learningfrench

I am planning to spend about a month in France next September to help me with my goal of learning to speak French. I think I would like to stay about an hour from Paris, by train, in a small , quaint town. I want to be able to speak with the people who live there, go for walks, sit in the outdoor cafes, etc. I usually do not like to travel to large cities but I think since I will be there for a while, I should visit the Louvre and other famous places. I could go into Paris for a day once in a while. I will not have a car, so will need to be near the centre ville and in a town that is on the train route

maryanne1

Having just returned from a riverboat trip last week stopping in towns I think Rouen would be a good one to visit on the train route.
A much smaller one is Les Andelys,but not sure about the train route there.

Christina

This request may be a slight problem because few places I consider a village have a train station. But maybe when you say village you just mean a small town, you do say town later (and if you are worried about being in centre ville, it must be a place of some size). What size town are you looking for? Because usually there aren't a lot of train stations in places less than around 10-15K population. There are exceptions of small places in the suburbs of Paris as to places that would be on the suburban rail RER line as commuters would use it, but they wouldn't be an hour away from Paris.

A few suggestions, Auvers-sur-Oise does have some very pretty areas and while a tourist destination (Van Gogh lived there a while and is buried there) and not an hour from Paris, it is on the suburban rail line and is close to what I'd call a village (population is less than 10K) http://www.auvers-sur-oise.com/

I'd also recommend Moret-sur-Loing which isn't a big tourist spot at all (except some French tourists, mostly, doing weekend trips) but is a lovely small town with a nice river and mill, and a small train station but is within an hour or less of Paris. It even has a few interesting buildings. It's not too far from Fontainebleau. http://www.ville-moret-sur-loing.fr/


French people are not going to immediately be your friend if you show up in a small village where people have lived there forever, with you being a foreiger and not speaking French well. Just a warning. Of course you can talk to people in shops just like anywhere, but it may not be something out of Marcel Pagnol, that's all I'm saying.

Personally, I think you should take French classes rather than just spend time in a small town if your goal is really to improve your language skills notably, or perhaps if you don't know French at all now (it's not clear, but almost sounds like it). If you don't know French at all, you won't learn to speak it just by being in a small town for a month.

greg

There is actually a book called "An Hour from Paris." http://www.amazon.com/Hour-Paris-Ann...0345893&sr=8-1

isabel

I agree with Christina that what you want to do is probably not as great an idea as it sounds. Other than people in stores, who do you plan to talk with? Think about your daily life where ever you live. How many strangers do you have much in the way of conversations with?

Have you considered language classes? There are lots of language schools which have formal classes in the morning and often activities of some sort in the afternoon where you speak with other students - so they may not be fluent in French either but at least they will be someone to practice with.

I would also rethink wanting to be in a small town/village. In a city there are museums, plays, cultural events, etc where you would probably have a lot more opportunity to talk to people.

FrenchMystiqueTours

I think Christina and isabel have given you some really good advice as to what your experience is going to be like. I think whether or not this experience would work for you depends a lot on your personality. You'll really have to force yourself to interact with people while not being overly perky and intrusive. If you have some French language skills then you would probably be quickly known by the locals if you were in a smaller place. Yes, you'll have to become somewhat of a regular at cafés, restaurants, grocery stores etc. as these are probably the places you're most likely to have a chance to meet people. If you are able to straddle that border between being outgoing and not being overly intrusive the locals will probably consider you a novel curiosity and will happily accept you and treat you well.

The other thing you have to think about is where are you going to stay? It's not like there are lots of places to rent for only 1 month in a lot of small towns and villages. I would think your best option is to try and get into some sort of exchange program where you could stay in a French home. That would really be an ideal situation to interact with locals and improve your French skills.

If you could give some feedback about what your thoughts are after reading mine and the other poster's responses and if you still think you'd like to try this experience of staying in a small town or village for a month then I could give you lots of suggestions. I have extensively biked through and explored the countryside within an hour of Paris in just about any direction you can think of and I know of many small towns and villages that are served by a rail line to Paris and I'd be happy to recommend them to you. Before I go through all the effort of describing them I'd like to hear what you have to say after reading the feedback you've been given.

annhig

Hi, lf,

I would second the suggestion that you enrol in a language school for at least part of the time. you could really improve if you spent a month at it, but even 2 weeks would be a huge help - much better IMHO than struggling along by yourself in a little village where opportunities to speak more than the most general remarks may be few and far between.

I'm not just guessing about this - earlier this year I spent a week at a language school in Italy followed by a few days in Florence. even in the one week i felt that I had made progress [2 weeks would have been more than twice as good] but when I got to Florence, I had to work really hard to find opportunities to practice my italian.

3 weeks at language school followed by a week or so in a large town would be the best option, I think.

TPAYT

greg---thanks for the book link. I love to read about Paris plus anywhere else in France. I've ordered it along with

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Beautiful...ref=pd_sim_b_5

which I found at the bottom of the page of your link. I can't wait to add them to my collection.

kerouac

Some outer suburbs might fit the bill, because they have easy transportation to Paris but also a cosmopolitan mix of residents with whom it would easier to be in contact -- and also language schools. Pontoise, Noisy-le-Grand, or even Versailles might be worth looking into.

Michel_Paris

In Paris:

http://adrianleeds.com/events/parler-parlor

Sarastro

Not knowing your present language skills makes recommendations difficult. As others have accurately pointed out, the idea that moving to a charming village will offer you the opportunity to improve your French is more a romantic notion than it is a practical reality. Making friends with the locals might be more of a challenge that it might seem. The French will probably be very polite to you as a stranger, but they will remain very guarded and hesitant about developing any personal relationship, particularly with someone who will remain but a few weeks.

You might look into one of the schools in Tours, one hour from Paris by TGV. Tours, a university town, has a vibrant and active social environment among students both at the university and among those attending its language schools. Centered in old Tours, Place Plumereau offers cafés, restaurants, and lots of people in a convivial setting. It might provide you a social conduit allowing you to develop relationships with local students.

Take a look at what this school offers. Its been teaching French to foreigners for a long time:

http://www.institutdetouraine.com/en

qwovadis

www.chartres-tourisme.com

www.beaune.com

My top 2 prettiest best towns albeit more tourist for a reason

Begin rosettastone.com B4 you go

hospitalityclub.com for good locals to stay/do immersion with

Did this it worked great...

qwovadis

hosptalityclub.org immersion far better cheaper

than any school I have seened most designed for tourists

larger classes one on one costs a fortune many folks have

commercial motives for putting you in a school.

Just say no...

qwovadis

eurocheapo.com/paris great map budget tips lodging

Happy Travels!

annhig

many folks have

commercial motives for putting you in a school.>>

i certainly don't!

quovadis - your link did not work for me.

StCirq

There aren't any commercial motives for putting you in a school. That's absurd.

I also think a school is a much more realistic approach to learning French in France. Even when I bought my house in a small (teensy) village in France 20 years ago I already spoke pretty fluent French, and hardly anyone was interested in chatting with me on a regular basis. I got to know lots of the locals eventually and even made some good friends who did spend a lot of time talking with me, in my home and theirs, but that took years and years, and it was more a matter of having to deal with workmen who changed my septic tank, built me an iron railing, replaced a well cover, etc. It wasn't as though I'd walk through the village and folks would want to chat. Even in the larger towns where I went to market every week and got to know the vendors and shopped at the local supermarkets and hardware stores and got to know the cashiers...people would have utilitarian conversations and then move on. I think your idea is purely romantic and not realistic. You're simply not going to move into an apartment (if you can find one) in a "village" outside Paris and suddenly be yakking up a storm with the locals, even if you're already fluent, which it doesn't sound like you are. There's a reason institutions offer immersion COURSES, as immersion doesn't just happen on its own. I know folks who've lived in villages in the Dordogne for decades who still can't speak decent French and have only minimal contact with their neighbors. Even if you had a really aggressive or extrovert personality and tried to force people into talking to you, it wouldn't work because the French are a far more reticent people than Americans and would read your personality as weird and aberrant and probably shut down entirely.

Sorry, but I think your idea needs a lot of rethinking. Go to Paris or a big city and enroll in the Alliance Française or a good immersion program.

persimmondeb

I don't know anything about small towns/villages near Paris, but I will say that the idea of real world immersion isn't necessarily strange, depending on how the OP learns language. I don't learn well in classrooms, but if you force me to function in another language I suddenly improve by leaps and bounds. I don't need to (and don't have the kind of personality that leads me to) have personal conversations with strangers, but if I suddenly have to buy ice cream or ferry tickets in French, I can. It's probably pretty painful, but I was impressed that I could do it. Just hearing other people speaking it helps a lot.

I once spent a couple of days racketing around London with a Frenchwoman who was spending her holidays in a hostel in London trying to improve her English. It was already pretty decent, but she was trying for a better accent (and loved mine, which is a neutral Northeastern one). Obviously she thought it worth a month of her time and money.

learningfrench

Thank you for the replies. I think I like the town of Moret-sur-Loing. I am having a difficult tome getting the train schedules from CDG airport to Moret-sur-Loing. I have looked on Gare de Lyon(Paris train) but when I enter Moret-sur-Loing, it ells me there is no station there, but I know ther is. Do I have to change trains in Paris?

kerouac

Yes, you have to change trains in Paris.

farrermog

The station for M-s-L is Moret Veneux-les-Sablons (the town centre a walk of 15 mins or so). Had a pleasant few hours there earlier this year even before spring had sprung.

More here

http://lifeslittleadventures.typepad...sur-loing.html

(a chance discovery while hastily putting together my trip)