'La douce France' is a concept. The 'hexagone' as the French often call their country, referring to its shape, is not only Paris. It also belongs to the sunny Mediterranean South, to the ruggedness of the Atlantic Ocean board in Normandy and Brittany, to the German rooted continental world in the Alsace, to the Northern lands of Flanders and the Ardennes. This extremely diverse character of France has hardly been diminished over centuries of centralising tradition in administration and governance, rooted in the monarchy of 'le Roi Soleil', Louis XIV and his predecessors, and kept intact ever afterwards, throughout the turbulent history of revolutions and consecutive Republics. Today, Paris still rules centrally over the Fifth Republic and all over the country the official buildings still carry the slogan 'égalité, fraternité, liberté' of the 1789 French Revolution, which changed the Western world, even … if there is still a long way to go, here like anywhere else. But unlike everywhere else, the regions of South, East, North and West express their own ide