is general agreement that the prohibition against hanging laundry out to dry on your balcony (most people don’t have dryers) is a firm one. Satellite dishes are a gray area, because people cannot be deprived of their droit à l’image, some kind of fundamental right to receive TV broadcasts (I wonder if that was in the European constitution...). Anyway, it clearly doesn’t apply strictly, or you wouldn’t be able to plant geraniums (or only if all owners voted to plant geraniums, but then you wouldn’t be able to plant petunias). Then there’s a whole category of items people find simply unsightly or unesthetic. In other words, they won’t want to see your stuff on your balcony, whether it’s your gardening tools, your bicycles, your fishing rods, your extra refrigerator, etc., if it happens to face their balcony. In short, there’s no way round it: you will have to get the owners of all units to approve your air conditioner by a majority vote.

What is air conditioned in France is franco-cooled, not ameri-cooled. Mind you, this has advantages. For example, you don’t need a down jacket to go into the frozen-food aisle of the supermarket. In fact, when you first walk into an air-conditioned building in France, the difference compared with the outside is relatively subtle, and only after a while do you realize that it’s actually quite comfortable. So if you want your apartment ameri-cooled (soon I’ll get rid of the hyphen), you will have to order double the recommended power ratings.

Yesterday my singing group gave a concert in a rehabilitation center. The center has existed for 30 years or so, but a spanking new wing – you know what’s coming – has just been built in the last two years. We sang in the conference center in the new wing. When we first walked into the building, it seemed air conditioned, but I wasn’t sure. Then I noticed all the windows in the conference room were open. A half-hour later I noticed sweat trickling down my back as I sang. But no one seemed to find this unusual. No one (including me!) said “For crying out loud, even this brand new building has no air conditioning!” No, everyone accepted it as normal on a hot day. I was too embarrassed to ask if the building had air conditioning.

In addition to the cost of energy, this preference for francocooling (told you) is in part because French people simply don’t like air conditioning. They think it’s unhealthy and spreads germs and diseases, such as legionellosis (it does, but only in rare cases). They think that it creates too much of a difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures, so that when you go from one to the other, the body undergoes a sort of shock. We even have one friend who insists that the difference in temperature between an air-conditioned room and the outdoors should not exceed 6°C (11°F). Thus, if it is 35°C (95°F) outside, it should be no less than 29°C (84°F) indoors. Ever work in a 29°C (84°F) office? Does this 6° rule apply in the winter, too?

Since the summer of 2003, a plan canicule or “heat wave plan” has been devised. The plan bears a lot of resemblance to the color-coded terrorist alert levels in the US. A lot of money was spent creating it; no one knows what it actually means.

Hospitals are no more air conditioned than they were two years ago. I heard a TV news report two days ago about elderly people in a small rest home or extended care facility somewhere in the south. They had 11 fans for 22 rooms.

In August 2003, when there was a power failure in New York, it was treated virtually as a healthcare emergency. People with heart conditions and other vulnerabilities were without air conditioning and this was considered very dangerous. Yet it wasn’t even terribly hot, maybe 30°C (86°F). Back in that small French rest home, the social workers said the heat was insidious. The elderly didn’t notice the heat and had to be told to drink, they said.

I remember the last time I went to a baseball game with my father. The temperature was in the mid-eighties (28-30°C) at game time and it was humid. By the seventh inning, my father’s congestive heart failure was making it hard for him to breathe. He noticed it and so did I. He said needed to get into air conditioning, which he did as soon as we got to the car.

What happens to these people in France, even in “normal” summers? Do they all pop off without anyone taking notice? I’ve been here 16 years, but this is still a topic that confuses me. Another French paradox?

When you look at these differences between France and the US – and presumably between other European countries and the US – you begin to realize the enormous amounts of energy that must be consumed air conditioning all those buildings in America and to understand why the statistics show that the United States alone emits 25% of the planet’s greenhouse gases. France could do with more air conditioning, particularly in hospitals, but couldn’t America do with a few less 65°F frozen-food aisles and air-conditioned sports stadiums?

Food Glorious Food II

A few weeks ago, after a review of a book called French Women Don’t Get Fat appeared in the New York Times, I wrote a long piece about obesity, French and American eating habits and how, despite what the author of the book says, obesity is gaining ground in France. Last week an article was published in Les Echos (subscription required) with the following title: Jean-Marie Le Guen (PS) dépose une proposition de loi pour endiguer l'obésité (“Jean-Marie Le Guen (Socialist party MP) sponsors a bill to counter obesity”). The bill suggests the creation of a high-level commission that would establish a code of good conduct for agri-food companies, restrict advertising and require health warnings on certain products. The bill’s sponsor also called obesity “the number one public health problem of the 21st century.”

Personally I would have put cigarette smoking, malaria and AIDS higher on the list of the world’s health problems, but everyone’s entitled to his opinion. It is interesting to note, however, the virulence of the reaction against weight upcreep in this country. An anti-smoking mentality is gaining ground too, but the need not to smoke doesn’t seem nearly as ingrained – if at all – as the need not to be fat. Indeed, a follow-up article in the Times to the French Women Don’t Get Fat book review pointed out that they don’t because they smoke. I think the article reflected France 10 or 20 years ago more than France today, but it still had a lot of truth to it.

Last month I attended the annual presentation of cancer research grants given out by the Ligue contre le cancer in the Rhône département. One of the officials presenting the awards mentioned the following statistics: over the past 30 years mortality from cancer has remained flat in France. If you remove lung cancer alone, however, the death rate from all other cancers has declined by 30% over the same period. In other words, lung cancer deaths, particularly among women, have risen dramatically. He also said that it is estimated one billion people worldwide will die from tobacco-related illnesses in the 21st century.

As dangerous and insidious as obesity may be, the tobacco problem sounds a lot more alarming.

Food glorious food

The Bush budget battle is raging enough already, so I won’t add to it ... except to say that we may yet get to see whose side the Bush administration is really on and what I meant by “hoodwinked” (see January 5 post). If you’re patient, I think you’ll see them get their comeuppance.

Also, Riverbend is back with a personal report on the Iraqi elections, another fascinating post. I don’t know how representative of Iraqi opinion her point of view is, but it’s so eloquently written that it’s hard to resist its pull (unless of course you think the whole blog is a hoax).

But this time I want to write about something entirely unconnected to Iraq, budget deficits, Social Security (back to them in future posts), something quintessentially French.

The Book Review section of last Sunday’s New York Times contained a review of French Women Don’t Get Fat, written by a French woman living in the US. The article stayed at the top of the “Most E-mailed Articles” list on the NYT website for a couple of days, so maybe my ramblings on the subject will interest a few people. Apparently the author thinks Americans don’t have the right attitude towards food and should exercise more rather than try to eat less.

Do books like this one, with all their sensible advice about how to enjoy food, about the importance of quality over quantity and balanced diets, make it over the horizon of mainstream American consciousness? I would tend to say no, but I’ve been out of the country for 15 years. A book inspired by a culture viewed as disdainful of everything American and convinced of how right it is about the way society should be would seem to have little chance for success in America. It might also fall into the not-invented-here category, too foreign, too worn-out, too inadaptable to today’s fast-paced, helter-skelter lifestyle.

It so happened I was already thinking about this topic when I read the article, because this week I signed up to attend my 25th college reunion. The class is conducting a survey about our careers and lifestyles, our beliefs and aspirations, in short, our lives since graduation. One of the questions asks us to provide a detailed breakdown of a typical week in our current lives, indicating the number of hours spent on each activity for a total of 168. Here are the possible categories:

Work
Volunteer/Community service
Commuting/traveling
Family care and activities
Housework/maintenance
Time with spouse/partner/date
Exercise/sports/physical activity
Other time for self (hobbies, leisure)
Social with friends and colleagues
Sleep
Studying
In the nation’s service
Other

French classmates will probably be making heavy use of the “Other” category. There’s nowhere else to put “mealtimes”.

In France eating is a ritual, an important activity that cannot be circumvented. Eating takes place at set times, almost always at a table. The day is neatly compartmentalized in France: breakfast, morning activity, lunch, afternoon activity, dinner. (OK, so sometimes I also sneak pretzels into the office late at night for blogging inspiration after my wife and kids are asleep.) Activities rarely obliterate meal times. Meals rarely overlap with other activities. They’re an activity unto themselves.

French people snack at designated times, too. Four o’clock in the afternoon is snack time throughout France. This applies primarily to kids, but it is so ingrained, it applies to adults as well. Have you ever been to Chamonix? Aside from Mont Blanc, there are a few other notable mountain peaks. One is called “L’aiguille du Midi” (literally, “the noon peak”), because the sun is over it at noon. Another is called “L’aiguille du Goûter”, because the sun is over it at 4PM. “Goûter” means “snack”.

Pan back to North America, where my (French) wife remembers a summer morning on a beach in Cape Cod a few years ago. It was around 10:30 AM. The sky was overcast, and not many people were swimming or sunbathing. But people were sitting in beach chairs, enjoying the warmth and the sound of the waves. My wife noticed that of the dozen or so people seated in a row, facing the water, every single one of them had something to eat or drink in his or her hands. In France at 10:30 AM, breakfast is long over and lunch is still an hour and a half away.

People don't eat in French movie theaters. French high school students don’t eat in class (if they do they might be asked to leave). French people don’t like eating contests or all-you-can-eat specials. Vendors don't prowl the aisles at French sporting events. Strollers for children in France don't have cup holders.

Now, I like to snack, I’ve actually been laughed at for eating, say, French fries at 5 PM, and this goes against my grain. But when I do manage to forget about food and not eat anything all afternoon, dinner is so much more enjoyable. It’s easier to forget about food all afternoon in France, though, because it isn’t so omnipresent.

For me, French Women Don’t Get Fat seems right on target about a lot of things I’ve noticed in France and that my wife has noticed in the US, regarding the two countries’ respective attitudes towards food. Problem is, it’s hard to change it all by yourself; it’s a lot easier when society helps. Alcoholics on the wagon don’t go into bars. Similarly, an American who wants to follow French eating habits amid America’s constant opportunities to pig out, is fighting an uphill battle. (My wife has cousins in America who could tell you all about it!)

Notwithstanding all this, believe it or not, French people, discerning epicures that they are, actually like American foods once they try them. They adore our breakfasts, for example. My wife has her own list of favorites: pancakes, bagels, Caesar salads, thick juicy hamburgers, clam chowder soup, New York deli sandwiches and my aunt’s sweet and savory chicken (recipe available on request!).

Finally, lest you think that France is some immutable, timeless ideal in this realm, France is changing. Fast food restaurants are proliferating, not only American chains, but French snack foods too. Doctors and school officials are bemoaning the increasing rate of child obesity, which a recent study found was correlated with TV-watching. Parents want soft drink machines banned from schools.

In Paris and other big cities, the 2-hour lunch break is only a distant memory. It still exists in rural areas and in French schools, where it seems safely entrenched, but I sometimes wonder if even there its days aren’t numbered. Because of it, primary school doesn’t end until 4:30 PM, seriously limiting time for homework and extracurricular activities, which are expanding.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each country could just take the best from the other’s food culture and leave over the rest?