You should have no problem keeping in contact with people at home while
you are in France. The country has an efficient postal system and you
can have letters and packages sent general delivery to any of the
official branches. The Internet is widely accessible, and is gradually
displacing the now-primitive Minitel telnet system which France
pioneered. Should you need to use the phone, you can use cheap pre-paid
phone cards or access home-country operators via free numbers.
French
newspapers
(not to mention
radio
and
television
) will be of less interest if you are not a reader (or speaker) of
French. There are some local English-language magazines, but you will
probably find yourself reaching for an international edition of a
British or American newspaper or an international news magazine to keep
up on current events. These are available in major cities and tourist
centres, though they can get to be an expensive habit.
French
post offices
(
bureaux de poste
or
PTT
s) - look for bright yellow La Poste signs - are generally open 9am to
7pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to noon on Saturday. However, don't
depend on these hours: in smaller towns and villages offices may close
earlier and for lunch, while in Paris the main post office is open 24
hours.
You can receive mail at the central post offices of most towns.
It should be addressed (preferably with the surname first and in
capitals) " Poste Restante , Poste Centrale", followed by the name of
the town and its postcode. To collect your mail you need a passport or
other convincing ID and there may be a charge of around a couple of
francs. You should ask for all your names to be checked, as filing
systems are not brilliant.
For sending letters, remember that you can buy
stamps
(
timbres
) with less queuing from
tabacs
. Standard letters (20g or less) and postcards within France and to
European Union countries cost €0.46, to North America €0.67
and to Australia and New Zealand €0.79. Inside many post offices
you will find a row of yellow-coloured guichet automatiques - automatic ticket machines with
instructions available in English with which you can weigh packages and
buy the appropriate stamps; sticky labels and tape are also dispensed.
A machine can change notes into change, so there is no need to queue
for counter service. If you're sending parcels abroad, you can try to
check prices on the guichet if available or in various leaflets available:
small post offices don't often send foreign mail and may need
reminding, for example, of the reductions for printed papers and books.
You can also use Minitel at post offices, change money, make photocopies, send faxes and make phone calls. To post your letter on the street, look for the bright
yellow postboxes
.
E-Mail and Internet
Email
is the cheapest and most hassle-free way of staying in touch with home
while in France. Practically every reasonable-sized town has a cyber café or connection point of some sort, and in less
populated areas, the need is being filled by post offices, many of
which now have rather expensive public Internet terminals, which are
operated with a prepaid card (€7.63 for the first hour). In
addition France Telecom has street-side Internet kiosks in major
cities. Prices range from €2.29 to €9.15 per hour, so it can be
worth shopping around. It's easy to open a free email account to use
while you're away with Hotmail or Yahoo: head for www.hotmail.com
or
www.yahoo.com
to find out how.
The existence of Minitel and the relatively low level of personal
computer ownership in France contributed to the rather slow adoption of
the Internet here, but in recent years the situation has
changed and France as a nation has come fully on-line. Information
about practically every aspect of French culture and travel can now be
picked up on the Internet: government agencies are now on-line,
including even some of the smallest local tourist offices; in the
cultural sphere even the most obscure and esoteric associations have
discovered the importance of getting their message out over the Web;
and the hotel and restaurant businesses have come to realize that the
Net is a key to foreign markets. On the down side, many or most of
these pages do not have English-language versions, although they are gradually
coming to be seen as indispensible in all but the most locally focused
sites. As anywhere on the Net, persistent combing of links pages and
use of search engines (among the best are www.google.com
and
www.dogpile.com
, and the French
www.enfin.com
) will almost certainly get you the information you are looking for.
TV and Radio
French TV
has six channels: three public (France 2, Arte/La Cinquième and FR3);
one subscription (Canal Plus - with some unencrypted programmes); and
two commercial open broadcasts (TF1 and M6). In addition there are the cable networks, which include France Infos, CNN, the BBC
World Service, BBC Prime, MTV, Planète, which specializes in
documentaries, Paris Première (lots of French-dubbed films), and Canal
Jimmy ( Friends and the like in French). There are two music
channels: the American MTV and the French-run MCM, where you can get a
real education on French rap.
Arte/La Cinquième is a joint Franco-German cultural
venture that transmits simultaneously in French and German: offerings
include highbrow programmes, daily documentaries, art criticism,
serious French and German movies and complete operas. During the day
(6am-7pm), La Cinquième uses the frequency to broadcast educational
programmes. Canal Plus
is the main
movie channel
(and funder of the French film industry), with repeats of foreign films
usually shown at least once in the original language. FR3
screens a fair selection of serious movies, with its
Cinéma de Minuit
slot late on Sunday nights good for foreign, undubbed films. The main French
news broadcasts
are at 8.30pm on Arte and at 8pm on F2 and TF1.
If you've got a
radio
, you can tune into English-language news on the BBC World Service on
648kHz AM or 198kHz long wave from midnight to 5am (and Radio 4 during
the day). The Voice of America transmits on 90.5, 98.8 and 102.4 FM. If
you're in the Paris area, you can listen to the news in English
on Radio France International (RFI) for an hour (3-4pm) on 738 kHz AM. For radio
news in French
, there's the state-run France Inter (87.8 FM), Europe 1 (104.7 FM) or round-the-clock news on France Infos (105.5 FM).
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