politics and beer

The French love talking about politics. A Sunday lunch can easily turn into a dinner due to heated debates between the family members. In a restaurant or at a bar, feeling rise to the surface and nobody thinks about keeping their preferences a secret. Thus last night, when the debate between the two presidential candidates was on TV the city of Paris fell silent.

As soon as we got out of class, we jumped on our bikes and raced through the quiet city to a bar with a big screen (yes, we actually had to, unlike all the frenchies go to a bar because none of us has a TV). There we were, three Dutch, one Belge, one Spanish and one Finn, others with a huge pint and me with a large diet coke (yeah, even politics doesn’t make me drink beer). The atmosphere was like that of an important football match.

Obviously most of us are economics or politics students and thus by definition interested in politics but yet the heated discussion went beyond my expectations. Not only can we not vote but also we seemed to be unable to stick to one language at any one time – comments went from English to French and back to English and then to Dutch (with me commenting in between with bad Afrikaans) and somebody else trying to explain himself in Spanish. Despite not really being able to agree on anything at the beginning we were all happy not to be French – it is hard to choose between two bad candidates.

2 minutes before the end of the debate the candidates changed the subject and concentrated on Europe. We cracked – how French indeed? Why would it be important to know what the president of the world’s fifth nation thinks about Europe or the EU? Well, apparently neither of the two speaks English properly, not to mention any other language so maybe the lack of interested in European matter can easily be explained.

The debate ran overtime and we decided it was time to go home.

But quite honestly – I am happy not to be French.