It's my considered opinion that it's the obnoxious service people at Charles de Gaulle Airport that give the French their unwarranted reputation for rudeness. I've seen such horrific attitudes on display there. But once you get into Paris, it's a different story, in my experience.

CDG is not exactly a model of efficiency, for sure. But the new train station is nice, although the automatic ticket vending machines never work for me.

And as far as the language thing--I love these comments such as, "Can you believe they didn't speak a word of English?" How about this instead: "Can you believe those tourists show up in our country and don't speak a single word of French?" I can sure imagine people here saying that about foreign tourists.

I've always found that attempting to speak a few words in French goes a LONG way. Just expecting that they should speak English can get you the cold shoulder.