Categories
Culture Food France info Life

Home Again

This was our house the first time we looked at it. It actually looks the same as it did in the picture on the outside, except for our old Kia parked in front of it.

Kind of repeating a topic this time, but as this blog is intended to let whomever is interested in it to know about the experience of moving to France, it’s probably just the thing to do. I spent three months here (in this house) in the spring of 2022, and I moved here permanently in May of 2023. So I have actually lived in France for thirteen months now, and I do have some impressions.

First, it no longer seems at all odd. In fact, the way things happen here seems normal, and I’m not sure but that I’d need to do some adjusting if I were to move back to the US. Not that the US is bad, but it’s different. In France I am in the process of applying for a residence permit, which of course I’ll never need in the US. You ain’t seen bureaucracy until you’ve seen French bureaucracy! That said, they have a facility in the nearest sizeable town for the sole purpose of helping people find a way through the bureaucratic maze, and they were very nice, and very helpful, and I felt better when I left than I did when I went in. That, believe it or not, seems like a normal thing.

And the food really is better. Not just restaurant food, but food you make yourself. Europe doesn’t approve many additives in food, so the beef never had hormone treatments, nor antibiotics unless it was sick, and there is a lot less added sugar in, well, virtually everything, although sugary treats are quite easy to obtain, and not just weird Frenchie stuff, but Kit Kat bars, Snickers, Gummy Things, Nestles (naturally, as it’s a Swiss company,) plus pies and cakes and other dessert items. Even, occasionally, doughnuts that would sell in the US. Not all the time, but sometimes. But outside of the dessert aisles, the food is nutritious, and meats, in particular, taste better, and if you’re into veggies only (can be tougher in France) the legumes (vegetables) are extremely high in quality.

Streets and roads are not as wide as I was used to in Nevada. In fact, some country roads are just about wide enough for one car, and it’s not unusual for someone to have to pull into a side lane or entrance to a field to pass another vehicle. This is normal. Also, speeds are generally lower, although the Autoroutes (mostly toll roads) are beautifully maintained and have a speed limit of just above 80 mph. Every so often they catch somebody going 120 mph or so, but as enforcement is strict, that’s rare.

And I can speak some French. In my learning curve, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can see how much I don’t know. This is discouraging, but also encouraging. Sometimes I even understand what someone is saying to me, and I’ve had a few conversations that, I think, actually worked. So there’s that.

I hear my supper calling, so I’m signing off. Be sure to tune in for the next thrilling installment!

Categories
Culture France Life

Frenchified?

Inside Notre Dame de Paris, before the fire

Last weekend I went out walking with my dogs and found myself having an attack of Frankish resentment at an impolite encounter. The hunters were out (la chasse), in which some people stand by a road with shotguns while facing the woods, while others take their dogs, circle around to the other side of the woods, and attempt to chase out something for the folks by the road to shoot. The bush beaters have shotguns, too, so maybe the folks by the road are just backup. Anyway, as I’ve written a few times, in France, it is obligatoire to say bonjour to anyone you meet well enough to lock eyes with. Not saying bonjour is the height of bad manners. You might get away with no s’il vous plaît, no merci, or even no au revoir, but bonjour is not negotiable. One says that, or apologizes if one starts a conversation without doing so.

Anyway, on Sunday the mutts and I passed by a number of people standing along the road holding shotguns. I’m cool with guns, and none of these people looked like they were obsessed with their guns, which are, of course, a tool to use of you happen to want to kill your prey animals yourself. I’ve eaten some of the wild boar from around here, and it is probably worth shooting. It’s very good. Most of the people and I exchanged bonjours, although one man we so intent on the tree line that I don’t think he even knew we were passing. But there was one small group, a man and a woman, who I looked at, nodded at, and said bounour to each of, who just stared at me as I walked past. Now, I’ll admit, maybe they were strangers to France. Maybe from someplace like Denmark where, I’m told, saying hello before getting down to business is considered impolite. I admit, maybe they had their reasons, but, you know, I found their failure to say hello made me angry. I mean, how dare they? One always says hello, boor!

I wasn’t that angry. I didn’t say anything to them about it (they should know better anyway, right?) But I was surprised to find out that they sort of pissed me off by not responding. I’ve lived here a total of just about a year, counting three months in 2022, and apparently that’s enough to start soaking up local cultural norms. Who knows what’s next? You never know, I might start eating pizza and beer and cheeseburgers like I see a lot of French people doing. And there’s just no telling where that might lead! Or, seriously, it is interesting that I would react that way. You don’t formally greet everybody you happen to meet the eyes of in the US, do you? I didn’t, although I did always at least nod and maybe make some sort of sound.

I guess I’m just moving along the continuum toward being a judgmental twit, huh? Well, life’s a journey!

Categories
Culture France Healthcare

Sproing!

Springtime in Paris? Well, yes to be accurate.

The sound in the title of this post is spring, springing. Last month it was colder than heck for around here (I used to live in Minneapolis, don’t bother with examples of when it gets “really cold.”) Yesterday it was 65 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. The cranes (grue) have been flying north over Lizant. It’s actually rather pleasant, and not terribly cold even when it rains. This weather is premature, but I haven’t heard any complaints. Maybe next summer the weather will continue to smile upon us and it won’t get up to 30 degrees Celsius every other week like it did last year. Maybe.

My French is improving. I had my medical exam for my Titre de sejour, residence card, last Tuesday. So on Monday I had to drive to Poitiers, about an hour away, to go to a French equivalent of a county hospital to get a chest X-ray taken. Then on Tuesday morning I walked into what we’d call a “Class C office building” again in Poitiers, with uncertain lighting and disturbingly bland decor, at 9:25 in the morning. At 11:55 I walked out again, having had a six minute interview with a nurse, and a fifteen minute interview with a couple of doctors. I’m telling you here and now, if you want to live in a particular country, be sure to be born there. It’s a lot less aggravating. I’ve since applied online for my official “can you live in France?” interview, which should be easy enough to pass. I had to send them many of the same documents I had to send the agency that gives out visas. France has a huge bureaucracy, with many branches, and apparently no two branches do much effective communicating with each other. This is itself very encouraging, as a scary situation would be where you give your documents to just one office, and the entire government apparatus knows all about you. I tell myself that while awaiting another step in a bureaucratic dance.

Besides awaiting that appointment, I await eagerly my carte sanitaire, or health insurance card. French healthcare is priced according to income, and they do not include pensions. Our income being all pensions at the moment, it should be cheap enough, huh? I applied in October, sent further documentation in late December, and as soon as I receive the card I plan to visit my French doctor, if only because I promised those doctors in Poitiers that I would do so. I do believe that there is no way that one could overestimate the ubiquity of French bureaucracy. But, what the heck, I do like living here.

Speaking of which, I’m considering reviving my “Grumpy American Moves to France” YouTube channel. Please let me know if you’d be interested in such a thing. If you want to check out what it was a couple of years ago, click here: (483) A Grumpy American Moves to France – YouTube

Categories
France Moving to France

Moving In

Not moving into the house. That’s over and done with. Moving into France requires a series of steps, one of which I have reached, or am about to reach. I am currently living on a one-year tourist visa, which you can get if you just want to spend more than 90 days in France. By you I mean anyone. It required a trip to Beverly Hills to interview with the company that handles French visa applications. They were nice. My visa expires at the end of April, so it’s time to apply for the next thing, which is a five-year residence permit, which requires a couple of things as well.

First, a medical exam, which is scheduled for a week from Monday and Tuesday. Monday for an X-ray, Tuesday for the interview. I have to take my passport (of course), vaccination record, birth certificate, and any records of surgeries that I may have, which is exactly none. I hope that doesn’t mess anything up, but if they aren’t available, they aren’t available. After the Tuesday exam I have another interview (or will have) in which it is determined either that I am a suitable subject to live in France for at least five more years, or if I should be sent packing. As I am retired, and we have income and won’t actually cost France much of anything (we pay our taxes on time) that shouldn’t be a problem.

After five years there are several ways to go. One can renew that five-year card online, apply for a ten-year residence card (carte de sejour is the official name of those cards, by the way) or apply for French citizenship. That’s four years from now if I include the application time. Of course, for the five-year card one must also demonstrate a basic knowledge of French language. A2 level, which is enough to get by. Ten-year card required B1, which is essentially comfortable. Citizenship requires B2, which is good in everything except the technical minutiae of life. Even the current French zeitgeist is okay with not knowing how to build a skyscraper, apparently. These requirements are new, as of last week. Previously the 5-year had no language requirement, the 10-year required only A1, which I call “tourist Franch”, and citizenship required only B1.* If you think that there has been some complaints from some expatriate quarters, you’re right. Mostly, though, not from Americans. From Americans I have read sympathetic posts, and comments that we should require English of anyone wanting to live in the US, forgetting that the US has no official language, as does France. Tough to write a defensible law about a non-existent situation, I’m afraid.

So this is simply a report on where I am in my adventure in Moving To France. I’ll post something about how my medical exam goes after it happens, in a couple of weeks. Until then, au revoir!

*Those letters are from a European standard language skills rating system. I am C2 in English, proficient that is, at least! 🙂 The levels, in ascending order, are A, B, C.

Categories
Culture France

French Labor

News today in France: It is very difficult to get to anywhere significant from anywhere significant as farmers are staging nationwide protests by blocking roads and Paris streets. The Autoroutes and National Roads (largely freeways) are affected, and the alternate routes are, shall we say, not so fast at the best of times. French people in general back the farmers, and also labor unions of all sorts.

Remember that last sentence. A majority of French citizens, while off put by the inconvenience, support the ideas behind the protests. A protest is called a manifestation, a union is called a syndicat. These protests are mostly organized by a group whose name translates as “Young Farmers’ Union.” If this sounds weird to American sensibilities, that’s just because it is, but you should know that most Europeans agree with the French people on this one. This is the weirdest thing about life in France, that labor unions are appreciated and respected. Yet, France is a capitalist country. France has the most productive economy in the European Union. France is the second largest food exporting country in the world after the US. But France, generally speaking, supports labor and farmers.

I’m not offering an opinion on this phenomenon in this post. I’m just pointing out something different about French and European society. I leave you to make what you will out of these simple facts. For me, this has little impact on my daily life. I’m retired, I live in a small village, and all the towns I need to get to are along side roads, but there are lots of people who are impacted in a major way. As Dorothy says to Toto, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, are we?

Categories
Culture France language

The French Languages

A Real Book. A Long History. Written in French. Sigh.

You may think I’m going to talk about dialects of French, and there certainly are a lot of them to consider. French is spoken as a native language in the Carribean, in Canada, in Africa, and in Polynesia plus some other places. But, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that, whatever dialect you speak, you probably will need to learn two French languages. Spoken French (not too awful) and Written French (too awful.)

To begin with, let me show you a few letter combinations you can write to represent the sound we call a “long A”.

è, é, ai, ait, er (on the end of a word), and several more if you can believe it. Now, about the plain old e. It’s a schwa (the linguists term for it) which means it’s just a generic vowel mostly considered unworthy of being pronounced, especially if it is at the end of a word. Chien, is pronounced sort of like shieh. It means Dog, masculine or just generically. Chiene is pronounced sort of like “she-en” and means Dog, feminine. Many times, a vowel with an e on the end of it is the feminine form of an otherwise masculine word. If you see an unaccented e on the end of a word, never pronounce it. If you do, the members of Richlieu’s Academy will probably come threaten you with their swords, and maybe send you to their secret jail somewhere. (Kidding)

French, like English, changes verb forms depending on who’s doing it. I run, you run, he runs, that sort of thing. They run, easy enough. In French that phrase looks like ils courent. The word “to run” is courer. Keep up, now. To run sounds like “Cou-ray”. I run sounds like “Cour” (there is an s on the end of the word.) courent sonds just like cours. Yep, ent means absolutely nothing to how one pronounces the word in French, but it absolutely must be put there if you’re writing it out. L’academie français, founded by that famous Cardinal Richlieu, keeps a tight grip on written French. But, being a free country, French people say whatever they want to.

For example, if you take French, they’ll tell you that “I don’t know” is Je ne sais pas. Sounds sort of like Zhe nay say pah. But, forget that. Write it, but in speaking it, I kid you not, what comes out sounds a lot like Zhay Pah. In French, even under current rules, you could write that out as J’ai pas, but don’t ever do that, or the ghost of every retired French grammar teacher will haunt you to your grave. (J’ai pas, by the way, could be translated as “I have nothing.” That would even work, wouldn’t it?)

This, then, is a warning. study your academic French well. You’ll need that, if only to fill out government paperwork (or to read government paperwork) but remember to speak the way French people do, in what is, pretty much, an entirely different language.

Categories
Culture France memoir

Je Vais à Disneyland !

This is the plaza outside the entrance to Disney Parks, Paris photo by the author

That picture was taken on January 7, 2024, 25 kilometers East of Paris Centre-Ville. Yep, Disneyland Paris (and Walt Disney Studios) in January. Had a pretty good time, considering the weather, which kept getting colder as time passed. The feels like temperature got as low as 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Our puffy, cold-climate worthy coats never arrived from Nevada. Lined raincoats are good, but maybe not good enough. At least I had earmuffs!

It was the final day of the Holidays at Disney

his tree is just inside Disneyland, or was, that is. Disneyland is the same place, only different. Have another picture or two:

Top: Main Street; Bottom Frontierland

You’ll notice the Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland. There is also a Mississippi steamboat, a really lame walk-through called “The Real Wild West,” restaurants, and maybe in summer those canoes, but I can’t say for sure. On Main Street you’re looking at the Emporium, which will be familiar if you’ve ever been to a Disneyland Magic Kingdom.

Amazingly, this park is 30 years old as of last year. (Guess that makes it 31 years old this year, huh?)

For lunch we found a place serving turkey legs with frites (fries, sorry) and soft drinks, and we ate outside. A bit cool, but not bad yet.

We got there at about noon, so after lunch we went on “It’s a Small World.”

I thought that the French were experts with topiary. This is one of the exhibits outside of the “Small World” entrance. Maybe I was wrong?

It hasn’t changed much since 1965, but here there is a small “American” section, consisting of a couple of NFL fans and the Hollywood sign in a high alcove. The default language, as in all of this park, is of course French. Most attractions also present in English.

This was the first Disney attraction I ever rode on, in 1965, Flushing Meadows, New York. It still gets me every time because it makes me feel the way I felt in 1965, which was excellent, and born of sheer naiveté. After this, we went looking for Tomorrowland.
Which isn’t there. Instead, we found Discoveryland, a Jules Verne themed area.

You can put Deepl/Google away. It says, “Whatever is within the limits of possibility is and will be accomplished.” It’s been trendy of late to credit Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, with inventing Science Fiction, but hers was more of speculative/fantasy. Verne was an educator, and you can learn the state of scientific knowledge of his time by reading his books. He invented classical Science Fiction, later developed by Asimov, Heinlein, and their peers. France is justly proud of what he accomplished.

Here’s an photo of Discoveryland:

It has Hyperspace Mountain, a Spiderman web-shooting ride, and some things that looked frankly worthy of le vomit!

Well, we were back the next day, and it was 5 below zero Celsius, which is 23 degrees Fahrenheit, which is too cold for a lined raincoat, but that’s what we had. We spent the morning on a couple of attractions, including a roller coaster in the dark (bad idea for an old guy) and a space adventure ride (Star Tours, for which they made a new script, bless them.)

That’s the roller coaster in the dark, Avengers themed. Heck, go for it

We went back to the hotel and sat in a hot tub for a couple of hours, coming back for dinner at Captain Jack’s, right next to Pirates of the Caribbean. Same song, a bit longer ride. Captain Jack’s serves good seafood, and takes a couple of hours to do it. Hey, it is a French restaurant!

Pirates of the Carribean is longer, but still has Captain Sparrow in it. It has not been edited to fit contemporary American tastes, so the wife sale is still on.

Captain Jack’s. Note how those people are dressed. They did a good business in character themed fuzzy hats!

After that we went back to the hotel. On the way our, we caught a bit of the final Holiday Parade of the season:

The next day, tired of freezing in Disney, we went into the city (Paris) and discovered that we needed to have advance tickets for Saint Chappelle, so to stop freezing in Paris, we had a most excellent steak dinner for lunch, went back to the hotel, and ate complementary beverages and snacks until it was time to return to the station to catch our train (more or less) home. I leave you with the following photograph of what was happening weather-wise as we waited for the shuttle to the station:

The snow stuck to the streets, even. It did not snow in Lizant until the next afternoon. It all melted the day after that.

One big difference between France and the US is that we live five hours by car (on excellent roads with 80 mph speed limits) from Disneyland Paris, but the train from Poitiers gets there in about two hours. Nice. (Yeah, Poitiers is an hour away, but that’s still two hours faster, innit?) If you like Disney stuff, I recommend these parks. But, if we go back, it will most likely be in May or October. I’m tired of being cold, folks!

Categories
France language

Parlay Voo?

If you think he can’t talk, you never met a beagle

The proper spelling is parlez-vous, in case you wondered. I do mean speak French, of course. Do you? I’ve been able to speak French for a while, now. What is relatively recent for me is the ability to understand French when it is spoken to me. There were scattered bits of comprehension for a year or more, then last October I made a call and got somebody’s voice mail, in French. I was amazed to hear, in French, The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please leave a message after the beep. Yep, beep. Bip, I suppose. It went on to say how I could leave a number if I wanted to. If that message sounds familiar, that means that you’ve heard people’s voicemail before. Voicemail is messagerie vocale, by the way. Since that day, I have had moments of temporary lucidity in my comprehension, and generally, I am finding it easier as time passes. I wonder if this is because I’m getting used to the Poitou accent, or just have practiced enough that it is starting to sink in. Whatever, I like it. I was able to translate something for Tami a couple of days ago. No one was more surprised than I was.

So, if you plan on spending more than a week or two in France, here’s my advice. Learn more French than you need to just be a tourist. You may need to ask for a jump start when leave the lights on in your rental car. You may want to look for brown sugar in a supermarket. You may need to know where the bank is. All sorts of things can come up, and you’ll need to know how to ask for help with them. Several years ago I had to ask a French gentleman to use his credit card for us at a gas station and I’d reimburse him in cash. My French was pretty weak, but he was great, and we were saved, so to speak. Weak, but not entirely lacking in the useful words needed to ask for that sort of help. I highly recommend that you get to at least that level of French if you’re going to be here longer than a casual tourist. (In Europe, that would probably be known as level A2. A1 being tourist French.) And, I can’t stress this enough, practice listening to French being spoken. It is a musical language, where rhythm and cadence are important. Quite a few syllables are not important, so it can be confusing. So listen, listen, listen.

There are French language movies available on Netflix and Amazon Prime that can be configured to display French subtitles. Why French? Why not English? Simple. I learned recently that when you know two languages, both are active all the time. The trick is to suppress the one you are not using, which can’t be done in this case if you’re reading English words. In fact, reading the English words tends to suppress your French. French subtitles (les soutitres français) reinforce your French, allowing you to keep your English down to, well, maybe a mild roar? Whatever, it helps a lot, and I write from experience.

Well, that’s this week’s French lesson, the first of 2024. Hope you enjoyed it, and remember, practice, practice, pratique!

Au revoir!

Categories
info

Happy Holidays

Categories
Food France

French Food @ Home

We live in the sticks, really. It’s ten kilometers to the nearest town with any normal facilities, such as supermarkets, hospitals, movie theaters, etc, and both towns at that distance are still very small. But, the bakery pictured is two blocks from our house in a commune of 400 people. Bakeries are, I’m saying, common in France, and the bread is very good. The food you buy in France to take home and prepare is all good, actually, so it’s really just a matter of deciding what you’re hungry for this week, or today. You can buy most familiar things in a supermarket in France, if you know what to call them. Most things. However, Molasses is iffy, truly hot sauce can be tricky, refried beans are mostly unheard of, although there are places to get them because some restaurants use them. Without salsa, but still. Powdered sugar, eh, you may need to make your own. Tami did find brown sugar, which is sugar and molasses mixed together. There may be other things that are harder to find (Fritos Original!) but that mostly covers it. Besides those things, which can be worked around, you can buy whatever you need to use at home. And, it will be better than what you buy in the US.

I’ll use wine for a quick example. All French wine for sale is at least good. Maybe not top shelf, but good. This is generally true of anything you find for sale in France. The butter is all good, and some of it is excellent indeed. Meats are fresh and tasty, never having been dosed with antibiotics to fatten them up, yet still fatty good. (French people don’t worry about fats. A quick rule of thumb, if you’re not sure of something you’re cooking, add butter.) There are no factory farms in France, so the chances of contamination with e-coli or other bacteria are considerably lower. Another rule of thumb is that a person weighs ten pounds less in France than in the United States, and this without excessive worry about weight. Hmmm. Legumes (all vegetables) are fresh and seasonal. Right now, for example, cauliflower is over eight Euros per kilogram, which would be outrageous during the harvest season. This is different from the US, although thanks to our Southern neighbors in Spain and Italy one can get pretty much anything pretty much any time.

So, in sum, there are a few frustrations to cooking at home in France, but whatever you cook will be made with high quality ingredients. Not so bad, really.