Foreign Perspectives

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.

In times gone by people met at work or on holiday or whatever but these days everyone is so busy with their life that they’ve very little time to allocate to the search for that perfect partner.

With so much of your life being online already it seems only natural to begin your search for “the one” online too. It’s easy enough to fit in the time to run up a profile for yourself even in the busiest of schedules and before you know it you could find that you have more offers than you know what to do with.

Years ago it was taken as read that only losers ran to dating agencies but with the hectic lifestyle that we all lead these days that image has long since gone out of the window. With the online dating sites chances are that you’ll find quite a selection of professional people looking for someone just like you. Moreover there are many people online who you’d just never come across by chance and yet one of those could well be your ideal match.

Quite important is the number of people signing up for the site. It’s probably not much use to sign up for a site with few people already there as it could take a very long time for it to build up a sensible membership and in the meantime nothing’s really happening for you. That also applies to many sites that concentrate on, say, America if you live in Europe or vice versa. That’s where a truly global site like Date.com comes in as it has quite a large membership in most countries therefore chances are you’ll have a good selection of people locally to you.

These sites are very much like real-life dating in that the more you put into them, the more you’ll get out of them. Whilst this might make the initial signing up something of a challenge, you’ll usually find that they work best when you write loads of stuff about yourself and complete all the tick-boxes after you’ve thought out just what the right answer is for you (which I find isn’t always quite so simple!). Then, of course, there’s that all-important photo. Get a good one taken if you can manage to as the photo is going to be what people will see first: nobody really reads through all that stuff that you wrote initially (although, if they’re serious, they will do in due course) but they will make a quick yes/no decision about you based on that photo. Yes, I know, that’s very superficial but it’s the reality.

Anyway, give it a go. You might be surprised at who you will find there!

As part of my pre-course preparation for the English Literature course, I’ve just finished A Doll’s House which was a whole lot easier going than I had expected it to be.

Next up on the list is The Color Purple which I’ve just started today and, so far, is quite an easy read.

The strange thing about these “English” literature books is that most of them aren’t actually written by English (or even British) people which does seem a little odd for an english literature course I think. Still, I suppose it reflects the fact that english is an international language so I guess you’d expect there to be a number of non-english writers in amongst any collection of english literature.

Although the French people themselves are very polite and welcoming, French companies are quite different and use all the anti-consumer laws that they have at their disposal in France even when they aren’t obliged to.

Take for example the car insurance industry. Everywhere else in the world it’s common practice for car owners to wait for their renewal premium to arrive then to shop around for cheaper insurance. In France, that’s illegal!

Yes, you read that correctly. It is actually illegal to shop around after your insurance renewal arrives because by that time you are already legally committed to paying it (regardless of the cost!). If you DO shop around, you’ll find that the previous insurance company will go as far as taking you to court to recover their money from you.

As most insurance companies are international businesses, its interesting to look at how differently some of them operate outside France. Even the French-owned companies seem to be able to provide customer service everywhere else except in France. Having said that, it’s perhaps instructive to observe that French-owned AXA doesn’t mention anything about the customer in its strategy “Attain leadership in every one of our markets through operational excellence.”; I’ll certainly attest to its operational excellence in operation in France as it was very quick in issuing the court summons to me when I had the temerity to attempt to cancel a policy because the price had doubled between me accepting it and them issuing the invoice.

Interestingly, the set of laws that permit them to do this run completely contrary to the equivalent European laws (which apply in France). The insurance companies know this, of course, and therefore if you are cancelling it’s useful to remind them that it will be European law that you’ll be using against them rather than their nice cozy anti-customer French law which tends to stop the court action rather quickly. They clearly can’t afford to lose such a case in court as it would open up competition in the insurance market in France rather more than they seem comfortable with.

If you’re moving to a new area it makes a lot of sense to rent first rather than dive straight in and buy somewhere.

That’s simply because, no matter how much research you do in advance, you’ll never really properly know a new area until you’ve lived in it for a few months. That’s the amount of time that you need to really settle into a new area but realistically is far more time than most people can devote to researching a new area.

Aside from anything, renting an apartment involves a much lower committment on your part financially so, if it turns out that your choice of apartment isn’t quite so perfect as you expected it to be, then you can move on relatively easily. However, even then, that time isn’t wasted as it’s much easier to research an area whilst you’re living there so chances are your second choice would be that perfect one.

Of course, you’ll want to be looking somewhere that has a wide selection of apartments for rent and for that the obvious choice is ApartmentFinder.com.