Nancy Local Customs

We know that Nancy is a landmark in arts, but we were not expecting to see painters around, as seen in Paris. It happened in the garden called "La Pepiniere".

A very old man (more than one hundred years) approached us, identifying himself as Claude Oscar Monet (never heard!), and asking permission to paint us.

We had no much time, and posing under the rain was not the best idea, so we turned our back and tried to move away.

He insisted and in a couple of strokes painted something.

Na! I think that Monet has no future! Do you agree?

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Great local worldl-renown art tradition. A group of artists called "L'Ecole de Nancy" (end of 19 and 20 century) gathered in Nancy. The group of nouveau type art was founded by famous Emile Gall.

Musee den L'Ecole de Nancy is a beautiful museum with a cozy garden. The museum contains Gallee and others' main work.

Address: Rue du Sergent, Nancy

Coming from Germany I know how difficult it is to change from your native currency to the European currency EURO, but well, quite a few countries had to get used to that! I found it quite amusing, though, to see how much the French still stick to their former Franc:

we did see the most obscure price tags, like 3,27 € - something that must convert into 10 FF or 13,88 € (which once was probably around 40 FF) instead of the usual 4,99 € or 20 € or so!

The funniest thing that struck me was the way that parking meters were "converted" into Euro measures: since there were no odd money measures possible, they did it the other way around and charged an even amount of Euro for a very specific amount of time: 30 cents for 29 minutes or 1,50 € for 1 h 56 minutes!!!

There is a system to the French license plates:

to find out where the car was registered you have to look at the last two digits of the license plate. They correspond with the first two digits of the zip (postal) code of the area where the car is from. In Nancy for instance you will mostly find cars with a 54 as the last two numbers on the license plate, since the postal code of Nancy is 54000. The Alsace has 67, further south you find the 68 and so on - it is fun to track down the origins of the cars this way!

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People in Nancy seem to like dogs - and people!!! We did see quite a bit of evidence that dogs are cherished - they even have their own walking lanes!!! I have never seen anything like that before!

On the other hand people are being protected from dog poop - you find boxes with plastic bags (so called canisacs) all over the place! Very useful for dog poop disposal! I do not know if there is a fine for not removing your dog's "leftovers", but I could very well imagine that there is!

And hey, doesn't that little doggie look cute?

Besides architecture, Lorraine is famous today by its kitchen, which traditions in many respects is obliged to Stanislav's gourmandise. Everything, what about "to eat", is not less strong thing, than monuments and houses.

And "Stanislav's baba", the progenitor of our Soviet rum-baba which russian school buffets were full in due time, come from there. Only it was made not with rum, but with favorite wine of the king - "tokay".

Stanislav was a gourmet, a king of Sicily delivered a bergamot in Nancy, and very soon it won the heart of Stanislav. There is very tasty batch in Nancy, almond cookies, chocolate cookies with nuts, rum babas, - all this things were born in Nancy.

bonjour, bonsoir, merci, s'il vous plaitand au revoir would be used very often esp. when you go shopping!!
when i go shopping with host family, like everyone, they will really look at the ingredients, not like people in hong kong who usually look at the brand.
try to watch soccer match, and you will feel how people there love this activity!

I have been admired by amount and a variety of flowers in the streets of Nancy. Flowers were everywhere - on beds and lanterns, in tubs and baskets...