Foreign Perspectives

One of the biggest problems in getting out of France is the sheer quantity of post and email that continues to generate.

This wasn’t so bad when we were actually working in the hotel as we were online daily and keeping on top of everything that came in but now that we’re away from that we don’t have nearly so much time to devote to that as it seems to need. For instance, in the past week I needed to go through dozens of pieces of post and thousands of emails only to find a mere handful that were relevant and needed action taken on them.

Despite France having quite a strict no-spamming law, the quantity of junk email coming from France far exceeds that from anywhere else in the world and almost all of it seems to contravene the French law. The reason why that should be is quite simple: French ISPs require anonymous logins to their mail servers so anyone can send anything and, of course, they do.

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One of the greatest hassles in our lives at the moment is that we’ve to try to sort out some administration with the French tax and social security people whilst we’re in the UK.

You’d think that it would be relatively easy to do as you can obviously use email, faxes, phone calls and even letters but in practice it just isn’t. For one thing, French fax machines seem to work on a different standard as other places as faxes from the UK aren’t accepted by the French fax machines that I’ve tried (even sending from a French fax machine!). Phone calls just don’t seem to get you anywhere and emails rarely receive any response. You might think that leaves letters as a workable approach but even that doesn’t always seem to work. In fact, the French lettre recommandé is the only approach to use but, of course, that’s not available outside France, is it?

Actually, even in France we found that the only really reliable way to do things was to visit the office concerned though flying over all the time is hardly a viable option.

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Settling into the life of an expat is something that I’m sure relatively few people think a whole lot about as they’re just too busy trying to organise the move itself to worry much about it.

However, immigration is still a big deal even if you’re “only“ moving between the countries in Europe. Although you’ve obviously got to move house just like in a normal move that’s pretty much where the similarities stop.

If you’ve children in tow then you’ve to consider what to do with them. Primary in that is their education where you’ve basically three options: local school, bilingual school or boarding school. If you’re in a big city and close to a bilingual school that’s probably close to ideal but what if they’re following the American syllabus and you’re from the UK? A local school will mean that the kids will grow up learning the local language as their primary one and may no longer be fluent in English after a number of years. Boarding school is good but expensive and you obviously don’t get to see your children that much.

Then there’s your partner. Will they be able to fit into the local social scene in the same way as they did at home? Probably not unless they’re quite fluent in the local language.

Finances will probably have featured quite prominently in your decision to move, but have you considered what to do with things like investments and pensions back home? If you’re tax resident in the new country (quite likely unless your stay is a very short one) then your existing financial arrangements may not be suitable. Actually, it’s pretty much certain that they won’t. Even pensions can turn out to be taxable in other countries when, usually, they won’t be in your own. All those taxfree investments aren’t taxfree anymore either.

The local administration can be a nightmare. It took over four years for the French authorities to recognise that we were living there by which time we were leaving. Goodness knows when they’ll catch on that we ain’t there anymore!

Finally, there’s the culture change. This can be very different and, usually, you won’t know what it’s really like ’til you’re there a few months. For example, even in Christian countries you can’t really rely on them celebrating Christmas eg nativity scenes in shops are actually illegal in France. Shops open different hours so you may not be able to do your usual late night shopping. Even satellite TV doesn’t guarantee your usual channels and, of course, all the movies will be foreign ones or dubbed into the local language.

Did all that put us off? Nope, because we considered it as an adventure and, for us, that worked out as a great way of looking at it. Would we do it again? Yes, if a suitable opportunity arose but we’d be asking more informed questions a second time around!

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