Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [264]
Just Campagne
This partially English-named shop (campagne means “countryside”) is actually very French, founded in the South of France in 1990 by Azzedine Berkouk, who designs women’s handbags. Berkouk’s line of what I refer to as “regular” leather bags are perfectly fine and nicely crafted, but it’s the open-weave leather bags with interchangeable linings that are truly distinctive. The leather is available in only two shades, but the linings, in cotton, linen, and wool, come in a variety of colors, and the price is dependent upon which lining you choose, wool being the most expensive. All Just Campagne bags are hand finished in Toulouse and each has its own serial number. Stores in Paris are at 159 boulevard Saint-Germain, 6ème, and 14 rue des Pyramides, 1er (just campagne.com).
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Language
Everyone will tell you that it is essential to attempt to speak some French when in Paris. This is true—the French warm to anyone attempting to speak their beautiful language—yet it is also true that the natives of any country love it when visitors try to speak their language. What you might not realize is that French is still in many ways a universal language. It has been my experience that someone always speaks French, even in such seemingly unlikely countries as Egypt, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, and Croatia. Spanish may be the second language in the United States, but it won’t serve you very well outside of Latin America, Spain, and the Philippines.
With this in mind, I wasn’t surprised to learn, in Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow’s excellent and fascinating The Story of French (St. Martin’s, 2006), that though in terms of numbers of speakers French ranks only ninth in the world, French is flourishing. Of the six thousand languages now spoken on earth, French is one of only fifteen spoken by more than a hundred million people; it is one of eleven other languages that are the official language in more than one country, and among these, only four—English, French, Spanish, and Arabic—have official status in more than twenty countries (French, with thirty-three countries, ranks second to English, with forty-five). Two G8 countries, France and Canada, are French-speaking, as are four European Union members: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. And French, along with English, is one of the two primary languages of the UN. Nadeau and Barlow also inform us that French “is the number two second-language choice of students across the planet, attracting learners as far away as Lesotho and Azerbaijan.” And finally: “There have never been as many French speakers in the world as there are today: The number has tripled since the Second World War.”
Nadeau and Barlow share their surprise at discovering, on a trip to Tel Aviv, that the first language they heard when they stepped out of their hotel was French. They were surprised because most Israelis speak Hebrew and English, and they figured it would be difficult for a third language to emerge among them. But what they learned was that 10 percent of Israelis speak French, including the large Moroccan population there, and that there are French-speaking communities in many more places than Tel Aviv. This solidified an impression that grew as they worked on their book: “that French is more resilient than people generally believe” and that “it has an enduring hold on the world, a level of influence that in many ways