How a Frenchman fell in love with the Russian provinces

“Bonjour, it’s Julien here from a Russian province!” That’s how Julien Dumontier, a French teacher from the city of Saratov on the Volga River, begins his articles. He arrived in Saratov through a student program and decided to stay permanently. Recently, he started a blog in Russian about the life of a Frenchman in Russia.

“Saratov is my second home”

Julien was born in a small town in Burgundy, central France, and studied to become a linguist. “Our university in Clermont-Ferrand had student exchange programs with Russia. I was given the choice of either Tver or Saratov. I chose Saratov and didn’t regret it,” Julien recalls. He liked the old merchant city with its wooden mansions and its beautiful Volga River embankment.

He saw Russia for the first time in 2008. He then received his diploma in France and returned to submerge himself into Russian culture and to travel across the country. In Saratov, he teaches the French language and considers this city his second home. He even had a tattoo done on his chest with the Russian flag and the coat of arms of Saratov.

One could only tell he’s a foreigner by his light accent. 

“I don’t like to draw attention to myself and try not to speak French, I feel uncomfortable when people stare at me,” Julien explains.

He has no problem with the Russian language: he understands the spoken language well and writes correctly (okay, he admits, his female friend proofreads his blog posts) and even involuntarily swears in Russian when he forgets a word – “Blin!” (‘blin’ in Russian is a mild swear with a meaning close to “damn”).

Love for feasts

Julien in Murmansk.

Julien likes history and politics; aside from his Saratov coat of arms tattoo, he has a lot of tattoos with Russian and French historical figures. He believes that the peoples of Russia and France have a lot in common, which is also connected to the events of the beginning of the 19th century. One of his articles is dedicated to his love for family feasts, popular in both countries. But, it was in Russia where Julien tried weird appetizers like dried fish and sunflower seeds for the first time. He even tried to make rye bread kvass by himself.

His homeland, Burgundy, is famous for its wines and cheeses and, at first, it was unusual for Julien that the culture of drinking wine in Russia is different. Unlike in France, people prefer not dry, but semi-sweet wines; Julien needed quite some time to find a wine to his taste.

Unexpectedly, however, he relished medovukha, an ancient low-alcohol drink based on honey and yeast. “I remember how I brought medovukha to France. My friends and I have a football team and I offered it to our opponents, saying that it was a local Russian alcohol. But it doesn’t get to your head, it gets to your legs and they were sluggish on the field after. We won then.”

The Frenchman approved of Russian-produced cheese. “I found such a camembert that if someone gave it to me to compare to the French one, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

“There’s a great saying by Charles de Gaulle – how can you rule a country that has 246 sorts of cheese? In France, there really are a lot of cheeses, but, in Russia, their quality and amount is also improving,” Julien says.

“When in Rome, do as Romans do”

“I often read that, in Russia, people don’t smile, but I understand that better than when smiles are fake,” Julien says.

Often these stereotypes originate from Russians themselves, who look at other countries and say that Russia is for the sad. “For some reason no one says that, for example, Japan is for the sad, although they don’t smile there all that much either.”

Julien in Saransk, the city where Gérard Depardieu is registered.

Julien believes that, through years of living here, he got russified and treats many things as normal, which, in France, would appear weird. For example, if guests come suddenly.

Across Russia on a train

“My dream is to visit every region of Russia,” Julien says, “For now, I managed to visit Krasnoyarsk, Murmansk, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Vladikavkaz, Vladivostok, Tolyatti, Nalchik, Voronezh, Ulyanovsk, Astrakhan, Izhevsk, Saransk, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Volgograd, Sochi, Samara, Moscow and St. Petersburg!”

He says that he likes to travel on the Pravda train the most; as a foreigner, at first, he had trouble with purchasing train tickets with his French passport (Julien doesn’t have Russian citizenship). “Excuse my French, this is a pain in the ass [sic] – as the majority of Frenchmen, I have three names and no patronymic name. Sometimes, during ticket checks in trains, I’m even asked to pay a fine, since I stated no patronymic name. I tried to explain that it’s not a patronymic name, it’s a second name. Now, I found a loophole, maybe someone will find it useful: when I buy tickets on a website, I put all my names into the ‘name’ field and say that I have no patronymic.”

In the North Caucasus.

During a recent trip, Julien decided to see the city of Saransk, about 350 kilometers from Saratov, where his compatriot, legendary actor Gérard Depardieu, is registered. He even found the house of his “friend”, where the actor apparently is registered, and wanted to pay a visit, but no one was there, Julien said. However, he didn’t get discouraged and still enjoyed the trip.

This sign in Murmansk says "The North is to live".

“Surprisingly, for now, I liked Krasnoyarsk the most, I literally fell in love with this city. All my acquaintances say that I just got lucky that, in these five days, the city had great weather without smog from the local factories. It only rained one day, the sun was shining for the rest of my visit; the city is clean, well-kept, pleasant, large and, of course, the nature around is beautiful. Krasnoyarsk Pillars were especially impressive.”

“As it occurred to me, Murmask has the most stoic people. For now, that’s the only northern city I’ve visited; I’d also like to visit Arkhangelsk, Solovki and Karelia next. Last year, I wanted to go to Norilsk. My friends were telling me: why would you go there? But it’s interesting to me.”

Julien says that he often hears, even from Russians themselves, that there’s nowhere to go on a trip, but he believes that the country has it all: forests, seas, mountains – there’s plenty of things to look at!