Things did not go according to plan - I had overestimated my abilities. I read somewhere that if you can understand the first 20 of the InnerFrench podcasts then you should be at a good place to start this course. That is a good benchmark. I was not there. I really struggled with the first few lessons, each took me several hours and I was constantly looking up words. I couldn’t even understand the questions let alone answer them. Not Hugo’s fault. From the 16th to the 19th century, France was responsible for 11% of the transatlantic slave trade, [55] second only to Great Britain during the 18th century. [56] While the state began condoning the practice with letters patent in the 1630s, Louis XIII only formalized this authorization more generally in 1642 in the last year of his reign. By the mid-18th century, Nantes had become the principal French slave-trading port. [55] Louis XIV, the "Sun King", was the absolute monarch of France and made France the leading European power.

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France uses a civil legal system, wherein law arises primarily from written statutes; [87] judges are not to make law, but merely to interpret it (though the amount of judicial interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law in a common law system). Basic principles of the rule of law were laid in the Napoleonic Code (which was, in turn, largely based on the royal law codified under Louis XIV). In agreement with the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the law should only prohibit actions detrimental to society. As Guy Canivet, first president of the Court of Cassation wrote about the management of prisons: "Freedom is the rule, and its restriction is the exception; any restriction of Freedom must be provided for by Law and must follow the principles of necessity and proportionality." That is, Law should lay out prohibitions only if they are needed, and if the inconveniences caused by this restriction do not exceed the inconveniences that the prohibition is supposed to remedy.Last RER A train leaves Paris Chatelet les Halles at 12:36 a.m. and arrives at 01:15 a.m. at Disneyland During Louis XIV's minority and the regency of Queen Anne and Cardinal Mazarin, a period of trouble known as the Fronde occurred in France. This rebellion was driven by the great feudal lords and sovereign courts as a reaction to the rise of royal absolute power in France. The monarchy reached its peak during the 17th century and the reign of Louis XIV. By turning powerful feudal lords into courtiers at the Palace of Versailles, his command of the military went unchallenged. Remembered for numerous wars, the so-called "Sun King" made France the leading European power. France became the most populous country in Europe and had tremendous influence over European politics, economy, and culture. French became the most-used language in diplomacy, science, literature and international affairs, and remained so until the 20th century. [57] During his reign, France took colonial control of many overseas territories in the Americas, Africa and Asia. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, forcing thousands of Huguenots into exile and published the Code Noir providing the legal framework for slavery and expelling Jewish people from the French colonies. [58] For the exercises, one thing I really liked is that each question is answered right away. So if there are 15 questions in a section you get the answer to question #1 before you move on to question #2. This helps with self-correction and meets the aim of readily identifying things I didn’t understand well early on. Main article: History of France §Revolutionary France (1789–1799) The Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 was the most emblematic event of the French Revolution. France is among the globe’s oldest nations, the product of an alliance of duchies and principalities under a single ruler in the Middle Ages. Today, as in that era, central authority is vested in the state, even though a measure of autonomy has been granted to the country’s régions in recent decades. The French people look to the state as the primary guardian of liberty, and the state in turn provides a generous program of amenities for its citizens, from free education to health care and pension plans. Even so, this centralist tendency is often at odds with another long-standing theme of the French nation: the insistence on the supremacy of the individual. On this matter historian Jules Michelet remarked, “ England is an empire, Germany is a nation, a race, France is a person.” Statesman Charles de Gaulle, too, famously complained, “Only peril can bring the French together. One can’t impose unity out of the blue on a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.”

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basic RER map showing 5 RER train lines with branching endpoint stations and the 5 fare zones for Paris and surrounding suburban area (Ile-de-France) In Sweden, the country's top epidemiologist said immunity was probably lower than thought as the country - which took a relaxed approach to COVID restrictions - saw daily deaths hit their highest for months. A new Line E station initially proposed at Rue de l'Évangile (eventually officially called Rosa Parks) on the approach to Gare de l'Est, opened in December, 2015. [32] See also [ edit ] The first leader to make himself king of all the Franks was Clovis I, who began his reign in 481, routing the last forces of the Roman governors of the province in 486. Clovis claimed that he would be baptised a Christian in the event of his victory against the Visigothic Kingdom, which was said to have guaranteed the battle. Clovis regained the southwest from the Visigoths, was baptised in 508 and made himself master of what is now western Germany. The Navigo Decouverte pass is a radio frequency (RF) card roughly the size of a credit card and has no identifying information on it:This tendency toward individualism joins with a pluralist outlook and a great interest in the larger world. Even though its imperialist stage was driven by the impulse to civilize that world according to French standards ( la mission civilisatrice), the French still note approvingly the words of writer Gustave Flaubert: I saw him tell a group that he would intro­duce them to a fundamental aid to under­standing the Gos­pels. He called it the “Big Bad Wolf” key. You could, he explained, tell the story of the Three Little Pigs to a child in vari­ous ways, but your hearer would noisily object if you omitted the key line (thrice repeated): “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.” When reading or listening to the parables and teaching of Jesus, he said, look out for the “I’ll huff and I’ll puff” sayings, because they were always included, however different the telling of the rest of the teaching might be. Sometimes they were signposted by the words “Amen, amen” (“Truly I say”). The scholar smiled, the group laughed, and we all gained a valuable insight into the world of hermen­eutics. The Franks embraced the Christian Gallo-Roman culture, and ancient Gaul was eventually renamed Francia ("Land of the Franks"). The Germanic Franks adopted Romanic languages, except in northern Gaul where Roman settlements were less dense and where Germanic languages emerged. Clovis made Paris his capital and established the Merovingian dynasty, but his kingdom would not survive his death. The Franks treated land purely as a private possession and divided it among their heirs, so four kingdoms emerged from that of Clovis: Paris, Orléans, Soissons, and Rheims. The last Merovingian kings lost power to their mayors of the palace (head of household). One mayor of the palace, Charles Martel, defeated an Umayyad invasion of Gaul at the Battle of Tours (732) and earned respect and power within the Frankish kingdoms. His son, Pepin the Short, seized the crown of Francia from the weakened Merovingians and founded the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin's son, Charlemagne, reunited the Frankish kingdoms and built a vast empire across Western and Central Europe. Due to its numerous overseas departments and territories scattered across the planet, France possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world, covering 11,035,000km 2 (4,261,000sqmi), just behind the EEZ of the United States, which covers 11,351,000km 2 (4,383,000sqmi), but ahead of the EEZ of Australia, which covers 8,148,250km 2 (3,146,000sqmi). Its EEZ covers approximately 8% of the total surface of all the EEZs of the world.

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St-Michel - Notre-Dame (1988): deep construction on an existing stretch of the Line B between Luxembourg and Châtelet - Les Halles with two tunnels, common in other underground systems but unique in Paris. The station is situated on and built at the same time as the Luxembourg Châtelet tunnel.In June 2017, transport authorities announced that the RER brand was being retired, and that the system would simply be referred to on public signage, maps, and other materials as Train. [11] Allegedly, the term was difficult to pronounce for non-locals, especially those who did not speak French as a first language. [12] History [ edit ] Origins [ edit ] As of 2023, the network consists of five lines: A, B, C, D and E. The network has 257 stations and has interchanges with the Métro and commuter rail within the City of Paris and the suburbs. The lines are identified by letters to avoid confusion with the Métro lines, which are identified by numbers. The network is still expanding: RER E, which opened in 1999, is planned for westward extension toward La Défense and Mantes-la-Jolie in two phases by 2024–2026. The performance of the RER has made it a model for proposals to improve transit within other cities. [1] In November 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of the additional RERs that will serve the ten largest French metropolises by 2040. [2] Characteristics [ edit ] France has laws against racism and antisemitism, [139] while the 1990 Gayssot Act prohibits Holocaust denial. RER trains will generally always stop at RER stations within central Paris Zone 1 (visible on the RER Map with zones). RER stations outside central Paris may or may not be served by RER trains depending on their route or whether they are “Express RER trains” making only a few stops before arriving at their final destination. Main article: Economy of France Overview La Défense was in 2017 ranked by Ernst & Young as the leading central business district in continental Europe, and the fourth in the world. [175]