Hôtel l’Elysée - taken for a ride!

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Hôtel l'Elysee, Val d'Europe

This is the report that I shared on TripAdvisor about my stay last September in the Hôtel l’Elysée outside Paris, near Disneyland.

I stayed here with my girlfriend for 3 days in September. We chose to stay here because it was a great deal cheaper than the Disneyland “Sequoia Lodge” hotel, which would’ve been our first choice. I think from the pictures and the reviews on TripAdvisor, we’d managed to convince ourselves that although the price for the room was relatively cheap it wasn’t a “cheap hotel”. However, upon first entering the hotel we were quickly disabused of that particular illusion - the hotel smelt like the Ibis Stevenage. Furthermore, the wi-fi, although free, was tortuously slow and there were some unsightly looking marks on the toilet seat.

Which isn’t to say it was all bad. It was conveniently close to Disneyland with a free shuttle service to take us there and there was free wi-fi (albeit slow and buggy with page time-outs). But we had a fantastic time at Disneyland - I recommend going on the “Finding Nemo” rollercoaster which is great fun.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Not unlike the American Embassy, Disneyland Paris is a
little piece of the USA on French soil.

Basically you get what you pay for with this place.

There was one thing however, that really did irk me and which I think merits a complaint. We got terrible service when calling for a cab to take us to the station where we could catch the airport express shuttle. They didn’t call a regular taxi, but some shuttle service, with whom, I’m sure, they have some kind of arrangement. We were already pushing it with time, but we had to wait another 15 minutes for this shuttle service. When we finally were in the shuttle, he didn’t take us direct to our destination, but instead picked-up two other passengers, notwithstanding that we had told him what time we had to be at the station. The driver himself was a caricature of a sleazebag unscrupulous cab-driver, when I complained to him at the end of the trip for getting us to the destination later than we’d asked he tried to blame us for not departing early enough, and then to top it all off when I offered him 50EUR for the fare he pretended not to have any change! It wasn’t until I demanded his name that he finally produced four 10EUR notes. Slimey son of a …

Needless to say we missed our shuttle bus and had to pay another taxi to take us all the way to Charles de Gaulle. This time we found an honest cab-driver from the long cab-rank at the station. The fare ended-up costing 70EUR!

And I’ll leave the story about the easyJet flight and landing at Luton airport for another post!

Whatever Happened to the Rude French?



Image via Tom Häkkinen
Disneyland Paris

Disneyland Paris is not really in Paris. In fact, it’s not really in France at all. Like the U.S. Embassy, Disneyland Paris is a little piece of America in the centre of Europe (Val d’Europe to be precise). And it is populated by a kind of Euromerican, typical American suburban families, except that they hail from the Netherlands, or Germany or Italy or England.

And the most frustrating thing about Disneyland Paris is that it’s almost impossible to speak French there. Unless that is, you speak very fast and very fluently, or unless someone is trying to rip you off. The worst people there are the smug service staff who work at hotel receptions, McDonald’s counters and other places never frequented by le vrai français. These are people who can speak 5 different languages with varying degrees of fluency and they take delight in correcting your broken French and then proceeding to talk down to you in English. And if you’ve ever been talked down to by someone serving you French fries at McDonalds you’ll know it’s not a fantastic feeling.

In fact, if you wish to maintain your dignity with these smug gits the best thing to do is to begin in English from the get go – without so much as a “parlez-vous anglais?” or even a “do you speak English?” – and simply expect them to know what you’re talking about. But, having some small proficiency in French I can never bring myself to take this philistine route. So I begin in French and feel under intense pressure not to give myself away as a native English speaker – even if this means nodding in agreement and replying “oui, d’accord” when in fact I have no idea what the other person has just said to me. Because just a single “pardon?” will straight-away give me away – upon hearing this word, the smug-git-member-of-staff will immediately narrow his or her eyes at me and re-evaluate his or her initial impression:

« Hmm, ceci n’est pas un vrai français – il est un anglais, en déguisement d’un français – ceci est un imposteur ! »

And so inevitably the smug git’s next response will be “Ingleesh? Yass?” and he or she will say so with a decidedly superior tone.

At times I wish I could wear a shirt or carry a sign that read:

« Je suis un idiot. Parlez-moi lentement – pas en anglais ! »

I would actually be grateful if people would speak to me slowly like an idiot and not immediately switch to English for my benefit. Because the thing is I can speak French, having been learning on-and-off for the better part of five years I have by now a decent working vocabulary, I just find it difficult to hear the words when native French speakers speak so fast. If only French people came with subtitles below them that would be the ideal solution – unfortunately this isn't the case.

The last thing is, often-times, the smug-git-member-of-staff’s English won’t be near as much cause for feeling superior as he or she might think it is. And this sometimes causes problems, as I remember upon seeing a member of staff yelling “French fries, you want French fries” at a poor customer once, when from my position back in the queue I could see that wasn’t what she wanted at all.

Image via Tom Häkkinen
Does this monument not posses a certain...
arrogance?

Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned rude Frenchman of the type you are still likely to find in an SNCF office when your ticket has been cancelled? You know, the type who will suddenly turn cold and unhelpful even after the meekest and most humble of “parlez-vous anglais?”. Or who will pretend not to know English out of spite if he or she doesn’t like your attitude. Whatever happened to that famous French arrogance which made the country great. Because, whilst these service assistants can be smug and pretentious and even sometimes snobbish and cliqueish it takes real arrogance to know how to speak English perfectly and yet not do so just because you'd rather speak French. And a whole sort of "je ne sais quoi" or "savoir vivre" or "jeu d'esprit" accompanies that kind of arrogance.

It's in fact not altogether unlike the arrogance of those writers who refuse to translate quotations from foreign languages!