…and if you don’t know this expression, it simply means: we’re going down. In the 1960s, France boasted with 200.000 cafés, bistros and café-tabacs, today there’s only 30.000 left. In 2009 alone, 2000 or so publicans went out of business. In Paris you can find the ruins of their run-down établissements at every corner, yet some of them are quite pretty, actually. Look at this:
There’s multiple reasons for this, amongst the most cited are: the prohibitive non-smoking-policy, the bad food quality, the changing lifestyles…and there’s some truth to that, of course. Yet the real problem is an economic one. Real estate prices have sky-rocketed in the last decades. So much so that it makes much more sense to sell designer clothes nowadays than just a cup of coffee, a glass of Sancerre, a Croque Monsieur. So the cafés and bistros remaining need our help. Go there! Enjoy life! Consume! And leave good tips, will you!?
Sadly things change, even for the frogs, but they do not know it, or notice it!
They are to self-centered and busy queuing up at the pharmacy for drugs, bloody hypochondriacs!!! HAIL ENGLAND!
xxxx Benny
Forgot one thing, never leave TIPS for the FRENCH!
warm regards Anton
You could leave a pourboire then…