We received an email from one of our readers who said that she would be making her first trip to France and that this area of the country was at the top of her possible retirement locations. Christine went on to say, “I really want to get into the culture of the area, do what the locals do, not just what the tourists want to see. Any advice?” Bill responded with quite a few suggestions that could probably apply to any new city although our experience is, of course, with Carcassonne. These general concepts worked for us when we were vacationing here and fantasizing about a permanent move so I thought they might be useful to others.

The marché—This was an easy one to put at the top of the list since we even shopped there during our stays in Paris which was never a genuine retirement location consideration for us. We think that there’s no better way to “be local” than to buy your fruits, vegetables, eggs, cheese, etc. from the enticing displays (photo across the top of this page) each week at the open air market. You can always ask for assistance to pick out what you need for dinner and now that we visit the same vendors each Saturday morning we might discover some “bonus” fruit discreetly placed inside our bags or some whispered advice like, “Buy these instead of those; they’re sweeter.” 

Les Halles: the covered marché—for seafood and meats this is the place to go with the same benefits as its outdoor cousin. When our regular butcher sees Bill arrive he automatically tears off a big sheet of kraft paper knowing a large order is coming up.

The boulangerie—Whether it’s a baguette, croissant, or a loaf of country bread, the bakery has to be a daily stop and if you go there around the same time each morning you’ll run into many of the same customers. This is another place where a “bonus” baguette might show up in your order.

The city’s website—Here you can find all of the upcoming events that are officially sponsored by the city in the theaters, concert hall, auditoriums, museums, etc. or programs that the city is simply helping to promote. The directory of the hundreds of associations in town can be found on this site too, and many offer activities of their own. That’s how we found out about the jazz association that has frequent jam sessions with members playing or invited professional groups. There’s a link to Carcassonne’s site in the righthand column.

Newspapers—There are 3 daily papers that cover Carcassonne, all with online editions that can be partially accessed for free or 1€ for a trial subscription. We read these each morning to see what has happened overnight and to find out where we might go in the following days. We even did this at a distance from the US as well as looking at supermarket flyers to get an idea about prices and French products.

Walk—We don’t think that there’s a better way to explore a neighborhood, especially in a city where you might want to live, than to do so on foot. Can you easily get to the train station, the weekly market, grocery stores, shops of all kinds, the doctor’s office, for example. From our house we can walk to the hospital in 15 minutes and to the airport in half an hour. Looking at online maps can provide a head start.

Local bus and long distance trains—Our 15€ annual Senior bus pass lets us ride anywhere in the city and we can typically catch a bus each half hour. Without a pass it’s only 1€ per ride which is also the same fare on some of the trains in our region of Occitanie and on ALL the trains in Occitanie the first weekend of each month. It takes an hour to get to Toulouse or half that to Narbonne or Limoux; all easy day trips to try out how easy it can be to get around.

Relationships—In our opinion, to truly feel like a local you need to establish relationships. If you’re just visiting then that’s hard to do with neighbors but a bit easier if you can visit the same vendors at the marché, for example, and certainly achievable with a daily visit to pick up your baguette at your favorite boulangerie. Stopping at the sidewalk café next door for a morning coffee wouldn’t hurt either. Making contact with bloggers who already live in the areas that you want to investigate can be a great introduction to the locale. 

Feel comfortable in French—Whatever you might think “fluent” in a language means, in our experience, if you are moving here to retire, without needing to go to a university or to work which would require a high level of French, simply feeling comfortable in the language has worked for us. That said, the more French you know before getting here, the better. We have found conversations with native speakers to be the quickest route to feeling at ease. Before moving I joined one of the online conversation exchanges and found someone who lives in this area who wanted to improve his English. We instantly had a common topic that we could discuss in both languages.

Thank you, Christine, for your question that inspired today’s blog post that might help you choose a new home town.