Several months ago we wrote about a retired American couple who had moved to France, expecting to settle here permanently. Wife Joanna said that they were looking for “civility, consideration and little or no gun violence” that they seemed to have found in Nîmes. Unfortunately, a year later they were preparing to return to San Francisco for a variety of difficulties revolving around: visas, banking and government regulations, the language, the food, and not having any friends. “Things are very difficult to figure out here…I miss familiarity…I miss knowing where things are,” she concluded. Then I saw a CNN Travel story about a Florida woman who so enjoyed her vacations in Spain that she took up residence there two years ago. Can you guess where she now lives?

Continue reading “Look before you leap”

There’s an online forum that I look at each morning (one of our Favorite Links in the right column) where expats living in or moving to France can pose questions and share their experiences. One of the threads that caught my eye is entitled “Why France? And why not…” which the moderator had hoped would generate a discussion about why people would want to move to this country in particular rather than elsewhere in western Europe, for example, or even just change locations within their homeland. That latter point, she notes, would avoid any dealings with immigration and keep you in familiar surroundings (food, language, culture, friends) that could be especially important for retirees. Since it’s a forum for people who already live in France or are seriously considering moving here, it didn’t surprise me that the conversation went somewhat off-topic pretty quickly. Instead of addressing what other countries did or did not offer, most people wanted to talk about what drew them here and especially explain how they might have better prepared themselves for the leap. 

Continue reading “Getting prepared”