Pandas in France – Huang Huang and Yuang Zi at Zooparc Beauval

It’s the Chinese New Year today – Happy Year of the Dragon to everyone – so a very good time to talk about pandas, China’s most dramatic export.
France now has a pair of pandas at Beauval. We visited there last summer and at the time we commented on how OTT the Chinese section of the [...]

FEDAE – Working To Support Auto-Entrepreneurs

I joined a union today. See, I’m taking my drive to become a French national this year very seriously.
I’ve signed up with the FEDAE – Fédération des auto-entrepreneurs. And on a good day since today the federation presented its livre blanc to the government. A livre blanc, literally white book, is an official document published [...]

Sold On Les Soldes

France went on sale today, 11th January. From now until 14 February the soldes are taking place in the vast majority of the country. A few stubborn or otherwise non-conformist départements are holding theirs on different dates.
However, they may not be up to much this year since various surveys have found that many French people [...]

Record Weather for France in 2011

It’s official. 2011 was the hottest year in France since 1900, beating previous record holder 2003. The average temperature of 13.6 degrees C was 1.5 degrees higher than ‘usual’. This resulted from a warm spring and a warm autumn. Summer was actually quite disappointing with July being colder than normal.
The warm weather has continued into [...]