L'hiver en France, QU'EN PENSENT LES FRANÇAIS ? | Podcast en français COURANT avec sous-titres.

Hello and welcome to the podcast Fluidité, episode 116. Today I offer you immersion in French culture and immersion in the French language as well because I would like to talk to you about how winter is going in France and what French people think. So stay tuned! Do you learn French? Fabien offers you content in current French that talks about culture, history, French geography, but also biographies, dialogues or learning tips. Welcome to the Fluidité podcast! Before starting, I invite you to join our VIP club. This is my Patreon page where you have material to deepen my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have bonuses like the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version and a private group course where I explain the grammar of the contents. The VIP club is also a large community with more than 300 members, 300 learners, and we discuss together every day on the Telegram group and on the Discord server. We do different activities to practice French, so you can also practice your French, find or share resources with other students, other learners, and it's very important for you to not feel alone in your learning and to always be motivated. So you have the link on podcast platforms and on YouTube to sign up for the VIP club and you can stay as long as you want. Come with pleasure! In the description of the episode, you also have the YouTube video version, if you listen to me in audio, with the subtitles in French or in other languages to improve your oral comprehension, and you also have the free French transcription in the description. Three months ago, in October 2022, I did the same type of episode on the fall. I had told the changes that the season causes on nature, on the French and their way of life, but also the fruits or vegetables of the season. Since you liked the concept, today we're going to do the same thing, but for the winter this time. And I hope you'll like it too. We are currently at the end of January, so it's already been a month since winter started. We are almost halfway through, since winter ends on March 20 and then it will be spring. Just a parenthesis, we use EN ÊTRE, always with the pronoun EN, to say at what stage we are in a situation. For example, if someone asks you how far you have read a book, he will say, Où tu en es du livre ? And you can answer, J'en suis à la page 50, j'en suis à la moitié, etc. So we're halfway through winter. In short, what I'm going to say about winter may seem banal to a European who knows this season well, but many of you don't and don't know the cold, nor the snow, nor any of the sensations that winter causes. So I think it's important to explain what winter is, to give everyone a good overview. But the best thing is still to experience it for real, because you can never really know something without having experienced it. So winter started at the end of December, the 21st more precisely. Why this particular day? Because it is the winter solstice. So what is the winter solstice? It is the day when the duration of the night is maximum. In the northern hemisphere of the globe and from the second half of the year, the days gradually decrease to reach their minimum on December 21st. So that day, the duration of the day is minimal and the duration of the night is maximum. In France, on December 21st, the day lasts about 8h30 and the night lasts about 15h30. The sun goes down from 5pm to 5.30pm and it rises from 8am. So it's night longer than in summer. This is what the winter solstice is, and the further north we go, the longer the nights are. That's why in the far north of Europe, it's night all the time during the winter. Tell me in the comments if you imagine living in the night for three months. I would have trouble anyway. Which also means that from December 21st, the situation reverses. That is to say that the days will increase until June 21st. I summarize. From December 21st to June 21st, the days increase. And from June 21st to December 21st, the days always decrease in the northern hemisphere. But even if the days start to increase again on December 21st, it is more night than day in winter. And you will see afterwards what people think about it. In the episode on autumn, I said that because of the gradual cooling and to prepare for winter, the leaves of the trees began to fall. In winter, they have already all fallen. There are no more leaves left on the trees, except for the species that keep them, of course. So we can see the trees bare, leaving all their branches. Besides, people take the opportunity to cut them, to cut the branches of their trees or plants, so that they grow back better when spring arrives. In this season, a good part of nature goes to sleep temporarily, like a bear that hibernates for example. Arrived in winter, the cold is at its maximum and will bring its share of consequences. The snow will start to fall in some parts of the country. It does not snow everywhere in France, but mostly in the north and of course in the mountains. Which means that winter marks the beginning of the ski season. In February, there are school holidays. So some French people take the opportunity to spend a few days in the snow and skiing as a family. Besides, this winter, the snow arrived a little later than usual. And it has caused problems in this economic sector, since activities related to snow are a source of income for many professionals who are dependent on it to be able to open their ski resorts, etc. So I made two episodes that talk about the mountains in France and that I invite you to listen to after this one, one on the Alps and another on the Pyrenees. In the areas where it snows in winter, people have to change the tires of their cars and put winter tires on so as not to have problems when they ride on a snowy road. Where I come from in the south, it almost never snows. And when it does, it's exceptional. And the whole city is paralyzed in general because we have no suitable equipment. It happens once or twice a decade and generally the snow does not last long, about 3 or 4 days. But when it snows, we are too happy, we make a snowman, we put a carrot on his nose and we make snowball battles. One of the most anticipated events of the winter are the end-of-year holidays, Christmas and the awakening of December 31st. It's time to get together as a family, to take stock of the year, and of course the children die of impatience to have their gift. A little before Christmas, some cities are transforming and we see the decorations and lights of Christmas appear, but also the Christmas markets with all the local specialties that can be found there. It's part of the magic of winter that we love a lot. On my YouTube channel, there is a vlog where I am at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, one of the most beautiful in Europe, so I invite you to see it too. There are also subtitles in French. To warm up during the winter and fight the cold, our body requires more calories, so this season we tend to eat a little more than when it's hot. We tend to make much more consistent and fatty dishes. We like to meet around a raclette or a fondue for example. We like to make homemade pastry to make cakes or very caloric biscuits that we will eat on a Sunday afternoon. And baking in the oven also warms up the house. And at the beginning of January, we eat a family cake to cheer up the kings on the occasion of Epiphany. For the lucky ones who have a fireplace, they start using it towards the end of autumn or the beginning of winter, depending on how cold it is. But before using it, you have to ram it, and it consists of cleaning the conduit of the fireplace to remove stuck dirt and avoid a fire. In general, it is done by a professional and it is even a legal obligation in France. If you want to make fire in the fireplace during the winter, you need heating wood of course. You can either buy it from a professional already dry and cut, or you took the risk and dried the wood 2 or 3 hours in advance. In France, less and less people use fireplaces. In general, there are no more in houses built for about 15 years. People prefer other more economical and more practical systems, like a heat pump for example. In any case, in winter, there must be a heating system in France. Even if the houses are well insulated, it is not enough to resist the cold. But for me, nothing is worth a beautiful fireplace that brings heat to heat our houses, but also light and conviviality to warm our hearts. Always to fight the cold, we will also change our wardrobe, that is to say our clothes. In winter, we will have to cover ourselves like an onion, and we will have to take out of the closet the warm clothes, like big sweaters, thick socks. And to go outside, we put on scarves, gloves, a hat and a coat or a jacket. Shorts, light jackets and other summer clothes will stay in the closet until the return of the heat. So you have to think about that too, we have different clothes depending on the season in France. While in Mexico, I had the same clothes for the whole year, of course. In terms of food, winter brings us a lot of root vegetables, like black radish, which we eat at the entrance with a little butter and salt. Beetroot too, which we like to consume as a crudity. We also like to eat salad endives, a very common winter vegetable in France. And who says winter says soup. In supermarkets, you will find ready-made soups, already ready in bricks, and there are really for all tastes. Indeed, many French people eat prepared dishes that they just heat up, often due to lack of time and even soups in fact. But the interest of a soup is to make it yourself, with vegetables that hang in the fridge, so it's always better when it's homemade. On the subject of fruits, our body wants to eat those that are rich in vitamin C, like oranges, tangerines, clementines, or kiwis, which we already had a little in autumn. Winter is therefore the coldest season of the year, a period that is often feared by the coldest. And according to polls, it is the least favorite season of the French, who do not like to stay a few days without seeing the sun, without a single light, for example. And even worse for those who work from 9 to 17 hours in an office, without really seeing the light of day. Before starting his day at work, it's night, and when leaving work, it's night too. So winter can be a depressing season for some people, since there is less light and less heat. So as soon as the sun points to the tip of his nose, we expose ourselves as much as possible. That's why in winter, you'll see French people sunbathe on the terrace of a cafe, to try to warm up as much as possible. We must be ready to face these changes, but if we accept them, we will be able to enjoy all the joys that the winter season offers, enjoy the end of the year holidays, enjoy the month of January and its new year, to start from scratch, to get back on track, to question ourselves, and patiently wait for the next change, spring, but it will be for another episode. That's it for today. Thank you all for watching or listening to this episode. I hope you learned a lot of French, vocabulary and grammar. Listen again several times if you want to assimilate well, to improve your oral comprehension in French. And if you have stayed until now, the episode has interested you, so put a little like and subscribe to my podcast and on my YouTube channel. Bye and see you soon!