One of the things i find interesting about France is the way people use the telephone for everything. I hadn't recognised how much society had changed in the US until I moved abroad, and everyone used the phone for everything. It's actually a lot like Arkansas in that respect. So today, when the train was seriously delayed due to "various incidents" (which sounds absolutely dire, really) everyone immediately leapt onto their phone.
Which is actually a subject all its own - people here don't talk on their phone, per se, they use their headphones to listen and hold the phone in front of their mouth so they can talk into it and see it at the same time (not sure if the 'see' part is intentional or coincidental). It took a bit of getting used to - at first I thought everyone was video conferencing on the street, which seemed weird (and dangerous).