Foreign Perspectives

When we started running the place here, we were surprised to find that quite a lot of people will get into their car in Amsterdam at 4am and drive to the south of France, arriving around 8pm.

Funnily enough, they’re still fairly sane when they get here.

The English on the other hand are rarely totally sane by the time they get here although they’ve “only” driven from Calais.

Why? Well, basically because the Dutch are used to driving much longer distances. In the UK, two hours is quite a long drive yet we’ll drive to Barcelona just to do some shopping which is a four hour round trip.

However, we’ve just had what’s probably our record breaking trip from an English family who, quite surprisingly, arrived in good spirits even though they’d driven around 13 hours from Calais (much longer than normal due to the heavy traffic at the weekend) and were just heading off for another 15 hours or so to get to the south of Spain. I praise them because they managed to stay sane after all that driving over just two days yet wonder about the sanity of spending something like EUR 100 on tolls, another EUR 100 on petrol, another EUR 100 on hotels and nearly three days of their lives when they could have flown there considerably cheaper.

In the days of Franco, the various local languages in Spain were, by and large, suppressed. The overall effect of that was that they were on the way to dying out.

However, since the early 1980s single language schools in the local language have sprung up in all areas of Spain where there is a local language. That’s particularly important in the Basque region as their language is so different from all others that it’s said to be virtually impossible to learn unless you learn it as a child.

But there’s a downside to all this promotion of local languages and that’s that it’s beginning to cut those taught in them from the rest of the world. This morning we had one of an increasing number of Spanish guests who couldn’t really speak any language other than Catalan. We could barely communicate with them at all because they couldn’t speak more than a few words of English, French or Spanish.

Now, I can understand that in some areas they would prefer not to be taught in Spanish but they really need to learn one world language or many people will find themselves virtually cut off from the world. Remember that these are local languages: if you only speak a local language you’re going to have trouble outside that region.

Most French banks are what would be termed building societies in the UK and consequently the banking scene is fairly different in nature in France.

There are only two proper banks, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas. These both operate nationwide networks but their branches are largely confined to the towns so they may not be entirely practical if you live in an isolated village.

As in other countries the Post Office and co-operative movement operate their own banks offering some advantageous accounts which we’ll be covering separately.

The majority of banks are effectively small regional building societies. For example, the Credit Agricole you see in Normandy is a totally different outfit to that which you’ll see in Paris. Although it is possible to open an account in one region and operate it via the branches in another region, this will entail delays in having your deposits credited and limits the facilities you have access to. So, I can’t use the deposit machines in Perpignan with the card from my account in Normandy.

The other banks worth looking into are those of the various supermarkets. By and large these are re-branded versions of some of the banks covered above but not always, for example Auchan operates its own bank. Generally speaking, the charges for these accounts are lower.

The main postal banks are those operated by Axa (a full-service bank) and Ing (savings accounts only).

One difficulty that you will have in opening any of the accounts is that you are usually required to provide proof of income. If you are living in France, they will ask for proof of a French income and this can take several years to acquire so it’s generally better to open an account with one of the banks before you move here or very shortly after you get here.

The speed of movement in technology is such that many people still see various devices as being distinct with no possibility of transferring content from one to another other than via very limited transfers.

But these transfers aren’t, by and large, limited.

For example, it’s quite easy to record TV programmes onto your computer. From there you could create your own DVD and play that. You can also transform the recorded programme and play it on a range of phones and even MP3 players. The business of playing videos on MP3 players in particular seems to throw people: they’re for music, so how could you play video on them? Yet, even on my 2 year MP3 player I can do that.

The new media players are even more capable. If you get one with an SD card you can store up to about 4 hours of video at pretty good quality and play that directly on the built-in screen or on your TV and you can even record TV programmes directly onto the device.

What’s not so good is moving from low resolution devices upwards. For example, videos recorded on a phone come out very poorly when played through the TV.

Offshore banks are banks that operate in various tax havens around the world. The most familiar in the UK are the Channel Islands and the Isle of Mann but there are many based in small islands in the Carribbean.

If you’re moving abroad, it can be useful to have an account with one of these banks both to simplify your taxes a little and for the additional services that many of them offer to the expat community. None of the legitimate centres offer taxfree interest on your accounts these days but offer you two options for the interest on your accounts: 1) a withholding tax roughly equivalent to the tax that you would normally pay in your country of residence and 2) no tax but they report your income to the authorities in your country of residence.

Although no longer taxfree, the additional services that many of these banks offer can still make them worthwhile. Even the simplest of them are much more familiar with international bank transfers than a normal high street bank could be expected to be but most go beyond that offering multi-currency accounts, debit cards in a range of currencies and often expat advisory services.

On the whole, the range of services on offer increases in proportion to the increase in the minimum income that the banks ask for. A reasonable compromise with this seems to be Abbey International which offers accounts and debit cards in pounds, euro and dollars for an opening balance of £5000. If your needs are more modest, try the Co-Operative Bank in Guernsey (under Current Accounts, Offshore Banking).

Most people will think of Switzerland in terms of “offshore” banking, but is there anything special about it? The banks there are generally more aware of the needs of international clients but this generally comes at a price. By and large, unless you have fairly sizeable amounts of money (say £25,000 upwards) to deposit or invest, they probably aren’t worth it. Sadly, the Swiss Post Office no longer offers its excellent Yellow Account outside Switzerland (despite what you’ll read on some of the “open a Swiss account” sites).

We’ve included a list of the main banks operating in this arena in the directory which should let you choose the perfect combination of prices and services for you.