Looking For A Good Reference: Gros Tournois

Years ago I worked in my company's French research lab. I travelled around Europe making presentations of various kinds. I remember a visit to one of our factories near Linz, where I heard the complaint that all the lab reports came back in French. I suggested that the lab should start writing them in German. Quelle horreur! They said that English would be just fine, thank you.

Are you familiar with the 1997 Ashmolean book on the gros tournois? Abebooks (www.abebooks.com) lists a cc for about $10.

The relationship between France and Austria was a bit tense politically at that time because of Haider, but that was not the real problem. The plant in Austria only had one person competent to translate the tedious French technical reports. Our lab had been certified ISO but that did not mean that what they wrote was coherent, even in French.

My favorite French pastries are viennoiserie and I enjoy musette accordion street music. The French consider jazz to be a national product (from the verb jaser). None of these are really French, and they know it. They like to put on airs and thumb their nose at the rest of the world, because they took the best part of many cultures as their own and left out the bad parts. If you're there be sure to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Bland and rich food, not bad, but what I consider a Vietnamese/French amalgam. And what wine do you take with it? Rose! It's as if they couldn't decide between red and white, so made an inexpensive compromise.

One of my French colleagues periodically travelled to Quebec for conferences. He asked people there to speak to him in English because he couldn't understand their French. Not that he could understand my French any better, but we always spoke in English. I only used French in desperate situations.