Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Relocating’ Category

When we had the first little guy I was the one working as Wendy was at home looking after him but by the time we had the second little guy we were both working from home.

Since Wendy’s from Sydney and I’m from Belfast, that has had an unexpected effect on the accents of the two. James, the oldest, speaks with a mainly Sydney accent but with a Belfast sprinkled in amongst it whilst John speaks largely with a Belfast accent but with Sydney words in it.

Of course, that’s why they refer to your first language as your mother tongue in that, in times gone by, it was always the mother that was around the children the most. That’s obviously still the situation for most people these days but there are a growing number of families where it’s the mother working and the father at home or even both at home.

Obviously it’s not as noticeable when both parents are from the same place but when they’re not it can produce an interesting mix of accents in the speech of the children.

If you’re considering relocating and you have a choice of time in which to do it then chances are that you’ll follow the crowds and do your searching between Spring and Fall.

Ironically, that’s probably the worst time of year to search for a new home. Aside from ending up following crowds of people around the homes for sale and thereby complicating the scheduling of your visits.

However, the worst aspect of timing your visits for the Spring to Summer is that the weather is totally different. That place that looked really cute at the bottom of the valley might have howling winds right through the Winter. The lovely way that the sun falls upon the garden of your ideal choice might not happen at all in the Winter: indeed, if you’re unlucky enough, you might find that the sun doesn’t reach the property at all during the Winter.

So, if you want to find the perfect property you need to either visit it in the Summer AND in the Winter or just in the Winter. If the house market is moving along it’s usually not possible to visit a particular property in both seasons of course so in reality, most of the time, you’re limited to seeing it in the Winter or at least late Autumn/early Spring if your chosen area has a Winter that is just a little too serious to face house hunting then.

When we kicked off with the French taxation system we were constantly getting letters saying that we hadn’t paid this or that in time. Most of the time the initial demand for the money arrived in the same post that the reminder did and frequently the initial demand arrived a week after the reminder.

So, we started moving some things onto direct debit. Major mistake.

Even if you tell the authorities that their calculations are in error, they just collect on the direct debit. So, this year when they have calculated that we made EUR 155,000 the direct debits are a major joke. You’d think that the bank wouldn’t pay out on a direct debit that was going to put you thousands into the red but that’s not the case.

Anyway, we’re off to the bank tomorrow to attempt to cancel several of them. At least with the cheques we knew that they couldn’t take the money out.

Of course, that’ll no doubt require an appointment with our “banking counsellor” which might mean a delay of some weeks.

Poor little John is scared to go out of doors at the moment as he can barely stand up in the wind at the moment!

So far we’ve had no snow though sometimes it has seemed cold enough for it. That’s a bit misleading of course in that the wind chill factor makes it seem a good deal colder than it really is and in fact this morning it was actually warmer outside than it was inside the house!

It is pretty dreadful weather for this time of year though. Ordinarily, we’d not be expecting such severe winds until February and even then only for a short period rather than for days at a time as we’ve been having lately.

I’d like to say that we’ve been using all the time indoors to get caught up on the Winter schedule of activities but instead we’ve been busy organising our Christmas holiday over the last week or two. Still, at least that’s booked now so we just need to source a turkey to take to Spain at some point in the next month or so (Wendy won’t get it in Spain as they do unspeakable things there including leaving the head on!).

A long time ago, I was brave enough to ask the question which many are afraid to ask: do you need to speak French if you want to live in France?

It’s not such a simple question to answer as it might appear. For one thing, there are many expat enclaves throughout France where, by and large, English is the only language used. Within these enclaves, the shopkeepers and so on can be expected to speak English and indeed even if you speak French to them, they’ll reply in English. So, yes, you could live in France without speaking French.

However, in many other areas (most of France in fact) you couldn’t do that. The locals either cannot or will not speak English. After all, why should they be expected to? It is France after all. Except that everywhere else in the world the locals DO speak English: that’s why people expect to be able to move to France without speaking French.

Funnily enough, just a few miles south in Spain the locals won’t speak Spanish and actually insist on using English. Well, to be fair that’s Catalonia and few people outside it ever have the opportunity to learn Catalán which tends to dictate the use of English with foreigners.