Tag: Americans in Carcassonne

Life in France

We 💖 farmers

Years ago we saw a movie called “The Girl from Paris” (the original French title was Une Hirondelle a Fait le Printemps) that told the story of a 30-year-old woman who is bored with her life as a computer specialist and decides to become a farmer. First she must get a 2-year degree in agriculture, including an internship on a working farm followed by sorting through the farming opportunities to find the best one to attain her goal. I remember being surprised at the time by two things: that an adult woman in Paris would strike out on her own to undertake such a big project alone and that there were educational options available to her that I had previously associated only with teenagers. Now that we live in France in a city surrounded by growing fields and where we have our own “wine high school”, it’s all falling into place.

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Life in France

To live decently

The headline in one of our local newspapers was “How much do you need to live decently?” My first question was “What exactly does that mean?” not only because it was a new word for me—décemment—but also because it would seem fairly subjective as far as what could be considered as a reasonable standard of living. Sure enough, a definition was there in the next paragraph, “households have the capacity to participate effectively in social life without the risk of experiencing significant deprivation”. Spoken like a true economist which is not surprising since the study’s author, Pierre Concialdi, does indeed have that title at the l’Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES), just outside of Paris. So, I had to read further.

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Life in France

Buy here, buy now

Blog reader John sent us (thank you!) an article entitled “7 Reasons to Buy a Property in Carcassonne”. It was sponsored by a real estate company so there were lots of enticing photos with descriptions including words such as “mansion, garden, village, views, marble fireplaces, and wooden floors.” Everything you want to see and read when you are fantasizing about your French dream life. Since we’re already living that dream, it was easy enough to look past all of the beautiful marketing to see the concrete reasons that someone might want to buy here or elsewhere in France, for that matter. We’ve included some of our own observations with each of these ideas from author Karen Tait.

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Life in France

Cheapest places to live

For administrative purposes, mainland France is divided into 96 departements, each with its own presence of the federal government at the Préfecture. Not only is that convenient for the elected officials in Paris but it’s also handy for comparisons when you’re trying to decide where you might want to live. Here on our blog if you click on the Tag “Where to live in France” (in the right hand column) you’ll see posts that have sometimes included that division in the results. Today we’re adding one more article to that list with the topic being “cheapest” since it’s about the cost of living while others have looked at factors such as healthcare, recreation, and weather. After all, it’s probably pretty inexpensive to live on a desert island but the quality of life might leave a lot to be desired.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

School field trips

Growing up in southeastern Virginia, there were many school field trip opportunities that could be seen within a day: Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, Civil War battlefields, the Chesapeake Bay. In second grade we took a train trip of only 20 miles (32 km) but that obviously made such a positive impression that years later it remains my (our) favorite mode of transportation. When I first moved to Chicago there was a travel agency that specialized in student travel to Europe. The manager was a high school history teacher who knew first-hand how important it was to immerse his students in the topics that they were learning by visiting the places that they were studying. It’s one thing to read about the French Revolution and something entirely different to travel to Paris to stand on the site of the Bastille or to touch the walls of the Conciergerie where Marie-Antoinette was held prior to her execution. Now a university study has measured the value of field trips and lends support to what that teacher knew all along.

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Life in France, Travel in France & beyond

Super trains

What is “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound”? The easy answer is “Superman”, of course, but if you’re willing to stretch your imagination a bit, the travel booking website Omio would give you an additional answer. In the article entitled, “These routes in Europe are faster on the ground than by plane” they looked at their 100 most popular routes and found 27 that would get you to your destination faster by using the rails. They also surveyed their customers to gather opinions about convenience, comfort, speed, and pollution generated by the various forms of transportation. Twenty-five percent of those questioned were willing to add up to an hour in travel time if that meant a significant positive contribution to the environment. The sample chart below, with a nod to France, lists some of those time savings.

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Life in France

All that jazz

We joined a jazz club. Technically it’s an association as defined by the law from 1901 that states essentially,  “Any citizen has the right to associate, without prior authorization.” I knew from studying for the citizenship interview exam that se réunir (to get together, meet up, assemble) was a guaranteed fundamental freedom of being French. Although I had anticipated that the ban on gatherings would have been by royal decree, it was under the signature of Napoleon Bonaparte that clubs were disbanded. Maybe he didn’t like jazz?

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