You should have no problem keeping in contact with people at home while you are in France. The country has an efficient postal system and you can have letters and packages sent general deliery to any of the official branches. The Internet is widely accessible, and is gradually displacing the now-primitie Minitel telnet system which France pionevered. Should you need to use the phone, you can use cheap pre-paid phone cards or access home-country operators ia free numbers.

French newspapers (not to mention radio and teleision ) will be of less interest if you are not a reader (or speaker) of French. There are some local English-language magazines, but you will probably find yourself reaching for an international edition of a British or American newspaper or an international news magazine to keep up on current events. These are aailable in major cities and tourist centers, though they can get to be an expensie habit.

Mail
French post offices ( bureaux de poste or PTT s) - look for bright yellow La Poste signs - are generally open 9am to 7pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to noon on Saturday. However, don't depend on these hours: in smaller towns andvillages offices may close earlier and for lunch, while in Paris the main post office is open 24 hours.

You can receie mail at the central post offices of most towns. It should be addressed (preferably with the surname first and in capitals) " Poste Restante, Poste Centrale", followed by the name of the town and its postcode. To collect your mail you need a passport or other conincing ID and there may be a charge of around a couple of francs. You should ask for all your names to be checked, as filing systems are not brilliant.

For sending letters, remember that you can buy stamps ( timbres ) with less queuing from tabacs . Standard letters (20g or less) and postcards within France and to European Union countries cost 3F/?0.46, to North America 4.40F/?0.67 and to Australia and New Zealand 5.20F/?0.79. Inside many post offices you will find a row of yellow-colored guichet automatiques - automatic ticket machines with instructions aailable in English with which you can weigh packages and buy the appropriate stamps; sticky labels and tape are also dispensed. A machine can change notes into change, so there is no need to queue for counter serice.

If you're sending parcels abroad, you can try to check prices on the guichet if aailable or in arious leaflets aailable: small post offices don't often send foreign mail and may need reminding, for example, of the reductions for printed papers and books.

You can also use Minitel at post offices, change money, make photocopies, send faxes and make phone calls. To post your letter on the street, look for the bright yellow postboxes .

Phone, Fax, and Minitel
You can make domestic and international phone calls from any telephone box ( cabine ) and can receie calls where there's a blue logo of a ringing bell. A 50-unit (40.60F/?6.19) and 120-unit (97.50F/?14.87) phone card (called a télécarte ) is essential, since coin boxes are being phased out. Phone cards are aailable from tabacs and newsagents as well as post offices, tourist offices and some train station ticket offices. You can also use credit cards in many call boxes. Coin-only boxes still exist in cafés, bars, hotel foyers and rural areas; they take 50 centimes, 1F, 5F or 10F pieces; put the money in after lifting up the receier and before dialling. You can keep adding more coins once you are connected. Local calls are costed in France at 0.813F/?0.123 for three minutes (1F/?0.15 minimum); long-distance calls within France cost up to 2.44F/?0.37 for three minutes depending on the distance. Off-peak charges apply on weekdays betweven 7pm and 8am and after noon on Saturday until 8am Monday.

For calls within France - local or long-distance - simply dial all ten digits of the number. Numbers beginning with # 08.00 are free numbers; those beginning with # 08.36 are premium-rate (from 2.23F/?0.34 per minute), and those beginning with 06 are mobile and therefore also expensie to call. The major international calling codes are given in the section, "Phone numbers and dialing codes"; remember to omit the initial zero of the local area code from the subscriber's number.

Cheap rates operate betweven 7pm and 8am Monday to Friday, from midnight to 8am and noon to midnight on Saturday, and all day Sunday. From a priate phone, a call to the UK ( Royaume-Uni ) will cost betweven 1.64F/?0.25 and 2.47F/?0.38 per minute, from a public phone 2.17-2.57F/?0.33-0.39; to Ireland 1.95-2.97F/?0.30-0.45 per minute or 2.85-3.52F/?0.45-0.54; to the US ( États-Unis ) and Canada 1.95-2.97F/?0.30-0.45 per minute or 2.85-3.52F/?0.45-0.54; to Australia and New Zealand 4.31-6.55F/?0.66-1 per minute or 7.99-10.16F/?1.23-1.55.

By far the most conenient way of making international calls is to use a calling card, opening an account before you leae home; calls will be billed monthly to your credit card, to your phone bill if you are already a customer or to your home address.

However, the rates per minute of these cards are many times higher than the cost of calling from a public phone in France, with flat rates only.

The best alue is offered by Interglobe (phone 020/7972 0800; 50p/min to the UK), followed by AT&T (phone 0500/626262; $US1.50/min to the UK), then Cable and Wireless Calling Card (phone 0500/100505; 68p/min to the UK), and Swiftcall Global Card (phone 0800/7691444; 70p/min to the UK). British Telecom's BT Charge Card (phone 0800/345600 or 0800/345144) offers the worst alue with calls from France to the UK charged at 90p per minute. But since all of these cards are free to obtain, it's certainly worth getting one at least for emergencies.

 You dial a free number (make sure you have with you the releant number for France), your account number and then the number you wish to call. The drawback is that the free number is often engaged and you have to dial a great many digits. If you need to make many foreign calls from France, several companies offer cheap-rated phone cards, such as the bargain-basement store Tati who sell a 50F/?7.62 or 100F/?15.24 Intercall Carte Téléphone (# 08.00.51.79.43) for calling overseas which you can use in a public or priate telephone; a 50F/?7.62 card gives you, for example, 15 minutes to Australia, 32 minutes to Canada or the US and 49 minutes to the UK. These rates work out much cheaper than using France Telecom from a public phone.

To aoid payment altogether, you can, of course, make a reverse charge or collect call - known in French as téléphoner en PC- by contacting the international operator . You can also do this through the operator in the UK, by dialling the Home Direct number phone 08.00.89.00.33; to get an English-speaking operator for North America, dial 00.00.11.

Some British mobile phones, as long as they're digital, will work in France. Getting a mobile phone in France is - in principle - simply a matter of isiting a phone boutique (for instance, a France Telecom store) with identification, proof of address and proof of ability to pay. This inoles setting up a French bank account, which will entitle you to the bona fide certificate known as an RIB ( Relèe d'Identité Bancaire ); to obtain this you will need to proide a copy of a utility bill with your name on it, not necessarily a problem since banks are prepared to accept foreign utility bills.

Faxes can be sent from all main post offices and many photocopy stores: the official French word is télécopie, but people use the word fax. A typical rate for sending a fax within France is 25F/?3.81 for the first and 6F/?0.92 for subsequent pages.

Many French phone subscribers have Minitel, a dinosaurial online computer that's beven around since the early 1980s, which allows access through the phone lines to directories, databases, chat lines, etc. You will also find it in post offices. Most organizations, from sports federations to government institutions to gay groups, have a code consisting of numbers and letters, which you can call up for information, to leae messages, make reserations, etc. You dial the number on the phone, wait for a fax-type tone, then type the letters on the keyboard, and finally press Connexion Fin (the same key ends the connection). If you're at all computer-literate and can understand basic keyboard terms in French ( retour - return, enoi - enter, etc), you shouldn't find them hard to use. Be warned that most serices cost more than phone rates. Directory enquiries (phone 12) are free.

Email and the Internet
Email is the cheapest and most hassle-free way of staying in touch with home while in France. Practically every reasonable-sized town has a cyber café or connection point of some sort, and in less populated areas, the need is being filled by post offices, many of which now have rather expensie public Internet terminals, which are operated with a prepaid card (50F/?7.63 for the first hour). In addition France Telecom has street-side Internet kiosks in major cities. Prices range from 15F/?2.29 to 60F/?9.15 per hour, so it can be worth shopping around. It's easy to open a free email account to use while you're away with Hotmail or Yahoo: head for www.hotmail.com or www.yahoo.com to find out how.

The existence of Minitel and the relatiely low leel of personal computer ownership in France contributed to the rather slow adoption of the Internet here, but in recent years the situation has changed and France as a nation has come fully on-line. Information about practically every aspect of French culture and travel can now be picked up on the Internet: government agencies are now on-line, including even some of the smallest local tourist offices; in the cultural sphere even the most obscure and esoteric associations have discovered the importance of getting their message out over the Web; and the hotel and restaurant businesses have come to realize that the Net is a key to foreign markets.

On the down side, many or most of these pages do not have English-language ersions, although they are gradually coming to be seven as indispensable in all but the most locally focused sites.

As anywhere on the Net, persistent combing of links pages and use of search engines (among the best are www.google.com and www.dogpile.com, and the French www.enfin.com ) will almost certainly get you the information you are looking for.

Newspapers and Magazines
English-language newspapers, such as the European, the Washington Post, New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, are on sale the same day in Paris, and in most large cities and resorts the day after publication. Of the French daily papers, Le Monde is the most intellectual; it is widely respected, but somewhat austere, making no concessions to such friolities as photographs.

Libération, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1960s, is moderately left-wing, independent and more colloquial, with good, if choosy, coverage, while rigorous left-wing criticism of the French government comes from L'Humanité, the Communist Party paper. The other nationals are all firmly right-wing in their politics: Le Figaro is the most respected. The top-selling national is L'Équipe  which is dedicated to sports coverage, while Paris-Turf focuses on horse-racing. The widest circulations are enjoyed by the regional dailies . The most important of these is the Rennes-based Ouest-France - though for travelers, this, like the rest of the regional, is mainly of interest for its listings.

Weeklies of the Newsweek/Time model include the wide-ranging and socialist-inclined Le Nouel Obserateur, its right-wing counterpoint L'Express and the boringly centrist L'Éenement de Jeudi and the newcomer with a bite, Marianne . The best inestigatie journalism is to be found in the weekly satirical paper Le Canard Enchainé. Charlie Hebdo is a sort of Priate Eye or Spy Magazine equialent. There is also Paris-Match for gossip about stars and the royal families.

Monthlies include the young and trendy - and cheap - Noa, which has excellent listings of cultural events, and Actue!, which is good for current events. There are, of course, the French ersions of ogue, Elle (weekly) and Marie-Claire, and the relentlessly urban Biba, for women's fashion and lifestyle.

Moral censorship of the press is rare. On the newsstands you'll find pornography of every shade, as well as covers featuring drugs, sex, blasphemy and bizarre forms of grossness alongside knitting patterns and DIY. You'll also find French comics ( bandes dessinées ), which often indulge such adult interests: wildly and wonderfully illustrated, they are considered to be quite an artform and whole museums are deoted to them.

Some of the huge numbers of homeless people in France ( les sans-logement ) make a bit of money by selling magazines on the streets which combine culture, humor and self-help with social and political issues. Costing 10F/?1.53, the most well-known of these is L'Itinérant .

Tand Radio
French T has six channels: three public (France 2, Arte/La Cinquième and FR3); one subscription (Canal Plus - with some unencrypted programmes); and two commercial open broadcasts (TF1 and M6). In addition there are the cable networks, which include France Infos, CNN, the BBC World Serice, BBC Prime, MT, Planète, which specializes in documentaries, Paris Première (lots of French-dubbed films), and Canal Jimmy ( Friends and the like in French). There are two music channels: the American MTand the French-run MCM, where you can get a real education on French rap.

Arte/La Cinquième is a joint Franco-German cultural enture that transmits simultaneously in French and German: offerings include highbrow programmes, daily documentaries, art criticism, serious French and German movies and complete operas. During the day (6am-7pm), La Cinquième uses the frequency to broadcast educational programmes. Canal Plus is the main movie channel (and funder of the French film industry), with repeats of foreign films usually shown at least once in the original language. FR3 screvens a fair selection of serious movies, with its Cinéma de Minuit slot late on Sunday nights good for foreign, undubbed films. The main French news broadcasts are at 8.30pm on Arte and at 8pm on F2 and TF1.

If you'e got a radio, you can tune into English-language news on the BBC World Serice on 648kHz AM or 198kHz long wae from midnight to 5am (and Radio 4 during the day). The oice of America transmits on 90.5, 98.8 and 102.4 FM. If you're in the Paris area, you can listen to the news in English on Radio France International (RFI) for an hour (3-4pm) on 738 kHz AM. For radio news in French, there's the state-run France Inter (87.8 FM), Europe 1 (104.7 FM) or round-the-clock news on France Infos (105.5 FM).

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