The French vacation obsession

As vacationers take to the highways for summer vacation in mid-July 2009, a sign is displayed on a road in the south of France alerting drivers of heavy traffic for two kilometers. (Mildrade Cherfils/Global Post)

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PARIS — The holiday hand-off goes something like this: July vacation-goers known as “juilletistes” return to Paris and to the grind of urban existence while the “aoûtiens,” who take their allotted weeks off in August, prepare to replace them on the roads, beaches and mountains, and in vacation communities.

Ever since full-time workers in France were first granted holiday entitlement in 1936, they have seen their two-week vacation allotment increase generously to five weeks. Most families opt to take that time off when their  children are out of school. But instead of the mere stampede to the beach or lake that U.S. domestic vacationers might notice, here there is a mass exodus. Bakeries shutter and roads become predictably jammed around the beginning and middle of July and August.

“It has become a ritual, even an institution,” Sylvain Penglot said about the long annual vacations. He plans to travel to Salvador, in Brazil, with a friend during the second half of August. Penglot, 36, said he regularly takes time off during the year when he can afford to be away from his water-treatment business, but that none of those breaks — in winter, spring and at Christmas, as well as any long weekends in May depending on when the bank holidays fall — compares with the big summer holiday.

“We’re still very privileged, still living off of our social gains,” Penglot said. “We still have some crumbs but it’s not going to last.”

He acknowledged that he was among the lucky ones who could afford to take a big trip, as his business had quadrupled over the last four years. His brother, who recently bought a home and was now struggling to make ends meet, probably wouldn’t be going away.

But as soon as Penglot said this, he reconsidered. Even people without much money will make some kind effort to go somewhere, he said, whether it’s camping or to the beach, because “the holidays are sacred.”

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/france/090807/the-french-vacation-obsession