New French Stamps Smell Like Baguettes

Visitors to Paris for the Olympics can now send a smell of France home with their picture postcards and letters.

The smell comes from a special stamp showing the country's famous bread called baguette. The sweet smell, however, may remind you of a French bakery more than an actual baguette.

The stamp was released in May for the day of Saint-Honoré, the saint of bakers. Postal worker Clarisse Briend said the baguette makes people think of France. And she hopes visitors will pick up the stamps along with other official Paris 2024 postcards and stamps. The stamp sells for more than $2 at area post offices.

Pia Schöndienst is a German visitor coming from the Netherlands with her family. She bought the stamps and said she could not smell anything, but her son could smell a chocolate croissant.

"You just have to rub the stamp here like this with your nails," Clarisse Briend said. "You can smell the bread, the baguette."

At the Léonie Bakery in Paris, baker Yasin Robin smelled the stamp and said, “It smells like flan,” a dessert but not the baguette itself. Chief baker Harlem Gbodialo said he could smell something sweet on the stamp while the shop manager Jeanne Barrère compared it to vanilla.

Regardless, Gbodialo added that the bakery expects to have many visitors at their shop near the Champs Élysées. “On top of that the Olympic Games are going to start next week, so it'll boost our influence in terms of clients, and also the weather's been nicer lately, so all the factors are coming together to have a great period of Olympic Games, a great party for everyone,” he added.

Eating baguettes is not as popular as it once was, but France still makes around 16 million per day - or nearly 6 billion a year. One story explains that Napoleon Bonaparte's bakers created the long shape to make it easier for his troops to carry.

I'm Jill Robbins.

Elena Rodriguez, Nathan Frandino, and Helena Williams reported this story for Reuters. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English.

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postcard – n. a card on which a message may be sent by mail without an envelope and that often has a picture on one side

baguette – n. a long, thin loaf of bread

bakery – n. a place where bread, cakes, cookies, and other baked foods are made or sold

boost – v. increase

croissant – n. a type of roll that has a curved shape and that is usually eaten at breakfast

factor – n. something that helps produce or influence a result; one of the things that cause something to happen

saint – n. a person who is officially recognized by the Christian church as being very holy because of the way he or she lived