Fair enough, but what the h*ll were the German and Russian laughing about. Perhaps Schroder was thinking of French Beer, (similar to goat p*ss).

If the British-bashing jokes in the long run help scuttle Britain's moves towards full entry into the EU, then give Jacques his own prime-time Sky TV comedy special.

British cuisine jokes? Sooooo 1980's.

What next - shoulder pads? Rubik's cubes? Live Aid?

Ah, the sophisticated Europeans. They care so deeply about not offending their allies.

Making jokes about English food does play to the cheap seats in France. However, any gourmet, and M. Chirac is certainly not one, can tell you that the problem in English cuisine is not its ingredients but what the domestic population insists on doing with them. The Roux, pere et fils, and their restaurants in London are certainly indicative of that. As is the extremely high quality of Chinese food available there, which is better than that available in NYC. Upper-end Chinese food in London laughs at similar establishments in NYC.

I don't understand what Chirac is doing here. The average Frenchman(remember 'chauvinism' is a French word) may not like the English or the Americans but for the most part he likes Germans even less, and he considers Russians to be barely human beings. But then Chirac's political skills have always been dubious.

Bart:

I must confess that most of your posts leave me both infuriated and hungry. No small trick, that.

Unlikely as it seems, Britain currently has the official best restaurant in the world (The Fat Duck, Bray), and three others in the top ten alone.

The foodie revolution in Britain makes the Russian revolution look like a spot of argy bargy. Maybe Britons needed something to do once they stopped going to church.

Reading this post, I couldn't help wondering if this incident really happened. Can world leaders really sit around together at coffee and be this stupid and petty? How pathetic!

Yo, Pooty-poot, don't be talking smack about the hamburger.

What's Mother Russia given the world? Borscht?

bart - My speculation as to what Chirac is doing:

He hoped for a French-dominated EU. Since expansion it's become clear France doesn't have the clout to bring it about. So he's giving up on the grand EU and looking at a smaller French-German zone that France can dominate. To achieve that, he has to create a division in the EU, pushing conservative nations like Britain to the periphery and minor roles. He hopes to achieve that by alienating the British.

pj;

But where would that smaller EU get its money?

I concur - what was a Russian doing making fun of British cuisine? The mind boggles. Their one culinary claim to fame is Vodka but the Poles and Dutch beat them at that hands down.

Peter: "Now, go away! Before I taunt you a second time!"

AOG;

The French will go back to milking the Germans.

C'mon. Haggis can't be the only unappetising Scottish dish.

Wot's wrong with Haggis? And Bart, why would Chirac dislike the Germans? They were allies in WW2. And furthermore who gives a ratz about what they shoot the breeze about in a Russian cafe, obviously "firing for effect." In the context of the srticle ... they bore me.

Chirac should clam up a bit, if it wasn't for the British (and Americans) the French would still be eating German food.

The French, and Giscard understands this perfectly so he insisted on British EU membership, will be at best a junior partner in a German and French partnership, if not reduced to boot-licking lackey. WWII demonstrates the latter. There has always been a kind of weird French hope that the other European nations would work together to restrain the Germans in France's favor, but where's the benefit in that for Italy or Spain? The big EU agricultural disputes are between France and Italy or France and Spain. Holland seems to be opting out like Britain. And after 50 years of Communism, there isn't a whole lot of taste for French dirigisme and arrogance. They had enough of the Russian variety thank you very much.

I've never had haggis but I understand it is actually pretty tasty if you are not warned in advance what you are eating and what it is. BTW, that rule works pretty well in East Asia.

genecis,

Chirac probably doesn't hate the Germans. A solid 20-25% of French were active collaborators during the war, and there is every reason to believe that Chirac's family were among them. The remainder of the French merely tried to lump along as best they could under difficult circumstances and only about 5% at most could be said to have been in active resistance. But the non-collaborators do share a tremendous antipathy towards the Germans which the staggeringly obnoxious behavior of German tourists only exacerbates.

Germans look upon France as little more than a 3d World nation, slightly better than Italy and Spain, and they make sure that every Frenchman knows it.

you don't get many german tourists here, but the few that do come over are easy to spot. i have a feeling they behave better here because they know we will kick their asses if they try the crap they do at european vacation spots. i know i shouldn't do it, but i always go out of my way to antagonize them, just to watch them seethe.

Well behaved German tourists? Things really have changed.

Back in the late 70s, early 80s, the naturalists at the Old Faithful Visitor Center kept a tally of cone-walkers (people who ignore the "Stay Back" signs) broken down into two categories: Krauts and non-Krauts. The former were always in the lead.

When confronted, often they'd often lapse into "no sprechen ze English" mode. One ranger liked telling the story of when he went out to confront a pair, one said to the other, in German, "Pretend you don't understand him." To which the ranger responded, in German, "Okay, then we'll use a language you do understand." In my personal experience, using insults was a good way to get them to suddenly remember their English.

We learned some good ones in High School German III. My favorite is "s#*thead" auf Deutsch.

Chirac, who eats snails, is now a food critic?

German tourists behaving badly?

You're talking about Miller's Law of International Travel.

"Miller's Law of International Travel says, While traveling abroad don't worry about being perceived as an ugly American, because no matter where you go in the world you'll find a German there before you, behaving far worse than you could ever manage, (being stupider, ruder, more condescending, drunker, whatever).

Like an immutable law of nature it never fails. No matter where you go in the world, from Tibet to Taiwan to Timbuctoo, there's already a drunk, rude, red-faced German man and his wife (who will take off her top and sunbathe her flaccid breasts at the slighest provocation) there ahead of you."

H.D.

My parents told a great story about German loutish behaviour meeting up with British aplomb. They were in the reading room of a small English country hotel after dinner, sitting quietly with only one very elegant and reserved English woman in the room. Suddenly the door opened and in walked a whole crowd of yelling, laughing, arguing semi-drunken Germans who passed through noisily and out to their rooms on the other side. When the last one left, the woman looked up at my parents and said: "They're very purposeful, aren't they?"

hdm: that law must be valid, because it is my experience that the floppier the boobs, the quicker they "pop" out, vis-a-vis german females abroad. maybe the russians taught them that little trick.