Foreign Perspectives

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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When we moved here it took us four years before all the various authorities recognised that we were actually living in France. That started quite a flurry of back-administration obviously and it still isn’t entirely cleared up (eg we still get three separate bills for the TV license).

However, it would appear that it’s going to take quite a substantial amount of time for the authorities to recognise that we have now left France and are no longer French residents. Although we ceased to be French resident in January we are still receiving reminders that we’ve not paid various social security and health charges some eight months on.

It’s not that we have ignored their demands for money though. In fact, we informed them in January that we had left, then again almost every month since using their Internet service, email, fax, letter and even recorded delivery letter. In fact, it would appear that all missives from us are completely ignored. Last week we even resorted to writing to them in English as it would appear that they don’t understand French!

Actually, that last letter from us was in a response to a demand from them that it would actually be illegal for us to pay!

Perhaps another couple of years will see it sorted out…

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Sadly, we’ve just heard the news that some ******** have broken into our house in France and trashed the place.

What seems pretty much a cert is that the things that they took (seemingly less than a dozen things in total although we need to do a full check) will be appearing in one of the vide greniers (car boot sales) over this weekend. Some of their customers will be less than pleased with their purchases as they include, among other things, a TV that can’t receive French TV programmes and a number of region 1 DVDs that won’t play on French DVD players.

It isn’t so much the things that they’ve taken which is annoying though: it’s that they simply trashed most rooms in the house looking for stuff that just wasn’t there. Thanks to the high prevalence of the black economy in France, most French households are likely to have quite a pile of cash stashed away but us foreigners just don’t work like that so their cash take amounted to a few euros at best.

In other countries there’d be an insurance claim, of course, but in France the insurance only pays out when you have the original receipts and, for the most part, people don’t have them so you end up paying a whole lot for insurance that realistically you will never be able to claim on.

Anyway, it looks like our notional holiday will be taken up with cleaning up the mess that they’ve left behind and wasting time with the insurance company.

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