Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Many people have the view that the south of France is simply somewhere that you go to get a suntan on the beach but there are many other activities here throughout the year.

Whilst many fishermen will call it a day once it gets into October or perhaps November in the UK, in the south of France it’s quite a different picture during the year. This photo was taken in the middle of February with temperatures getting on for 20c which is only disguised by the local habit of wearing Winter clothes when it drops below 30c; those of you from the UK would still be in t-shirts.

It’s a similar story with many of the activities that are considered mainly Summer time persuits in the more northernly areas of Europe. In fact, it’s often too warm to continue with many “Summer” activities when the Summer weather kicks in here. For instance, if your interests are in rambling and cycling then it’s not viable to do those in June or July. This is part of our guide to the Pyrenees.

Frenchless in France raised the issue of how ethical it really was for Switzerland to be neutral during the war.

I’ve always thought of it being a noble thing to be neutral but as she pointed out there is another side to that neutrality. Swizerland turned away many refugees that could have escaped persecution under the Nazi regime. Yes, there were many Swiss who did help a great many refugees but as a nation they rejected all of them. Aside from that there is the issue as to what would have happened had the war gone Hitler’s way. Would that neutrality have been respected had Switzerland found itself surrounded by Nazi occupied countries? I think not.

This is one of the most complex areas of our guide as there are so many factors involved including your nationality, marital status, employment status for you, your spouse and your children.

If the simple case described in this section doesn’t cover you, it’s best to start looking into the matter as soon as you can as it can take ages to resolve immigration issues. Broadly speaking there are two basic types of immigration to France: where you are a European and where you aren’t. There’s a third variant where you are a European and your spouse isn’t which we’ll cover separately. Some defniitions are useful at this point:

A “visa” is a permit to enter a country and is usually obtained from the French embassy in your country of residence. There aren’t any French embassies in France itself of course and in some circumstances you may need to point this out to various people in the course of applying for your residence permit. A European Family Permit is a special type of visa issued to spouses and family members of European citizens who are not themselves Europeans.

France is in what’s called the “Schengen Area” which is a group of countries which grant a single visa to enter all of them. So, if you have a Shengen Visa for, say, Belgium then you don’t need an additional visa to enter France because both France and Belgium are in the Schengen Area.

A “residence permit” (“Carte de Séjour) is a document permitting you to live in a country. In some cases this permit may also give you permission to work in that country but you may need a “work permit” to do that.

A “work permit” gives you permission to work in a country. It may be incorporated into your “residence permit”.

Europe has two basic classes of countries: those which are established and those which are subject to transitional arrangements. Established countries are, generally, those which have been in the European Union for four years or more. Newer countries are subject to transitional arrangements in some circumstances, notably in terms of requirements regarding residence permits.

Anyway, next week we’ll be covering the case where you and your family are Europeans.

If you go by the signs, they are open from as early as 8am to as late as 11pm or so. However, if you try to order a meal it’s a very different story. The most common times are from about 11am to 10pm but in practice almost all such restaurants only serve food from noon to 1.30pm and from about 7.30pm to 9pm. Even the French fast-food chain Quick only serves its full menu a little bit outside the noon to 2pm period so you can’t even have a burger at 3pm if you wanted one unless you go to McDonalds.We still get caught out by those hours. A coffee-shop (salon du thé) opened recently in Estagel and we’ve been meaning to try it out for ages. We were running a little behind schedule on Sunday so thought that it would be a good time to get a sandwich or something from them as they had a sign saying that they opened from noon ’til 10pm. What happened when we turned up at 3pm? The waitress came out and said that they weren’t serving meals until the evening. The funny thing is that we were their only customers that day so the five staff will once again be sitting almost all day doing nothing. In fact, we’ve only ever seen the staff inside so perhaps we were their first ever customers.Perhaps we’ll be more lucky with the kebab shop but somehow I can’t see it.

Almost the first thing that people do once they move to France is to look for something else to do. Many people come over with the thought that the income from a few gites will support them into their old age but, sadly, it’s not quite so simple as that. Self-catering just doesn’t seem to be capable of providing enough money to fully support a family and B&B can’t be totally relied on either.So, people branch out. Many of the gite people find that there’s quite a bit of spare time during the week and often start doing odd-jobs for other expats around the area. Others find the allure of the computer a great attraction and once they’ve polished up their website for the nth time they start considering other internet ventures.