Moving to Paris, part 1: Before You Begin

A lot has been written, in print and in the blogosphere, about moving to the City of Light. Much is said about the joys of living in an iconic capital of a beautiful country where the natives speak an unfathomably elegant language. Almost as much has been written, especially in blogs, about the inevitable frustration that are part & parcel of  living here. Such posts are a treasure trove of salvation and inspiration.

This post is neither.

It’s more like a high-level checklist, liberally doused with practical links & tips, as well as a few very subjective opinions. Stay tuned for Moving to Paris, part 2: Installation Procedures.

1. Do a reality check. For many, moving to Paris might seem like the proverbial dream-come-true. While there are certainly the pinch-me-I’m-dreaming moments that come with living in an iconic city, living abroad is not for everyone. The Paris you experience on vacation is very different from the one you experience as a local who must, for example, find a plumber on a rainy Sunday in November when your sole bathroom has flooded & you have two house-guests. 

Buy a copy of Working & Living in France. Read blogs on expat life. Read books written by people who moved to Paris. At this point, you probably won’t actually believe what they say about the frustrations, but they’re still a good source of laughs and some new French vocab.

Some good blog posts:

• Chez Loulou’s complete *series* on Moving to France.
• David Lebovitz’s 8 Coping Tips for Living in Paris and Should I move to France? quiz
• The Cheeseweb blog’s 7 reasons expat life sucks (the author lives in Belgium, but her points are universal).

My favourite books on moving to Paris:

• The Sweet Life in Paris. Pastry chef and blogger extraordinaire David Lebovitz writes about his own move to Paris.
• A Year in the Merde. Fiction, and decidedly more satirical than Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, the main character still can see beyond the merde to appreciate his adopted city.
• Paris to the Moon. A collection of personal & professional essays by the New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik, written during the five years he lived here with his young family.
• Paris was Ours. A collection of stories of being an expat in Paris, whether as students, wounded divorcée, single mother without a fixed address, political refugee, or a corporate transfer.
• French or Foe? Practical advice on how to deal with cultural differences, by an American who moved to Paris in 1967 and 20 years later started a business providing cross-cultural training.

2. Contact your local French embassy about getting the necessary visas. Let the paperwork begin! Consider it training for once you’re in France.

3. Book temporary accommodation. Plan to stay in it for at least 2 months, 3 would be even better. Having a semi-permanent address in France is critical for getting a bank account, which in turn is critical for getting a longer-term apartment.

4. Learn French, especially if you are a complete beginner. You will be so busy settling once arrived that chances are you will have little time to take lessons, unless your employer provides them at your workplace. Even so, don’t expect to actually understand what people are saying when you first arrive. French use of the liaison, (the phrasing that links several separate words) and the speed with which Parisians’ usually speak causes deer-in-headlights paralysis, followed by panicked retreat into the linguistic safety of English.

That being said, learning French is still essential because it will help enormously in understanding the words around you – street signs, store signs, ads, newspaper headlines. You’ll be amazed at what you took for granted in your native lingo. And the French really will appreciate your efforts to speak their beloved language, and generally will respond with a lot more warmth than if you started off in English (one exception: Parisians under 30, who upon hearing your anglo-accent will be thrilled to switch right away to English, which is very trendy these days).

About.com provides great suggestions for learning or perfecting French.

5. Think about where you want to live.  If you have kids or dogs, you might want to consider living outside Paris, for better access to green space or to bilingual schools. Parents should also read the above-mentioned French or Foe to learn about the French school system, as it is waaaay different from anglo-saxon schools.

Expatica article: Where in Paris should you live?

And somewhat related, MESSAGE is a non-profit that provides support for English-speaking parents in France, including info on schooling.

6. Decide whether you want to move your furniture with you. For fixed-term stays, up to 3 years, it may be more bother than it’s worth. It’s much easier to find a furnished apartment than a non-furnished one. Keep in mind as well you’ll need to pay to ship your stuff  back home, unless this is covered by your company.

Another hindrance with furniture is it can limit which apartments you can rent. We shipped over most of worldly goods, including a wide couch that was too wide to carry up a typical Parisian stairwell. That in itself is not a big issue, as movers generally use portable exterior elevators to move furniture in through the windows. But we did have to make sure the apartment we rented had windows wide enough to fit our couch, which ruled out one charming 6th floor apartment built under the roof with, alas, gable windows. (Yeah….perhaps I was unreasonably attached to this couch. But at least its girth and good construction makes for a very comfortable guest bed. And ultimately, I prefer the apartment we ended up with).

7. Consider getting a relocation agent. We had one as part of my husband’s relocation package, and she was invaluable in getting us bank accounts within our first week of arriving, an apartment (eventually) in a very good location, an interest-free loan for the guarantee for the apartment (Solendi Loca-Pass), an account for electricity & gas, and explained the process for getting French state health coverage (la carte vitale). Obviously, this comes at a fee.

If you speak good French, are a whiz at logistics, do not get flustered or defeated easily, and have lots of time, it’s certainly do-able solo. But if you can afford it and do not want to start hating your new country before you’ve even moved in, I recommend getting an agent to help. It’s best to find one by word of mouth or by asking on expat forums.

Coming soon: Moving to Paris, part 2: Installation Procedures.

Does anybody else have tips on moving to Paris?

Cost of living in France: Paris vs. countryside

After nearly 3 years here,  we are feeling more and more “at home”  in Paris. Nevertheless,  HerrKaa and I still fantasize about moving down south where the wine is pink, we can bike all we want, and maybe actually someday have a garden. And another cat.

So I found this post on the costs of living in France on the Chez LouLou blog, which are helping fuel the dream. It’s an advertisement for the joys of living simply, which can be an extra challenge when working full-time in a big city (whether it’s Paris or anywhere else in world).

At the end of the post there were links to some Parisian bloggers, with their take on Parisian expenses. Their tips are excellent, but they seem to be all students or were very recently students. And there are things I cheerfully did  in my 20s–like share a bathroom-less studio apartment as a couple, or enjoy drinking €2 bottles of wine– that just don’t cut it for me anymore, nor even for the more frugal HerrKaa.

And since we’re doing our annual budget review anyways, here’s a breakdown of monthly expenses for a couple of no-longer-students who live in central Paris & work full-time.

Monthly Paris expenses

These are our core expenses. Obviously there are additional costs if you have pets, or kids, or do recreational drugs. Consider this a base.

All prices are in EUR since that’s the currency we’re paid in.

• Rent: €1660 (1 bdrm w/ bsmt storage, ~700 sq ft)
• Utilities: €85
• Taxe d’habitation*: €71
• Transport**: €67 (Two zone 1&2 Navigo passes, + 2 annual velib subscriptions)
• Home insurance:  €35
• Internet/TV/landline: €45
• Cellphone: €52 (Eek. This reminds me, I need to change plans!)
• Groceries: €300-500
• Car-sharing***: €20
• Restaurants: an embarassingly large sum. TBD.
• Travel: ditto. But that’s one of the major reasons we’re here. Actually, the same can be said to a good chunk (but alas, not all) of our restaurant expenses.

*Taxe d’habitation: essentially property tax, which in France applies to renters as well (Owners have an additional tax). A small part of this is a TV tax too. While the idea  of  rental property tax surely horrifies the home-owning majority in the anglo-saxon world,  one needs to consider the services provided by the City of Paris. Like the army of green-clad men who flush gutters, vacuum dog poop, and pick up garbage daily.  Or the plethora of free festivals and events put on by the City, such as Paris Plage. I am grateful for them all, so I’m not going to complain!

**Transport: both HerrKaa & I have this subsidized at 50% by our respective companies, which I believe is legally required by employers in the Paris region (or else they subsidize your parking).

*** Car-sharing:  get access to wheels without having to shell out for parking, gas, insurance, maintenance, or car payments! Learn more here.

Early evening light

Some of you have noticed an uptick in postings. Ironically, this is because our Mac laptop is currently out of commission. When Herr Kaa took off skiing a few weeks ago, I found myself staring at the abyss; that is, the prospect of being without  computer & internet access for a week (work doesn’t count as our internet access there has strict limits. Often if I have to ask HerrKaa to check my gmail account from his office).

So this finally pushed me to join the 21st century & get a smartphone. Which means that I have a camera with me all the time now. And since I’m working an earlier day, this allows me to capture the incredible morning & evening skies in all their wintry  blue-mauve-lilac glory.

These pics I took on Monday evening while hustling from the Hotel de Ville metro on the Right Bank to my physio’s clinic on the Left Bank, via the Ile St Louis. I was late for my appointment but he forgave me when I showed him how pretty the sky looked….

Romantic procrastination

While I have been assured by several girl friends here that French men really fit the Latin lover cliché–more passionate, more romantic, more sensual…& more jealous too–it looks like they are just as likely to leave their Valentine gifts to the last minute as Canadian men, judging by the crowd of worried male faces at the neighbourhood florist’s at 7:30pm today.

Early morning commute

So I’ve been back at work for two weeks, and am going in a lot earlier so I can get a seat on the metro. Usually it’s still dark as I walk/hobble to my station, but today it was freakishly light, and the sky was streaked with jet plumes. Spring is around the corner, I can feel it!

2010 continued: Now, the lows

We should have gone to Crete. That’s how we’re going to remember Christmas 2010.

Huh???

Ok, let me go back a bit. Or a lot. Unfortunately, I can’t simply write up a breezy little bulleted list with pretty photos to convey our low points. Perhaps that’s because in the last few months they’ve seemed to us more like long low stretches that fill up the space between th0se sparkly discrete points that are our vacations and visits with friends.

In other words, day-to-day life in Paris lately has been a real slog.

The expression I used in one of my rare 2010 posts sums it up: Metro, Boulot, Dodo. Far too many evenings spent flaked out in front of the TV or some torrent, trying to forget work and the growing pile of paperasserie on the desk. Really, is this so different from being a wage slave anywhere else in the western world? Other evenings I would grit my teeth and tackle the paper-chase du jour, cursing the French love of bureaucracy that is made truly lethal by their equivalent disdain for transparent process.

The result is, inevitably, you will do something wrong.

Yeah I’m Le Taxman

Like with paying our taxes. French taxes do not get taken off at source (although plenty else does, creating a large difference between your net & gross pay even before taxes), so in Sept this year I was pleased to see that I had accurately estimated how much we owed for 2009 income tax, which I’d been carefully putting aside since January. But two weeks later I received a letter informing me that our payment had been refused, no reason given. After two visits to the tax office, I learned that my error had been to set up the payment from a savings rather than a chequing account.

Back home, you’re probably saying “Duh, of course you pay with a chequing account. You have to send a voided cheque”. Not in France. Every bank account comes with its own ID card called a RIB. To set up any type of bank payment or deposit,  you submit a copy of the RIB (plus countless other forms and sometimes a photo for good measure). Since our savings account came with a RIB, I naively thought it meant I could use it to make payments.

The upshot of my naivité and consequent rejected payment was that we were now late with our taxes, which required adding an additional 10% to the the amount that eventually came out of the damned chequing account. So then I needed to write a letter to plead my case. But not just any lettter. I needed the correct type of letter, as French letter-writing remains fraught with language and etiquette rules that date back to Louis the XIV.  Fortunately, even native Frenchpeople are so daunted by the minefield of French letter-writing that several sites exist with downloadable templates to help tackle the myriad of bureaucratic snafus one inevitably runs into here. For our case, I needed  a Demande de remise gracieuse de majoration (a request for a gracious refunding of a surcharge).  In the end, it must have been suitably grovelling, or else my grammatical errors were sufficient proof of my ignorant foreigner status, and the late fee was refunded…into the very same  savings account that the Trésor public had scorned as a source of payment!

My point is, this sort of thing happens all the time. All. The. Time.

But that’s not all

But Byzantine paperwork is not the only thing wearing us down (although it is the most entertaining to read about). For vastly different reasons, we are both drained from work. HerrKaa is uncharacteristically tense and irritable most weeknights. Meanwhile I struggle with the delay-prone, 2-hour daily commute on the city’s busiest metro line. I could go into the stasis that is French work culture–it is an eerily popular topic when expats, regardless of industry, socialize–but that’s a whole other blog post, if not a whole other blog.

Then there is the expense. If we assume 1 Cdn $ in Vancouver = 1 EUR in Paris, our rent is 60% more than what we paid in Vancouver, while we earn 30 to 40% less in salary. There are also other costs here that we didn’t have before, like the taxe d’habitation, which I can best describe as property tax for renters. While this still hasn’t changed our day-to-day  standard of living,  I am uncomfortable with how much less we put away here than we did in our old life.

There are other things – the crowds, the noise, the lack of access to the outdoors, business opening hours hostile to the full-time employed, the countless things that don’t work here because it’s too expensive to hire maintenance workers, and the lack of space…..well, that’s really part & parcel of big-city Europe life. Or at least Latin Europe. Not surprisingly, things work amazingly well in the Germanic and Scandinavian countries.

So you’ve probably gathered from the length of this post that the challenges of expat life have been getting to us lately. But we’re acutely conscious that we chose to do live abroad in a country (in)famous for both its bureaucracy and stagnant work culture,  so we have been discussing better ways to cope and how to find our own “Système D” (for debrouillard, or resourceful) that all expat advisers tell you is The Secret to Suriving (and Thriving!) in France.

It seemed such a good idea at the time

Anyways, amongst the usual stuff–look for new work, eat better, exercise more, find new work,  yadda, yadda, yadda…. one of my brilliant ideas was to go skiing over the holidays. I still had 5 flex days I needed to use up by the end of the year, since our planned off-season holiday in Crete for November had fallen though (due to work conflicts that were eventually cancelled). We both love to ski, we craved fresh air & open space,  and we were looking for something different after two years in a row of Christmas in HerrKaa’s quiet hometown of Itzehoe.

Have you ever tried to book a Christmas holiday with less than a month lead time? And to go to a country (Austria) that largely eschews credit cards? Let’s just say the travel arrangements did not bring on the Christmas cheer.

Then we got caught up in the snow-chaoas that hit Europe just before Xmas. Our 2 hour flight out of Paris was delayed 3 hours, which in turn sent off a chain reaction of missed connections so that instead of celebrating Christmas at the 4-star hotel with 5-course supper I’d reserved at the resort, we were in a dark, deserted motel in an industrial suburb of Salzburg, beside a highway and across the street from a gas station. (And yes, I know we were extremely lucky compared to those poor sods camping in freezing tents outside of Heathrow).

Stranded bags in Vienna airport

But the next day we made it to the resort easily enough, found our rental condo and got our rental skis, huffing & puffing a bit at the unaccustomed elevation (the village is at 1800 m). Alas, we had barely started to relax when after lunch on Day 2, I over-ambitiously suggested skiing off piste in the powder. Within seconds Snap! went the anterior cruciate ligament in my left knee and with it all hopes for a relaxing week of shushing in the snow and Austrian après-ski.

So the rest of the week was a whir of pre-op, op, and post-op activities in the company of brusquely efficient Teutonic nurses.

How I spent my Christmas Vacation

HerrKaa did manage a few hours of skiing each day but spent the rest of  the time being my nursemaid. And on top of it all, he developed a tooth infection around the same time I had surgery so by the end of the week we were both in pretty rough shape,  swollen and feverish and haggard.

Homeward bound

And then, after a week of No New Snow, the Sunday we headed back to the airport there was a blizzard – the kind where the police shut the roads  due to the high volume of idiot vacationers who drive in summer tires without chains to a ski resort at 1800 m, and who were now strewn liberally along the snowy banks of the highway like metallic beached whales.

Snow tires are for wussies

Thus our 20 min taxi trip stretched to over an hour and was late connecting with the airporter bus, already 3/4 full of passengers worried about missing their flight. The minute we boarded, the anxious driver gunned it without noticing the gimped passenger on crutches who was still getting into her seat. Suddenly I was thrown sideways with all my weight on my bad leg and then backwards onto an elderly German couple. My knee, which had just been drained by a nuclear missile-sized needle the night before, immediately swelled up bigger than ever and so did my panic that I had re-ruptured the ligament. Tears and terse curses ensued.

But soon knee panic was overtaken by sheer panic: I don’t know what these poor drivers are threatened with if they’re late, but the snow had created a traffic jam on the autobahn so  the driver first switched to a twisty moutainside secondary road while he asked passengers for updates on the autobahn, just visible on the other side of the valley. The little tyke sitting in front of me quickly became bus-sick. Then back on the autobahn, we hit another traffic jam whereupon he simply drove this massive coach full-speed along the shoulder, prompting righteous Austrian drivers to deliberately drive into the shoulder ahead of him as a as a blatant (and frightening) reprimand. As the coach would approach,the hatchback he was about to pass would edge closer to the shoulder line….Ugh ugh ugh. HerrKaa reminded me to use my good leg to brace in case of impact.

Why did I suggest skiing over Xmas? And why in far-off Austria when there are so many resorts in France? Hell, what was wrong with a nice cold Christmas at home in Paris?

Fortunately, once in Salzburg Airport things picked up – for me at least. HerrKaa told Lufthansa about my gimped state which ensured wheeled transport through all 3 airports that day – a real lifesaver for traversing Frankfurt.  Before we took off from Salzburg I pestered him to phone the surgeon, who reassured me that the fall I had would not cause a rupture and that I just needed to ice & elevate. That erased all my panic, leaving me to enter a peaceful, near-catatonic state for the rest of the trip while HerrKaa was finally allowed to fully wallow in his own misery of fever, aching teeth, and puffy face.

Vive les vacances!

2010: First, the high points

Ok, so it’s a new year and it seems that the thing to do if you’re a blogger is do some sort of recap. This is especially useful for dilettante bloggers like myself who didn’t really post anything in 2010 and have fallen desperately behind with emails.

I started this post comparing the highs & the lows–essentially weighing the good vs. the bad as we decide how much longer to stay in Paris–but it quickly became epic in length, reflecting my conflicting thoughts about life as an expat. Since I’m already feeling blogger guilt for not posting my 2010 recap in, well, 2010, here is a slimmed-down list of highlights only.

For those wanting a schadenfreude fix,  have no fear, the lowlights are coming. In fact we are still living one of them as I type….more to come soon.

Our 2010 highlights:

• Escaping the grey, cold, 170-year-old-single-pane-windows draftiness of Paris in January for a long weekend in Seville. Sunny skies, Moorish palaces, and oranges literally everywhere. How could anyone not be happy? As an extra bonus, we got to stay a 5th day – thank you, striking French air-traffic controllers.
  

  Sevilla

• Watching Team Canada beat Team USA to win the Olympic Mens Hockey Gold at the Great Canadian Pub in Paris, where even there the crowd was half American which made the end of the 3rd period insufferable but then….. Na na NAH NAH. Na na NAH NAH. Hey hey hey, gooooodbyyyye.
• Landing a real job, with real French benefits and most critically, a real pay cheque and getting to shuck the ‘trailing spouse’ stigma. The whole process was easier than I was led to expect: in the preceding months, anytime I would brightly explain to whoever I met that I’m looking for full-time work, the reaction amongst expats & natives alike could be best described as funereal sympathy. And a proper salary was a welcome change after 6 months working for the wonderful, but decidedly non-profit, American Library in Paris.
• Paula’s visit in April, nicely timed to coincide while I was between jobs. It was like being able to vacation in Paris like a normal non-Parisian. Paula was joined a few days later by husband Todd, an ash-cloud refugee en route from Frankfurt. Paula loved everything, and even ardent Francophobe Todd hated France much, much less after we introduced him to the Loire Valley countryside and French rose.
  

  Paula (and Todd) in Paris

• Hiking in Scotland with Andrea & Julian in May. The Scottish Highlands makes the BC Coast look like Atlantic City. Now I understand the meaning of “desolate beauty”. Scenery, microbrews, hiking and haggis exceeded all expectations. So did our B&B in For William: http://www.huntingtowerlodge.com/.
  

  Scotland May 2010

• Our first visit back to Vancouver for one week of perfect weather in July. 7 days; 20 visits with friends;  9 restaurants + 1 Krua Thai takeout feast; 2 massage therapy appointments; 1 long-overdue haircut;  1 afternoon cleaning out Banana Republic Robson’s sale racks; multiple visits to Artigiano’s & Granville Island Market; 1 jet-lagged afternoon moving van full of remaining stuff from Shaugnessy to North Shore; and one glorious afternoon mountain bike ride followed by unfathomable amount of BBQ’d meats and glasses of Paula’s lethal punch now known as “Hyannis Mist”. It was great, we loved seeing everyone but….never again.
• Finding an excellent Yoga studio 5 minutes from our apartment with even better instruction than my favourite studios in Vancouver (and I’ve done a fair bit of Yoga over the past 15 years). Whodathunkit? http://www.rasa-yogarivegauche.com/en/index.php.
• Now having several tried, tested & willing cat-sitters to call upon, even at the 11th hour, and most of them free!
• Exploring “old east” Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg with Michele and Aaron in early October. It’s like Vancouver’s West End meets Main Street, but with better architecture, a lot more galleries, a lot less traffic and a scary number of fixie-riding hipsters. No pics here because we were either too busy marveling at the pre-WWII buildings, or eating delicious meals at seemingly pre-WWII prices.
• HerrKaa completing 3 bike races this year, and then capping off his season by participating in a 200+ km “fun” ride from Levallois (just west of Paris) to Honfleur (on the Normandy coast).
• Finding out my best friend is going to have a baby! For those of you with siblings, this might seem an odd highlight for me (obviously it’s a biggie for Kathryn). But since I’m an only child and HerrKaa is effectively an only (he & his only sibling are not close, to put things mildly), my chances of ever being an Auntie seemed dim to non-existent until Kathryn obligingly stepped up to the parenting plate. I’m looking forward to having a mini-person in my life to dote on!

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Metro, Boulot, Dodo (and the occasional World Cup game)

Translation: Commute, Work, Sleep – which neatly sums up my life right now. I’ve been on my new job for a month and a half, and I’m hoping these evenings of Zombie-like energy levels are a temporary thing. While I feel OK at work, once I’m home it’s like my brain shuts down so it can process my vastly reconfigured workscape. Or maybe it’s the constant buzz of vuvuzelas in our living room.

Random list of things I find weird about being a French employee:

• The older you are, the more vacation you earn. No, I’m not talking about seniority – that is a factor too, but age is just as important. In other words, during my first five years I will get another 2 vacation days per year, while a 30 year-old would only get one. A 40-something would earn three. No wonder people never change jobs here.
• Regularly being kissed by strangers. Ok, they’re my coworkers, but usually I don’t know their names and often my office-mates can’t even remember them either. But French office etiquette dictates that you greet everyone in a room when you enter, and greeting a female coworker means giving la bise.
• The first thing you do in the morning is go for a coffee. The first you do after your 1.5 hour multi-course lunch is go for a coffee.
• When you go for coffee, you don’t walk back to your desk and sip while you work. You go with coworkers, sort of like a twice-daily coffee date, and hang out by the coffee machine to chat.
• Internet access is restricted. My office-mates reassure me this is NOT a French thing, it’s just my company. I forgot to log out of Gmail on my first day and so wasn’t allowed to login to anywhere on the Googlesphere for another week and a half. YouTube is always restricted. So while it does makes you an efficient worker (when not drinking coffee or eating lunch) it also means you never get to laugh over some wacky TGIF video. I am told that less than five years ago, EVERYTHING was restricted and you had to get signed permission to access work-related sites.
• Software developers dress like normal (French) people.
• There is an employee union, with elected representatives, who spend about 2-3 days a *week* on union work. The union sends out newsletters with headlines like “Company pays dividends to share-holders instead of sharing profits with employees!”
• Meeting people face-to-face is huge. While my company is, er, rather frugal (for example if your office has a window, you don’t get air con) there was nonetheless budget for me to to go to Annecy (near the French Alps) simply to meet the people I’d be working with. My boss apologized for being too busy to come along to introduce me herself. There is even budget for the US-based writers to come to the Paris office several times a year, just to have some face-time. Tech writers? Travel budget? What kind of parallel universe am I in?!
• Meetings NEVER start on time. EVER. Not even when it’s an all-Anglo meeting.
• It’s not a myth: French people really do NOT snack. They will even refuse home-made brownies.

Three for three!

Today I am VERY excited as I have not one, not two, but *three* job offers at various software firms. Now I must return to my spreadsheet and do nerdy weighted comparisons of pros & cons…

Isn’t it ironic?

Sorry Vancouver , first the East Coast, now Europe!

Arc de Triomphe on Feb 10, 2010