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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

I would also recommend not being too loud, French people usually are pretty quiet in restaurants or public spaces, and being loud is frowned upon.

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> French people usually are pretty quiet

It's not just French people. American tourists have a reputation in many countries for being annoyingly loud.

An American colleague sent his children (7 years old ish) to the British International school on a foreign assignment, as there was no American school in the city.

The teacher sometimes asked the children were to "use their one metre voice".

As a European I'm still shocked at how loud Americans are. I cannot stay more than a couple minutes in an American bar or pub

Same, it's pretty rough.

You might have only been to higher-end restaurants, and not the "good ol' french" types that are as much about the atmosphere as they are about the food. The kind of thing I could only name as "à la bonne franquette". For a representative sample of the kind of place I'm talking about, try 'Chez Gladines' in the 13th arrondissement.

I have worn my earplugs (still carried from the flight that morning) in a Paris restaurant where the locals were watching the football.

It was a great atmosphere, but I was glad when the waiter asked us to swap tables to the other room — he rearranged all the noisy people into one room, and the quiet ones into the other.

I’m from a place where “bouchons” is exactly this :P still less loud than any restaurant in the US

> still less loud than any restaurant in the US

Sounds like you might need to try some restaurants in the US. It's more than McDonald's and TGI Fridays.

Not true in the South of France. Boisterous, fun, loud.

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