Silsoesid,
By situationally aware, I mean I have a general idea that I am within French Airspace, somewhere near Paris so I'm probably talking to Paris, and then when I climb out of London toward France, through 280 I have that moronic 30 second exchange before I go in to Brest airspace for higher.
However, you still haven't answered how monitoring VHF2 is not a line of defence against a VHF1 failure? Just saying "that's a different case" doesn't cover it.