Chapter 13

Planning a Trip

In This Chapter

Planning ahead for your trip

Using geographical prepositions

Using the future tense

Dealing with passports, visas, and other travel necessities

Traveling is a way to get away, relax, and perhaps seek a new adventure. Planning your travels in advance is the first step to a rewarding, fulfilling

time. Whatever you’re looking for— adventure, history, natural wonders, or cultural enlightenment — France and other French-speaking countries have it all. In this chapter, we help you decide where you want to go, show you how to make the appropriate travel plans, and get you ready to take that trip you always dreamed of.

Where Do You Want to Go?

When planning a trip to France — or any French-speaking country — one of the first things to do is to decide where you want to go and what you’d like to see. A trip to France, for example, offers these delights: the ocean and beaches, olive trees and vineyards, rolling green meadows bounded by straggling hedgerows, dazzling expanses of naked rock and arid ruddy soil, former homes or playgrounds of kings, counts, and feudal lords, Romanesque village churches and spectacular Gothic cathedrals, and ruins of Roman architecture and medieval monasteries. Here’s a sampling of the wonderful places you can go:

Les Alpes (ley-zahlp) (the Alps), in the southeast

Les Pyrénées (ley pee-rey-ney) (the Pyrenees) in the southwest

La Côte d’Azur (lah koht dah-zewhr) (the Riviera), along the Mediterranean coast, la Méditerranée (lah mey-dee-teh-rah-ney)

Le Jura (luh zhew-rah) mountains in the east

Les Vosges (ley vohzh) mountains in the east

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Le Massif Central (luh mah-seef sahN-trahl), the rugged, dry mountains in central France.

La Bretagne (lah bruh-tah-nyuh) (Brittany), in the northwest

You can even tour the country by water, by way of France’s four major rivers — la Seine (lah sehn) (the Seine also runs through Paris), la Loire (lah lwahr), la Garonne (lah gah-rohn), le Rhône (luh rohn) — and many others that crisscross the entire country.

If you want your trip to be more exotic, you can choose to visit an overseas department of France, Départements et Régions d’outre-mer (DROM) (dey- pahrt-mahN ey rey-zhyohN dooh-truh-mehr [drohm]), such as la Martinique (lah mahr-tee-neek) in the French West Indies, or an overseas collectiv-

ity, Collectivité d’outre-mer (COM) (koh-leh-ktee-vee-tey dooh-truh-mehr [kohm]), such as Tahiti (tah-ee-tee) in French Polynesia.

If you prefer to visit a French-speaking region closer to home, Québec (keybehk) and Montréal (mohN-rey-ahl) are all you can ask for. You can wander around the old city, visit the botanical gardens and the Basilica of Notre Dame. What about catching a hockey game at the Olympic stadium or attending the biggest winter festival in the world? If summer concerts are more your style, Québec is the place to be in July.

Using geographical prepositions

Wherever you’re going, you have to use the verb aller (ah-ley) (to go) — see Chapter 2 for the conjugation of this verb — followed by a preposition.

Which preposition you use depends on whether the place is a city, province, state, or country.

To indicate that you’re from a certain place, you use the verb être (eh-truh) (to be) or the verb venir (vuh-neer) (to come), followed by a preposition that means from. Here’s the present tense conjugation of the verb venir (head to Chapter 2 for the conjugation of être).

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Saying what city you’re from

In French, as in English, you can say I come from as well as I am from. Use être when you want to simply say that you are from some place; use the verb venir when you want to say that you come from some place. Consider these examples:

Je suis de New York. (zhuh swee duh New York.) (I am from New York.)

Nous sommes de Paris. (nooh sohm duh pah-ree.) (We are from Paris.)

Je viens de Montréal. (zhuh vyaN duh mohN-rey-ahl.) (I come from

Montreal.)

Il vient de Boston. (eel vyaN duh Boston.) (He comes from Boston.)

In French, the question Where are you from? is actually From where are you?

In an interrogative sentence that has a preposition, the preposition is always placed at the beginning of the question. To say from in French, you use the preposition de (duh). Check out the following examples (notice that de becomes d’ in front of a vowel):

D’où êtes-vous?/D’où es-tu? (dooh eht-vooh?/dooh eh-tew?) (Where are you from? [formal/informal])

D’où venez-vous?/D’où viens-tu? (dooh vuh-ney-vooh?/dooh vyaN-tew?) (Where do you come from? [formal/informal])

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But notice that the places mentioned in the preceding examples (New York, Paris, Montreal, and Boston) are cities. It gets a little more complicated when you start talking about the state, province, country, or continent you come from, as the next section explains.

Saying what state, province, country, or continent you’re from

In French, states, provinces, countries, and continents can be masculine

or feminine: la France (lah frahNs) and le Canada (luh kah-nah-dah), for example. (The state, province, country, and continent names that end in e are usually feminine.) Table 13-1 presents a sample list of countries with their genders.

(continued)

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Table 13-1 (continued)

* Both Les États-Unis and Les Pays-Bas are masculine, plural.

Notice that all feminine countries end with the letter e. One exception is le Mexique (luh mehk-seek) (Mexico), which is masculine, even though it ends in e.

The following list shows you how to indicate going to or coming from different types of places. Keep in mind that these are general rules; some exceptions do exist.

Feminine states, provinces, countries (or masculine beginning with a vowel)

Preposition Example

en (ahN) (to go Nous allons en Californie/en Normandie/en Espagne/en Iran. to or be in) (nooh-zah-lohN ahN kah-lee-fohr-nee/ahN nohr-mahN-dee/

ahN-neh-spah-nyuh/ahN ee-rahN.) (We are going to California/ to Normandy/to Spain/to Iran.)

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Masculine plural countries

Preposition Example

aux (oh) (to go Elle va aux Etats-Unis/aux Pays-Bas. (ehl vah oh-zey-tah- to or be in) zew-nee/oh pey-ee-bah.) (She is going to the United States/

to the Netherlands.)

Because the verb être means to be, you can use it to mean being in a city or country, as well as being from a city or country.

Talkin’ the Talk

Lynne is on the phone with her friend Anne in Paris. Anne and her husband Michel want Lynne and her husband David to join them during the holidays.

Anne: Écoute, Lynne. J’ai une proposition. Que faites-vous pendant les fêtes?

ey-kooht, leen. zhey ewn proh-poh-zee-syohN. kuh feht-vooh pahN-dahN ley feht?

Listen, Lynne. I have a proposition. What are you doing during the holidays?

Lynne: Nous? Pas grand-chose. Nous allons beaucoup dormir et nous détendre.

nooh? pah grahN-shohz. nooh-zah-lohN boh-kooh dohr-meer ey nooh dey-tahN-druh.

Us? Not much. We are going to sleep a lot and relax.

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Anne: Nous aussi. Mais voilà ma proposition: Venez à Nice avec nous!

nooh-zoh-see. meh vwah-lah mah proh-poh-zee- syohN: vuh-ney ah nees ah-vehk nooh!

Us too. But here is my proposition: Come to Nice with us!

Lynne: À Nice? Comment ça? ah nees? koh-mahN sah?

To Nice? How come?

Anne: Nous allons louer une petite maison. Pour vous et pour nous.

nooh-zah-lohN looh-ey ewn puh-teet meh-zohN. poohr vooh ey poohr nooh.

We are going to rent a little house. For you and for us.

Lynne: Oh là là, Anne. C’est fantastique! Je vais l’annoncer à

David. Nice! Mon rêve! Je vais te rappeler.

oh lah lah, ahn. seh fahN-tah steek! zhuh veh lah- nohN-sey ah dah-veed. Nees! mohN rehv! zhuh veh tuh rah-pley.

Oh wow, Anne! That’s fantastic! I’m going to announce it to David. Nice! My dream! I am going to call you back.

Words to Know

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Making plans with the future tense

When you plan a trip, you are looking ahead to the future. French has two main future tenses: the immediate or near future and the simple future. As Chapter 2 explains, you form the immediate future by conjugating the verb aller in the present followed by an infinitive. The immediate future means to be going to do something. The other form of the future tense in French is the simple future. In English, the simple future uses the word will plus the verb, as in I will travel this summer. In French, you use only the verb but conjugate it in the future tense, which implies will.

To form the simple future with –er, –ir, –re verbs, take the infinitive (drop the e of –re verbs because the future stem ends in an r) and add the following endings: –ai, –as, –a, –ons, –ez, and –ont. These endings come from the verb avoir (ah-vwahr) (to have), except that you drop the av– in front of the nous (nooh) (we) and vous (vooh) (you) verb forms. To see what we mean, take a look at the conjugation of three verbs — arriver (ah-ree-vey) (to arrive), finir (fee-neer) (to finish), and attendre (ah-tahN-druh) (to wait [for]) — which represent the three main verb categories: –er, –ir, –re.

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There are also many verbs that have irregular stems but regular endings. To conjugate these verbs in the future tense, you follow the same pattern noted earlier but change the stem as appropriate for the particular verb being conjugated. Aller is one of these verbs. The stem of aller in the future is ir. Here’s the conjugation of aller in the simple future tense:

Table 13-3 shows these types of verbs and their stems.

Table 13-3 Verbs with Irregular Stems but Regular Endings

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