Hello, nice diary!

Just a few comments:

--TV: what about tele5 or mezzo, the music channel?

--What is life like in a French city? A "tough" French city, like Marseille? Just to be fairer on LA ;-)

--Fancy household gadgets: when I moved to Germany my impression was that they have everything you may or may not need not for your kitchen, but it was all (i) punishingly expensive and (ii) made to look and feel extra special, as befits the Great Cooking Ritual. Even humble wooden spoons had to be SCUPLTED...

Concerning the political, cultural, educational aspects of your diary,  I have my (eurocentric) hypotheses, but they would lead too far...

A dog's a dog. A Cat's a Cat. (T.S. Eliot)

Hi, Lupin. I can't really comment on the comparison between rural France and California, but your anecdote about nearly getting shot reminded me of this -- you may already know it, but it's worth a re-read:

In LA, you can't do anything unless you drive. Now I can't do anything unless I drink. And the drink-drive combination, it really isn't possible out there. If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop your ash or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there's a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug.

So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown skyline carries a smear of God's green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hour, but can you get lunch? And should you see a sign on the far side of the street flashing BEEF--BOOZE--NO STRINGS, then you can forget it. The only way to get across the road is to be born there. All the ped-xing signs say DON'T WALK, all of them, all the time. That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don't walk.

(Martin Amis, Money, 1984)

I'd say you were lucky not to get shot for crossing the road. You should have been shot, in all logic.

In the woods around Chalabre in the autumn, don't dress up as a wild boar. ;)

"there's more, much more, of a social conscience and caring attitude; by far, the most striking difference"

And there are much more "Christians" in the US. This will always boggle my mind, since Jesus nonstop talked about caring for the poor and helpless. As a Christian myself, I just don't get the American mentality. What the heck is going on in their churches....

I was in Amsterdam this summer, and the plumbing was incredibly high-tech.  The toilet, for example, had two levels of flushing: a little for #1, and a lot for #2.  And the shower was controlled by a device that set the flow rate with one handle, and the temparature with another.  It must have had a temparature sensitive automatic mixing valve inside - I have never seen anything like it in the US.  Even the U-joint under the sink utilized some concentric piping that was very compact, and was designed for easy cleaning.  

I was so impressed that I drew these devices into my diary, while my wife, the fine art fanatic, teased me mercilessly.

Wow! I only hope that reader sees how the city-versus-country comparison here completely overwhelms the America-versus-France comparison.

L.A. is indeed a very wierd place by anybody's standards...

Interesting. I've never lived in France but I did spend much of my life living a couple km from the border, with constant trips for shopping, hiking, skiing. I haven't spent much time in Geneva over the past decade - just the occasional short visit.

I'm not sure how fair it is to compare cost of living in LA to rural France. In my experience groceries are a bit more expensive in France than the US, though a hell of a lot cheaper than in Switzerland. The law and order authorities - depends on whether or not you are white. If you are, fine, if not - they're not all that nice.

Which brings me to a second problem I have with France. While my impression is that racism levels are similar in France and the US, the practical effects are much worse in France. That is IMO a result of the pig-headed refusal of the French to allow the government to even acknowledge race let alone do anything beyond abstract worrying about racial disparities - which can't be quantified since doing so would be illegal.  

Also, when I moved as a child from MA to Geneva, one of the things that really stood out was the gun department at the local big supermarket just across the border.

So you are like living in my fantasy world.  Fine.  Rub it in.  

BTW, I was watching the local (Chicago) news and they were doing a report on how France is paying people to have more children, along with providing them with the social resources and job security to do so.

The news anchor actually closed the report with an excited and jealous "Gosh, that is just so progressive!"  Like, it was the first time in a long time I have heard a journalist describing something as socially progressive in a good way.  Hopefully people are waking up and realizing how good vous all have it and will begin demanding the same for themselves soon.  Or at least in my lifetime...

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Although I lived in LA for 20 years, it was as a kid at my parents' house, so I can't comment much on overall living expenses.  However, I did live in Ann Arbor, MI for five years in graduate school.  I always felt that overall utility costs were quite reasonable for my living situation, which was a yearly income of about $12,000 and a roommate.

I have noticed that they are distinctly more in Japan, but as my income here is almost triple what I used to have, I must admit I've not been paying TOO much attention to it.  After rent, my total utilities, including high-speed internet, don't normally come out to more than 20000 yen a month, equivalent to about $200 dollars spending-wise (NOT exchange wise.  As far as daily prices, the yen calibrates to the dollar at almost exactly 100/1 - that is, 100 yen FEELS like a dollar.)

Food, though, that I have paid attention to.

My experince with American supermarkets is that the fresher the item, the more expensive it is.  You can live pretty cheaply on frozen dinners and oatmeal, if you really want to.  Furthermore, the quality level of the fresh products available at your average supermarket tops out at a pretty low level.  You will almost never see anything marked as local.  Recently, small sections marked "Organic" have appeared, but mostly these are for processed or preserved organic products - nuts and dried fruits and flour and the like.  All this stuff is about 25% more expensive, on average.  In season?  What's that?  American supermarkets have doen their damndest to make us forget that foods go in and out of season.  I suppose, though, that in California, with a year-long growing season, at least it's accurate.

You can buy a lot of really cheap meat (chicken as cheap as $0.10 to $0.25/pound, sometimes) in the average supermarket, but most of it really isn't that good.  I could never afford to buy steaks that I thought were worth eating as steaks.  Those would range from $8.00 to $15.00 a pound.  Prices on roasts and whatnot were better, $4.00/pound buying you pretty reasonable roasting meat.  Lower-end supermarkets don't even sell good beef.  However, I like to cook with heavy spices and sauces, and it would be a crime to waste good meat on a sweet and sour sauce, so things worked out fine for me.  

But real bread?  Real cheese?  Good luck.  You find a factory product that is good enough, or you go to a speciality shop and pay through your nose for imported stuff.  Zingerman's deli in Ann Arbor is the perfect example of this.  You can get fancy organic cheese from all over the world, and wonderful fresh made bread.  Going there was an enormous treat.  The cheese was from $12.00 to $50.00 a pound, the breads $5.00 to $10.00 a loaf.  The problem is that the demand for the real stuff is just so low that there's no economy in making it.  Most people's tastes are so impoverished through generations of factory food and mediocre cooking that they just don't know any better.  I only came around because cooking is a hobby of mine, and I'm a glutton and so splurged on food after payday on a regular basis.  

Now I live in semi-rural Japan, and man is it strange.  The markets are really, REALLY Japanese in the range of products they offer.  I have to say, the produce here, although not very cheap, is just better than what I got on average in the states.  I always buy vegetables at the semi-local chain, which buys a lot of its produce from the local JAS cooperatives.  The local stuff is always marked as such, and sold right alongisde the regular stuff, and I buy it whenever I can.  It's damn good, but the selection leaves something to be desired.  I mean, if I wanted to live off of daikon (giant white radishes), I'd be set.  I've yet to see a store outside of Tokyo that sells cilantro (fresh corriander).  All the onions are yellow onions.  All potatoes are russet burbank-type.  All the green peppers are small and thin-skinned, some local variant I'd never seen in the US.  "Real" peppers of the red, green, and yellow variety are expensive and not always available.  It's nearly impossible to make good salads from the greens available.  The fruits, though, are great.  More or less local, highly seasonal, and real treats.  

Chicken and pork are cheap enough to eat, but are almost certainly factory produced somehwere else.  The fish selection is huge.  Fish is pretty expensive in America, in my experience, and my mom hated it, so I never grew up eating it.  I hardly know what to do with all the seafood stuff available at reasonable prices here.  Beef is right out.  Every couple of months I'll go get a steak at a restaurant, but that's that.

The Japanese just don't understand either bread or cheese.  They make decent white breads, but that's it.  There's a small organic bakery in town, which makes other kinds of breads, but in loafs the size of my hand, which cost 700 or 800 yen apiece.  They also do a couple tolerable pastries, but their abilities in that department are handicapped by the fact that the Japanese really don't have a sweet tooth - American cakes, pastries, etc. are WAY TOO SWEET, in their opinion.  Cheese is the worst, though.  They sell pre-shredded pizza mozarella in the stores, and it's expensive.  That's it.  It's fortunate that I'm not much of a cheese eater.

Lupin, thanks for this interesting diary.  I am curious.  Would you be able to provide a link to a real estate site so I could get an idea of how much a house would cost?

I just returned from Ireland and was dismayed by the housing prices.  Well, actually, all the prices.

What caught my eye primarily was your point about the sophistication of the culture. Obviously, as French culture has a long history, it will be more sophisticated. For one, they appreciate literature a lot more. Something Samuel Beckett once said about France always stuck with me: he liked the fact that August was "No Reading" month. I don't know if that's true but it is impressive.

Anyway, our television sets and airwaves our filled with nincompoop and bluster because our advertisers appeal to the lowest common denominator. I have a feeling that it's not so difficult to distort the average European mind in a similar way (that is, if you really don't care about the minds of citizens). All it takes is a will to sell to someone without giving a damn about the consequences. I guess I'm saying that in this chicken-and-egg argument, the corporations and their marketers are more to blame than the people (although, it's true, our secondary education system is at fault as well). Nonetheless, I meet ordinary people in my town who ignore the media. They are quite humane and intelligent. I tend to think that at the topical level, television tends to corrupt American culture. I don't have cable but I believe there are about 800 channels available to people with digital systems. Now, imagine what would happen to French children with access to 800 channels?

In short, I'm really arguing that a sense of community and an expansive interest in the world is more possible without cable television. Sounds simple, I know, but when you consider that Americans spend many hours of their lives every week in front of the tube, then the deficit can be explained.

Lastly, I live in Buffalo, NY. It's cold up here. But the city is very livable. We have excellent food stores downtown with local produce. We have local farmer's markets. All our neighborhoods are organized. We spend one or two mornings a month improving the neighborhood. We exert political pressure on City Hall regularly. I really like living here quite a bit. LA it isn't but I wouldn't leave here for LA.

Did today's post had to include mediterranean food and tomatos provencale ?
The only thing good about remebering them aloud was that my pale WalMart bought tomatos blushed in shame so they finally got a reddish tint... Alas, none of the flavor!

Hubby and I are seriously looking at our Italian passports(dual cit.) and considering the way US is turning into a banana republic with nukes. We may join you guys in the "Old Europe" when our kids get a bit bigger.

Things are getting too weird and I don't want my kids growing up in Bushistan!!!

Part of the reason that everyday technology items seems more advance is that Europe skipped some of the technologies that were very common in the USA. A particular example are mobile(cell) phones and pagers. The latter never caught on as they were so expensive and limited but as soon as cellphones came on the scene with SMS text factilitoes, they were redundant anyway. Another factor was the adoption of a common standard and  they way licences were granted. These were usually covering the whole country with multiple providers rather than the regional system first introduced in the USA. In most countries the phones are either very cheap or free with 12 month contracts and competition reduces the prices of the calls. (My current contract is a special offer that reduces the cost to around $9 a month including 500 voice minutes and 100 text minutes a month)

Other technology advances tend to be more incremental than in the US which perversely makes them faster. The position varies but digital TV (DTV) is more widespread and has had faster take-up in the countries that have adopted it than in the US (France held back but I believe has just started. This puts them behind the UK in this respect - we are to completely turn off analog TV broadcasts by 2012) Cable never really caught on and even now is the Cinderella of systems) Rather than going straight to highly expensive HDTV with @700/1000 "lines" the EU basic standard is @500, the same as DVD. A very simply connected set-top box (using a Euro-standard SCART socket) makes the conversion of an existing set very easy and cheap - boxes start around $50 before tax. That makes widescreen TV programs virtually standard, in turn increasing demand and bringing the starting price of a standard tubed widescreen 28" set to under $180 before tax. The guys who recently put in the new antenna system in the block I live in are actually Portugese who have been here learning the technology before they go back and start installing similar systems at home. HDTV broadcasts are just starting on satellite and broadcasters are already making in it (I believe the BBC made "Rome" in HDTV and plans to make all its programs in HDTV by 2010) Most countries are going down the standard definition terrestrial broadcasts/ HDTV by satellite and cable because the extra bandwiths available allow more stations to be broadcast. Compared to the US system where it will almost be 1 land frequency = 1 HDTV station, the EU "multiplex" system allows up to 6 stations plus up to 20 radio/alternate audio feeds.  

(footnote to Lupin, next year the BBC and the UK commercial stations plan to start broadcasting completely unscrambled which should add a lot more stations to your choice without having to pretend to Rupert Murdoch you live in the UK so you can get a decryption card)    

On food, my experience (several years ago now) is that ordinary supermarket food is almost inedible. Bread tends to have so much sugar in it that it overpowers the tasteless cheeses. Mind you it is less abominable than the "Snapple" fruit flavoured corn syrup you have to put up with. Supermarket fruits and vegetables are always grown sacrificing taste for storage time and uniformity of appearence so comparing freshly harvested locally grown food is a bit tricky.