Side Trips: the Boonies, Apparently
Chevreuse, à province My latest favorite French expression is à province , which generally denotes everywhere in France that is not Paris. Example: "Habite-il à province?" (Does he live outside of the capital?) "Oui, à Marseille." (Yes, in Marseille) To say " à province" is like referring to rural areas in the US as the boonies or the sticks. Except that in France, it basically applies to the entire country, with the exception of 0.019% of France's European territory (105 km2 out of 543,940) where about 3% of its population lives. For a factual statement (a person or thing is or is not in the capital), it therefore packs an impressive and revealing degree of snobbery. No place else is in the world can capture the imagination or simultaneously embody so many different things--fashion, culture, gastronomie, industrial innovation, royal excess, revolutionary zeal, intellectual courage, imperial overreach, faded grandeur--as Paris. But why rub it in? 35