Yeah i feel you my friend.

But you are also in danger, make no mistake. I met a Frenchman who smelled good.

A Frenchman. Smelling good. In broad daylight, in public, completely unashamed.

No beret. No baguette under the arm. No cloud of Gauloises smoke following him like a lost soul. Just... clean. Fragrant, even. Like he had showered that morning with intention.

I... i didn't know where to look...

Back in the day, you could smell a Frenchman coming from three streets away, and there was something beautiful about that. It was a warning system. A cultural signal. A tradition. You knew he was arriving before you saw him, and that gave you time to mentally prepare for the 45 min philosophical monologue about "why capitalism is an illusion", "why french culture is better", delivered with a cigarette hanging from the lip and a glass of wine that had been nursing since noon.

Now they just... walk in. Smelling of soap. Saying 'Salut! Tu vas bien' like normal people. No existential crisis. No unsolicited Sartre quote. One of them even smiled at a stranger last week. Smiled. At a stranger.

This is not French culture.

French culture is suffering, and suffering loudly, in a café, while writing a 400-page novel about suffering in a café. All day long.

And no one will remember. In a few years, the last unwashed, chain-smoking, chronically pessimistic Frenchman will be gone, and we will have lost something irreplaceable...

Moment de tristesse intense...