25 for 2025

The latest highly subjective and inexhaustive installment of things I've learned in, about, and autour de la France

A “nécro-érotique” statue about which you will shortly be hearing more.

1. A “coquille” is a shell, but it’s also a typo. Why? Two theories. The first holds that printing presses used to be cleaned with egg whites, and that, sometimes, bits of shell would get stuck on the printing plates, causing errors. The second holds that, one day, Le Journal Officiel, the official gazette of the French government, left out the letter Q in "coquille,” rendering it “couille”—a.k.a. “testicle.”

2. A chapon is a castrated chicken. I was listening to a radio show about holiday cooking, and one of the guests counseled listeners to seek out a “chapon raté.” Meaning, a fowl whose castration didn’t quite take. They’re cheaper, evidently. (“Chapon raté, chapon bon marché.”)

3. Alone among European militaries, the French army still counts among its ranks two hundred carrier pigeons.

4. The pink-breasted shrike was the first bird to go extinct in France in the twenty-first century.

5. At the height of their success, there were almost five hundred buffets de gare in French train stations. You can visit this spectacular-looking abandoned one in Saint-Quentin, in the Aisne. (I certainly plan to.)

6. 33.6% of children born in France in 2024 had a least one parent who was born in another country. 65.2% of French children are born outside of marriage.¹

7. There is an entire theme park just west of Paris featuring replicas of famous sites such as Mont Saint-Michel, the Chartres cathedral, and a Basque village rendered at exactly 1/30th their actual size.

8. You *could* buy holiday stamps. You *should* buy patisserie stamps. Bruno at La Poste likes the mille feuille. I’m partial to the éclair au chocolat.

9. Van Gogh’s “Red Cabbages and Onion” (Paris, 1887) was called “Red Cabbages and Garlic” until 2022, when a Dutch chef visited the Van Gogh Museum and alerted curators that they had their alliums wrong.

10. In 2016, the art historian Bernadette Murphy uncovered the identity of the woman to whom van Gogh presented his severed ear. Her name was Gabrielle Berlatier and she lived near Arles until her death in 1952.

11. You know how English speakers call a disaster a Waterloo? French people call it a Bérézina.

    

    The French Army Crossing the Berezina, November 1812. Unknown artist, Musée de la Armée via napoleon.org

12. There is an elaborate Art Nouveau door featuring a huge penis at 29 Avenue Rapp.

13. There is an elaborate tomb featuring an effigy of the republican journalist Victor Noir at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. Visitors have stroked a prominent lump in his trousers so frequently that it gleams bronze (the rest of the statue is oxidized) and is said to enhance virility.

14. One reason Bretons are partial to beurre salé? The region was exempt from la gabelle—a notorious salt tax—levied in the Middle Ages and under the Ancien Régime.

15. Tons of French cafés² are called Le Balto in hommage to Baltimore, a stronghold of the American tobacco industry. If you find yourself having a drink in a Le Maryland, a Le Narval, a Le Marigny, or a Le Chiquito, it’s because those used to be the names of brands of cigarettes.