Anyway, I don’t have a great deal of news, seems I’ve been too wrapped up in my own stuff to pay much attention to France [...]]]> It’s been a while since the last post. I’ve been busy with a renovation project and I’ve been on holiday (which I needed after lugging plasterboard, etc up and down ladders!).

Anyway, I don’t have a great deal of news, seems I’ve been too wrapped up in my own stuff to pay much attention to France in general – except the Tour De France, which almost got exciting

One thing I have found that could prove to be very useful to you is a new website which lists all kinds of English speaking businesses: EnglishSpeakingFrance.com.

If you haven’t quite got the hang of speaking French yet, or you’re comfortable having a chat to your neighbours but worried when it come to dealing with builders, banks, insurance etc., then this might be just what you’re looking for.

The site’s pretty new, but I’ve had a word with the owners and they’re adding new listings every day to build it up. They would also like to hear from you if you are having trouble finding a trade or service.

If you have your own business in France you can add a simple listing for free – although you might want to take advantage of an upgrade to give yourself more impact (which is hardly going to break the bank at just a couple of Euros a month).

Businesses of any kind can be listed, including gites and chambre d’hotes – and English or French – the only rule is that you must have at least one person who can speak English. More details here.

It will be interesting to see how it develops. I read somewhere that there are a couple of thousand English speaking businesses in France so they’ve got their work cut out!

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Satellite pic courtesy Meteo.fr

Depending on where you are in the world you may or may not have heard of the storm that hit the French coast on Saturday night (27th) and blew diagonally up through the country towards Belgium.

This is quite a difficult post to write. I said I would do a blog about [...]]]>

Satellite pic courtesy Meteo.fr

Depending on where you are in the world you may or may not have heard of the storm that hit the French coast on Saturday night (27th) and blew diagonally up through the country towards Belgium.

This is quite a difficult post to write. I said I would do a blog about French life for real and usually that’s a lot of fun but not this time. We got off relatively lightly – we have some roof and garden buildings damage but it’s all insured – and it’s nothing when you consider that nearly 50 have died, a couple of dozen are still missing and many more are injured. This morning there are still hundreds of thousands without electricity – at the worst it was over a million.

The storm was severe enough to get it’s own name – Xynthia. I knew hurricanes got names but I didn’t think ordinary storms did. Not that this was “ordinary”. 100mph+ winds when it hit the coast and floods up to roof level.

The Vendee and Charente Maritime regions were the worst hit. As the storm went north east it got less severe. We’re in the Centre region and although it was a very unpleasant night – and some areas still have no electricity – damage is mainly roofs and barns. Not nice, but hopefully people will have had them insured and it can all be fixed eventually. As far as I  know nobody around here has been seriously injured.

If you want more detail there’s plenty on news sites, just do a search for French storms or Xynthia. Me, I’ve already contacted the roofer, now I need to call my insurance company.

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I know there are hundreds of others like how can I learn about French wine? Or where’s the best place to stay in [...]]]> I reckon that the two biggest questions about France and the French are either language or property related. How to learn French? How to buy a house in France?… that kind of thing.

I know there are hundreds of others like how can I learn about French wine? Or where’s the best place to stay in France? Or how do I get the bill in a French restaurant? (That’s easy, ask for l’addition s’il vous plaît). Or what do I do when this French farmer is yelling at me and shaking his fist and I don’t understand a word… .

I could be here forever just doing a list of questions… and that’s the point of this post. I’m going along here adding posts when I feel like it and trying to put useful French information up here but what do you really want to know about France and the French way of life?

Post a comment down there where it says “Leave a Reply” or drop me a line here and ask me. Anything you like. Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t. It’s not going to cost you anything and perhaps your particular French questions will help others too.

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When you buy things like fridges, freezers and the like in the UK, you normally get free delivery if you spend over [...]]]> One of the curiosities of living in France that we’ve found frustrating is the delivery of things like fridges and washing machines. Actually the same applies to building materials but that’s kind of different…

When you buy things like fridges, freezers and the like in the UK, you normally get free delivery if you spend over a certain amount – for arguments sake, let’s say it’s £50.00.

As most white goods are considerably more than that, free delivery is kind of a given. Not in France. What’s more, it’s common that the more you buy the more you pay for delivery!

I have a proud boast of having never been inside IKEA – not anywhere. But I have to admit I do like the look of some of their stuff. It’s just the concept of trawling around a store that puts me off.

However, in France IKEA will deliver (which they didn’t do in the UK when we left). I thought that would be great. Order up the kitchen, get it brought here, knock it all together. Job done. Not… Now it’s a while since I looked so they may have changed their policy but at the time the delivery was going to put an extra 500 Euros on the cost!

FIVE HUNDRED!!!!

Anyway, back to the washing machine (machine à laver). A couple of months ago one of our fridge freezers (frigo congélateur) went phutt. Not surprising, it was years old. So we go in search of a new one. The large supermarkets (supermarchés or grande surface) often have quite good deals so that’s where we went first. Good deals, yes, until you factor in delivery at between 30 and 60 Euros. On a fridge freezer costing 250 Euros that’s quite a chunk. It’s not that we’re that far away either – under twenty miles. In the end we bought from one of the large electrical retailers called BUT.

It’s bizarre to me that when you want to buy something like this you have to look at not just the price but the delivery as well. In our case we ended up getting a more expensive machine because the delivery was 30 euros less. What’s even more bizarre is that a BUT near you may not offer the same deal. Turns out that most of these stores are actually franchises and have a degree of autonomy when it comes to delivery charges, precisely what they stock, etc.

All that frustration changed last week with the ancient washing machine that finally gave up the ghost (fantôme ). Darty – another of the large chain electrical retailers – actually do free delivery. Hooray!!! Their prices are quite competitive too.

They even deliver on a Saturday. Two very competent guys turn up, insist in installing and making sure it works even though we told them it wasn’t necessary, and will also take the old machine away for you.

Next time I’m shopping for electrical goods, where do you suppose I will try first? How long do you suppose it will be before the other retailers cotton on? Hey, this is France, don’t hold your breath!

The truth, as usual, [...]]]> French kissing – the sort that the French do rather than the other sort – seems to have gotten a bit of a bad rap. To hear people talk it’s hardly safe to go out in public without some French person rushing up and plastering you with kisses. Male, female, young, old…

The truth, as usual, is somewhat less fruity!

The French do indeed kiss friends as a greeting. Usually on both cheeks. It’s often an air kiss between people who don’t know each other particularly well but close friends make contact. Depending on the region it might be two, three or even four kisses. If you’re in a bigish gathering this can take a while! You also kiss to say goodbye when you go home for the evening. Men kiss women, women kiss women…

…but I’ve very, very rarely seen men kiss men, and in fact the usual greeting for strangers, man or woman, is a handshake. Kissing is for friends. You don’t have to be much more than a casual acquaintance, it’s true, but it’s not for strangers. If you go up to a French person and try to kiss them the first time you meet you’ll be thought of as very forward, possibly rude.

The French are actually very polite, it’s just that as with most things in a foreign culture, knowing the rules for French kissing is not easy. Best advice is to watch and see what other people are doing.

So if in doubt, hold out your hand! The French always shake hands. I will shake the hand of a friend I meet in the street. Or someone I know who I meet in the bar. Or the mechanic I know at the garage. If someone comes to provide a service at my home, like fixing the phone, delivering a new freezer or quoting on some building work, I will invariably shake their hand. So will my wife.

We will not kiss them, no matter how good looking!

Neither do you kiss, or shake hands, absolutely every time you meet, just the first time each day. So if you meet someone in the morning having a coffee, you share the appropriate greeting. If you see them again that evening you would not normally greet them again beyond saying hello.Also, if you’re in a bar, for example, it’s not common to kiss or shake hands on leaving, but it would be if you were at someone’s house for dinner.

Confused yet? Like I said, best to watch what other people do. Quite often if you haven’t known someone at the start of an evening, let’s say at a dinner party, you would shake their hands when introduced. However, at the end of the evening, if you got on well, you might kiss to say goodnight.

French children seem automatically programmed to kiss from birth. I remember when we were first living in France being sat outside a bar and two young children arrived with their parents. We had never met before but both children came over and kissed us on the cheek. We were rather surprised at the time but their parents just gave us a friendly smile and a nod. The other thing we’ve had is children come up and present a cheek for us to kiss.

I’m not sure there is a rule for French kissing and you can be guaranteed that once you’ve learned what’s normal for a particular region it will change in a different one! The secret is to keep your wits about you, learn what is accepted as polite where you are and, if in doubt, shake hands. Actually, the secret is to accept it as part of being in France and not get stressed about it. If you are kissed, consider it a compliment – which is exactly what it is.

From which you might think I’m a bit of a Scrouge. Which is not entirely true but I do get fed up when I start to see Christmas goods and [...]]]> So, French Christmas. Any different from anywhere else? Is Christmas in France the same mad shopping and boozing dash that is seems to be everywhere else?

From which you might think I’m a bit of a Scrouge. Which is not entirely true but I do get fed up when I start to see Christmas goods and adverts beginning in about September!

Which thankfully doesn’t happen in France. Although many things here are starting to seem more and more like their US or UK counterparts (Halloween, for example), Christmas in France doesn’t really get going until the first week of December when you start seeing street decorations.

In fact Christmas street lighting would appear to be a big thing here. Even our local village, population less than 250, makes the effort to light the place up. Quite nicely too.

Of course once they’ve made the effort to get them up, French Christmas decorations are there for the duration. When I was young we had to have all decorations down by 12th night for fear of bad luck, but not here. I can guarantee that these will be here well into February!

The French also have Christmas trees (sapin de noël), yule logs (bûche de noël) and Father Christmas (père noël). In fact is seems that you just take whatever it is and add noël and the French have a version of it. They don’t have panto though – which is not necessarily a bad thing in my book!

They don’t have Boxing Day either. Unless it’s a weekend, the majority of the French will be back to work. Although having the whole break between Christmas and New Year (the norm in England) happens for some, I think the majority of the French still just have Christmas Day and New Years Day. Even on those days you’ll likely find a local bread shop (boulangerie) open!

Although church attendance, like almost everywhere, is lower than it was, Christmas is still a big religious festival and many French will attend Midnight Mass. Just afterwards they start their main Christmas meal – le révillion (which means “the wake-up”). Yep, from just after midnight to well into the early hours our French friends will be eating and drinking copiously.

Like us they will probably have turkey (although it could be goose or capon) so I suppose the main difference is that their indigestion will start earlier!

Christmas afternoon, just like the rest of us, they will be having a nice long walk… or a nice long snooze. Happy Christmas! Joyeux noël!

The French departments

France is often called The Hexagon (l’hexagon), because that’s roughly its shape. It’s about 1000 kilometres north to south and the same west to east. [...]]]> Facts about France? I suppose you could go on forever finding different things but here are a few that you may or may not find interesting or useful.

The French departments

France is often called The Hexagon (l’hexagon), because that’s roughly its shape. It’s about 1000 kilometres north to south and the same west to east. Paris is the capital (I think everyone knows that) and the currency since 1999 is the Euro. Before that it was the Franc and it’s quite common to still see things priced in Francs as well as Euros (particularly property).

I think I’m going to establish a bit of a standard with this post. To help those who are interested in learning French I’ll put certain French words in italics, OK?

Anyway, back to those French facts.

As you can see from the map on the right France is broken up into various regions (départements). Ile De France is the area which includes Paris. It’s called an Ile (island) because of the rivers which virtually surround it.

Incidentally, The Seine which runs through the middle of Paris is often thought of as France’s biggest river but in fact it’s The Loire.

Départments are further divided into Cantons and these are further divided into Communes – which can be quite small villages. Each commune is governed by a Mayor (or Mayoress, who is nevertheless called Madame Le Mayor). These people are surprisingly powerful locally and worth getting on well with – particularly if you need planning permission!

There are four overseas départements (régions d’outre-mer), Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique and Réunion, which are treated much like they were a part of the mainland.

Bored yet? No? OK, a bit more.

The population of France is around 70 million – which explains why there’s so much space – that’s the same as the UK which is only a quarter of the size! It is claimed that this population actually doubles during the year with tourists, making France the most popular holiday destination in the world.

I’m not going to get into politics and religion because that really is boring – except to say that France has an elected President (every 5 years) and is mainly Roman Catholic. It is not legally necessary to marry in church but you must be married by a Mayor at the official building (Mairie). I told you they were powerful!

I think that will do. I’m no professor but if you want to ask anything else, by all means post a comment. You could always Google it of course, they know a lot more than I do!

A typical French view?

Today’s words of wisdom (or waffle) are the later. Why did I choose to live [...]]]> Sometimes these posts will be full of useful stuff about living in France, working here, French wine, anything really. Other times it’ll just be something I feel like saying. Hey, it’s my blog after all

A typical French view?

Today’s words of wisdom (or waffle) are the later. Why did I choose to live in France?

Well for a start, I quite like the place. My wife and I have been visitors for more than fifteen years so it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. In the end though, it was French houses that were the deciding factor.

We’re originally from the UK and like a lot of people dreamed of taking an old building or barn and putting our own stamp on it. Trouble is in England most of those places are bought by property developers and turned into “executive homes”. Result, to expensive.

We could afford France though. French property is not the bargain it was twenty or even ten years ago, but you still get more for your money than you do in the UK. What’s more the French prefer to buy new than renovate – which leaves all these lovely old farmhouses and manors for us ex-pats!

I’ll get into the whole “buying a house in France and renovating” thing in another post, but suffice it to say here we are, house bought and paid for. No mortgage, living debt free. Boy does that take the pressure off! If you’re living the life of stress that we used to then you have my sympathy.

The house is a bit of a wreck actually – big but in need of complete re-wring, plumbing, new floors in some places, a list too long to put here. We’ve done a fair bit but there’s a long way to go and the financial crisis didn’t do us too many favours because the exchange rate between UK sterling and the Euro (and the dollar and the Euro for that matter) has been awful – and most of my work is for those two countries.

Never mind, these things happen, and whilst work progresses somewhat more slowly than we hoped “la vie en France” is still very pleasant. I would definitely recommend it!