Tag: Community

Life in France

Don’t do that

When I tried to find out how many YouTube channels there are, the only agreement between websites seemed to be on the word “million” following numbers such as 37, 51, 113, or even 373, all of which translates to “a lot”. I (half) joked with Bill that you could learn anything, including brain surgery, from these videos. Spoiler alert: don’t search for that unless you have a strong stomach. We do use this extremely popular online platform for less serious matters that include improving our French and discovering more about the society in which we now live. A topic that I’ve seen at least once on almost every channel I follow has to do with mistakes to avoid as a visitor or new resident in France. The faux pas listed below are the ones that appear most often with our own experiences noted beside each one. 

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Life in France

Feeling at home

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.

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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

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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Life in France

Catherine’s C list

As soon as we made the decision to move to France we created a spreadsheet with all the cities we wanted to consider down the left hand column and everything we were searching for across the top. We wrote another blog post about that process but briefly we had 16 cities and a handful of must-haves such as a weekly market, a train station, and a water view. The overriding factor that eliminated perhaps a dozen of our choices was that we needed to be within walking distance of all of our needs. That driver’s license that seemed so desirable at age 16 was no longer a requirement; in fact, we wanted to live without a car. Several blog readers have told us that they too are using a chart to compare all of the possibilities and we’ve even seen some of these when visitors have come through Carcassonne. Our new friend Catherine has a lineup of what she would like to find in a new French hometown, be it full-time or part-time. She calls this her C list so let’s see what’s included.

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Life in France

Do it yourself

Our neighbor is 80 and to celebrate, she had a birthday party. Actually, that’s not correct. She had 2 parties, 1 for friends and 1 for family, and she gave both of them herself in what she says is true French tradition. I’m not sure that everyone here has 2 parties but it definitely is true that if you use the word “invite” it’s your responsibility to pay. It might be out for drinks, to a restaurant for dinner, to the movies or a concert. In this case, the festivities were at her home just across the street but still there was a caterer to book, the wines to order, the flowers and other decorations to arrange, and the clean up after we all left. Oh yes, and a special dessert to pick up.

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