Hygiene in Paris

Hygiene is different in different countries. Americans have become ridiculous in their insistence that everything be germ free. Their children can no longer fight the normal germs that are part of normal living throughout the world. So now the they have allergies that were not there in the past and asthma has become a natural childhood illness.

The French have a much more practical outlook on hygiene. When you go into a boulangerie (bakery) to buy the beautiful, tasty French bread, the woman or man picks it out of the bin with bare hands. We can assume they've been washed, but it is after all only an assumption. Yes, there is a bakery where the woman does wear latex gloves, but the bread isn't nearly as good as the one where clerks don't. I will take taste over hygiene anytime.

You want a sandwich with meat on it? Go to the charcuterie (which is something like a butcher shop except they also sell sandwich meat etc.) The butcher has no qualms about cutting a piece of raw meat and then with the same knife cutting the sausage or whatever it is you want on your sandwich.

There was a time when French toilets were the worst in Europe. No More. Most toilets are spic and span and have toilet paper with paper and sometimes the roller even works. But the French are able to go hours without using the toilet, have been trained that way so I'm told. But if the toilet isn't clean, the French don't worry too much about it. "Who has really caught something from a toilet seat?" This is a question which I can't answer, can you?