It takes a lot to decorate the 31-meter high Christmas tree on Strasbourg's Place Kléber: ten technicians, two bucket lifts, 75 thousand lights. Luckily, the operation is being managed by Antoinette Pfimlin, who has 20 years of experience decorating giant trees in a hard hat.

What is the French traditional holiday fare? You'd be surprised... While the classic turkey with chestnut stuffing is still on the menu, some people are getting off the beaten track, pairing classic dishes with ethnic food. Foie gras samosas, anyone? Or how about imitation caviar truffles?

A group of smart young people found revolutionary ways to solve our planet's woes. Electronic books, Internet mail and much more...

Enjoy Duel's spooky new single "Vertigo," set against a particularly impassioned, vengeful scene from an old film. It will definitely give you the chills!

A Primacalc representative introduces a revolutionary eco-friendly device that softens hard water. The device can be installed by a savvy handyman or a plumber.

Rumor has it that Parisians bicyclists are undisciplined. Is this true? Allessandro Di Sarno is out on the streets of Paris to find out for himself and carries out his own humorous inquiry...

Modern technology comes to the rescue! Planet Earth has a chance of recovering from man-made pollution.

The Musée des Abattoirs (Slaughterhouse Museum) in Toulouse devoted an entire exhibition to dub music, a subgenre of reggae. The exhibition featured a selection of Jamaican-style sound systems and culminated in a big dub concert.

Joanna and Caroline take us to the northern French city of Nancy in Lorraine. They'll show you around the beautiful Place Stanislas, classified as a World Heritage Site, and the famous Daum crystal studio. A beautiful art piece might set you back a few thousand euros... Be sure to bring your check book or your credit card!

Technology not only helps clean up our planet, but also allows us to explore the entire universe. According to the astrophysicist Alfred Vidal-Madjar, in five hundred years, we will have visited all the planets in the solar system.

At the Eco Habitat salon, Olivier Brunet from the "Terres Cuites de Courboissy" (Courboissy Terracotta) tile factory explains how they make floor tiles that are both eco-friendly and pleasing to the eye. One of their clients even had his floor tiles made to look three dimensional!

The pianist Alexandre Tharaud plays Beethoven and Chopin in the beautiful surroundings of the Chambord castle. It's an outdoor concert, but the acoustics are so powerful that the performers can hear a pin drop from the audience!

The home of the future includes a talking refrigerator that gives you chocolate bars for breakfast! Unfortunately, it also includes some pesky robots....

An exhibition called "Pottery through the Ages" is being held at La Châtaignère in Savoie, near the Alps. A friendly woman explains the history of pottery, from Ancient Egyptian artifacts to Biblical clay men to modern techniques.

Today Manon and Clémentine present a number of "set expressions," or idiomatic phrases. Hopefully you're not feeling "soft in the knee"—there are a lot of useful expressions to learn in this lesson!