Many travelling to Euro 2016 will carry on the football-supporting tradition of playing up to stereotypes.
The Irish will sing, be friendly to strangers and wear leprechaun hats. Others might opt for berets and stripy t-shirts in honour of their hosts.
All well and good, but another stereotype is threatening to spoil the fun: the grinding, intractable French transport strike.
Lara Marlowe reports on today's World View podcast on the threat to the tournament posed by the strikes and what progress is being made to bring them to an end.
The bad news is that the strikes are intensifying at seemingly the worst possible time.
Tonight, an open-ended railway strike will begin, to be followed by metro and, perhaps most worryingly, air traffic control stoppages later this week.
The good news, says Lara, is now that the “big theatre” of negotiations has begun in earnest, the political will is there to end the strikes in time - hopefully- for the arrival of fans.
Also on the podcast, Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole, who has returned from three months living in the United States, discusses the America that shocked onlookers by making Donald Trump the Republican nominee, and the steps the divisive billionaire must take next to capitalise on Hillary Clinton's stubborn unpopularity.
And from Beijing, Clifford Coonan reports on the reaction in China to "going viral" for the wrong reasons: an advertisement with racist overtones that drew global attention last week.
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