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Why Move to France ?


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 Please don't, as when I asked such a question after joining this board, I was called a troll. And for me it is still as valid as when I asked, what 16 years ago.............?

In the mid 80's we met some folk from London whilst away skiing and one of them asked what on earth we were doing living in France, things were different back then....... (and we are still friends with these people incidentally).

Like albf, I still often wonder too. There again, lots of posters seemed and seem to live in quite a different country to the France I know so well.

We were ready as young folk to move just about anywhere that had a few of our requirements. One work, but to go with that skiing, just an adventure, so we could have moved to Austria, Germany, Italy, not Spain, didn't fancy Spain, but nearly did move the Canary Islands, as there is lots of sailing there in the late 80's, or the south island in New Zealand, but decided that that was simply tooooo far away.

So there was work and skiing, so the french alpes it was for us. No french, either of us, but we soon got to grips with life in France and the language and moved to a village sans other anglais, which it remains.

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Minty said....

'Why not?'

Thanks Minty, that was a very thought provoking response that kept me awake all night. So I can add to that 'Why move back? ' or 'why not move back'?

Chancer suggested I was a troll (possibly I am), but I would argue that most of Chancers posts are 'anti-France' (or honest France) well I can't remember one that was pro- France. Nothing wrong with that, just saying. LOL.

As Idun said, it is a valid question. I agree.

Personally, having analysed forum posts for the last 3 years (wish I had discovered them earlier) I am led to believe that the 'France' or the 'French' bit of France is actually bottom of the list in terms of peoples motivation when moving to France. What I am saying is that people want live in France without the French bit. I think also a lot French expats who have lived long term abroad would actually say the same. I got a feeling a lot of French people in France would say the same.

I think I am right ? Certainly in my case that is right and I think that is true for Chancer and others. I think people move to France for many different reasons but 'France' is at the bottom of the list.

So, rather than having magazines and websites that promote cliche France would it not better cut the subterfuge and promote and sell the reasons why people actually want to move to France ?

Hmmmm.

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France is many different things though. If you move to Paris or Bordeaux your life will be very different to The correze, the alps, the land of the ch'tci (don't know whether I've got the correct spelling), Calais etc. They are all France.

2/3 (approx.) move to France because they have a job, so probably location is not the top of the list or the finer things of French life. My OH loves France but hates wine..we have another friend who has lived in France since he left University 25 years ago who detests cheese, French bread, French sausages, most French food, but is perfectly happy living in the middle of the French countryside.

As you say, people come for many different reasons.
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I think this is all very thought provoking.

I have been a bit naughty in the past by questioning peoples motivation to move to France or certainly why they want live in a rural location. You see, I know France and sometimes I could not get my head around why anyone would want to do that. It does not compute with me. It probably does compute with many French people.

Well then I thought, what if people don't want to move to 'France'. Maybe they are just keen skiers and want to live near a ski resort. Maybe living in a French village and dealing with all the bureaucracy is just the price you have to pay for the benefit of being able ski everyday. Likewise, with trekking, horses, birdwatching or whatever. Maybe, they just simply want a house with space around them. The 'French' bit is not important I just want the house and space.

I think if people were more honest about about why they want to move to France then you could offer more focused advice for them on forums or wherever. Maybe those who are honest are the ones that survive better in France. We all know that French living, laid back lifestyle, good food are myths. Or do people think that really exists ?

What about love. I want to move to France to find a French partner. That is a great reason to move to France. Does that happen ?
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[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]Why move to France ?[/quote]

[quote user="mint"]Why not?

Surely my question is just as valid (or not) as yours?[I]

[/quote]

IMO both of these questions are equally valid and ones I have given a lot of thought to over the last few months. We have finally made the decision not to retire to France for a variety of reasons but mainly because we couldn't find the right place at the the right price and because we felt the language was going to be an issue especially as we got older and more forgetful.

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Well your title was ambiguous, you have trouble expressing yourself in English, I get that. You didnt say why did you move to France? Or "why do you want to move to France?

 

I had to guess and took it to mean what possible reason could there be in the current climate to move to France? So my response was apt.

 

Now you are asking that we should be honest about why we moved to France so I will answer. - I didn't, I wanted to leave the UK and my life/business behind me, I would have gone to prison for a very long time had I remained. France was not my choice, it was my fall back position, a losers prize if you like, I wanted to go travelling (which I did) for an indefinite time (which both viral and cerebral malaria brought to an end) to follow my instinct and maybe my heart and to start a new simple uncluttered life wherever the opportunity presented and where I really wanted to be.

 

If it didnt work and when I had run out of funds I knew that I could sell up in the UK, move to France and do something very boring and unimaginative like buy a cheap house in the country, drink wine and beer and eat cheese and French bread, it was no challenge, did not appeal to me and unless something drastic became of me it would not happen, it really was a fall back position.

 

7 days before leaving I visited a French friend that I had made in this area through our common passion of race cars to bid him an au revoir and to buy a bivvy bag and trekking clothing from an excellent military surplus store nearby, we stopped to look at my property for someone else one hour before I had to leave for the ferry, he said that the other person had already shied away without visiting because it looked to be too much work, when I saw the size of the property, its location and above all the price I said to myself that I could definitely make a living from it in many different ways, it was dirt cheap so I bought it there and then to hold in reserve so that if circumstances dictated, which they did, then I could hit the ground running in France which I did, well a very slow shuffle.

 

So to put it in few words, - running away, cheap property.

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Personally, having analysed forum posts for the last 3 years (wish I had discovered them earlier) I am led to believe that the 'France' or the 'French' bit of France is actually bottom of the list in terms of peoples motivation when moving to France. What I am saying is that people want live in France without the French bit. I think also a lot French expats who have lived long term abroad would actually say the same. I got a feeling a lot of French people in France would say the same.

I think I am right ? Certainly in my case that is right and I think that is true for Chancer and others. I think people move to France for many different reasons but 'France' is at the bottom of the list.

I cannot work out from the above what it is that you think is true for both you and I, can you please explain clearly?

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Having already lived on the continent for a number of years, it became clear that we were not going to return to the UK during our working lives - at least not in the area we were based. The UK plant had shut (along with quite a number of other businesses around) and colleagues were now working in intellectually demanding jobs such as call centre manger.

We decided that we should look to purchase something on the continent that we could retire to at some stage in the future. We looked at Spain (rejected for so many reasons) and Italy (rejected due to lack of language knowledge and the cost of renovation due to having to meet earthquake protection standards - how prophetic was that decision?).

France was always in the frame, I could read the language reasonably well (magazine subscriptions from the early 90s) and speak it after a fashion (not a good fashion but nevertheless). We had holidayed in France for just about every year of our married lives. We also had a view (rather blinkered as it turned out) of French life and culture, which we liked.

Germany - where we were living - was rejected due to the cost of property (at least the sort of property we wanted) was too high.

We were looking for weather that was better than the UK having been spoiled by the local micro-climate. Four proper seasons rather than 4-5 months of what had seemed like perpetual grey in the UK. I suffer from a medical condition that is made worse by periods of cool damp weather. Hot weather is a definite benefit and real cold is not a problem, but months of British winter was a definite problem.

We wanted a renovation project to provide us with the property we wanted and our list of wants meant that this would almost certainly be in the country and not the town. We had been country mice and so this would be a continuation rather than a change. In fact in Germany we were probably more cosmopolitan than we had ever been but decided that was probably not for us - at least living in a community highly saturated with British, American, Canadian and other non-French nationals was not on our list of wants - and might just subjectively have been on a list of things to avoid.

Our final choices were down to:

Price - sorry ALBF, but the price of a property is always going to be a deciding factor in where you live. It is why those with money live in Chelsea, and those with less live in Clacton on Sea.

Cost of renovation - and yes of course we dramatically underestimated the costs - just like any of the house renovation projects. I was still working and could fund the work to be done over a number of years and we could afford to re-build over 5 years if we had to (in fact it was closer to 10 years).

Need to have a set number of bedrooms, garden to grow our own fruit and veg., outbuildings to be restored to allow us to fully enjoy our hobbies, which are space expensive. Away from busy roads so that our cats would have the freedom to roam without risk from road vehicles. Plus, Plus, plus......

Less than one day's travel with the car from our then location in Germany.

Having done a lot of internet research we settled on an area where we had often visited on holiday. We knew the summer conditions and also had spent time finding out the winter conditions - but had not experienced first hand. We organised with a number of estate agents to visit properties on their sites over a period of a couple of weeks. Two days before we set off, the first instalment of what I think was called "a House in France" starring Nippy and Nigel. This was centred on our area of search.

Anyway, we found what we wanted and have enjoyed ever since. Some of our reasoning was idealistic, some naïve, but life is about continuous learning and new experiences.
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We also had a view (rather blinkered as it turned out) of French life and culture, which we liked

My view must have been a hooded and blindfolded one drip fed to me by "A place in the sun" George East books and Nippy and Nigel, I Wonder what became of them?

 

In any case I can only laugh at what were my unshakable pre-concieved notions,  one of my old customers visited me very early on, he tried to tell me what I had let myself in for (in my area) but I wasn't wearing my listening ears, it was only when I gained competence in the language that it started to dawn on me, I say that nothing would surprise or dissapoint me now but  bless em people try very hard [:D]

 

It is what it is, you just have to make the most of what you have chosen for yourself.

 

I never wanted to live in a large town or city, still dont but find myself drawn to them for social and leisure activities, en bref, to have a semblance of a life.

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@ chancer

I ended up in France because I was transferred here for work and my girlfriend (now wife) was French. It was random. I am here because I am here. I never had any desire to move to France.

Reading between the lines it was kinda random for yourself. Was your intention to move to 'France' because it was 'France' ?

The point is, I have (and happily admit) that I have got the whole 'expat' (lets say British but I think it is the same regardless of nationality) moving to France thing wrong. It is not the 'France' bit that counts. I reckon that people don't move to France for 'France'. It is what France offers. Cheap property, open countryside, skiing, insert anything of your choice. The 'French' bit is not the attraction. It fact that is quite possibly the disadvantage of moving to France.

Does that make sense ?

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[quote user="alittlebitfrench"]@ chancer  Reading between the lines it was kinda random for yourself. Was your intention to move to 'France' because it was 'France' [/quote]

It was never my intention, just a fall back position if I did not find somewhere I wanted to be that would either accept me or turn a blind eye to me, then the property came up at the last moment and it became maybe 50/50 it would have to be a good Financial opportunity elsewhere or love to make me forgo the opportunity that I had waiting in France, at that time I did not have enough money to not be concerned about future income.

 

My pal who had my procuration in my absence (the acte de vente happened when I was completely outside civilisation) didn't expect me to return and had forwarded several offers to me for the place, thats how I knew that I was on to a good thing but not why.

 

So in the event I didnt have a choice.

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My reasons for moving to France was that my partner had land there, wanted to build a house, and told me he wanted to move there ASAP. I had never really considered France up until then..I certainly wouldn't describe myself as a Francophile and in fact I thought I would prefer Spain so up until then had been learning Spanish!

My partner and I hadn't lived together before we came here and I had never lived with anyone before, so it was a pretty big risk for both of us! To be honest dealing with France was one of the least difficult things we had to adapt to! At least I had no preconceived ideas about France.
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ALBF wrote:

The point is, I have (and happily admit) that I have got the whole 'expat' (lets say British but I think it is the same regardless of nationality) moving to France thing wrong. It is not the 'France' bit that counts. I reckon that people don't move to France for 'France'. It is what France offers. Cheap property, open countryside, skiing, insert anything of your choice. The 'French' bit is not the attraction. It fact that is quite possibly the disadvantage of moving to France.

Does that make sense ?

In a sense it does make sense but in another I am less so sure.

Certainly I have seen posts from people whose desire to move to France seems to have been based on a TV portrayal than on any more deeply researched view.

However you sometimes come across as if France is a unified and uniform country - well maybe two - deep rural and the cities. My experience is very different and I find the France of the Ardeche very different to that of Marseille where I worked for 2 years (but maybe that is the town country thing working out). I find it different again from Alsace - which was just a 30 minute drive from where we lived in Germany and we visited often (but maybe Alsace is too Europeanised by virtue of its Franco-Germanic history and latterly its position as a centre for EU activities). I find it different again from my limited experiences with Paris.

If you were right that people only came to France because of skiing, cheap property, cheap wine etc. then I put it to you that they probably would not have come to France at all, but would have chosen somewhere like Bulgaria where all of the above are possible and much cheaper than France, and still within the EU. And if France is like the UK was 30 years ago, rural Bulgaria is more like a century ago.

So even if people don't or can't express exactly why France has been their choice, I think the fact that it is France does have a bearing on that choice.

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Not wishing to sound accusatory, ALBF, at times, you seem to have a rather strange attitude towards a majority of people, Brits included, over a move to France.

Surely, people relocate to various places around this globe, and for all different sorts of reasons; which are unique, often to them.

Thus it must be impossible (as with most aspects of the human dynamic) to pigeon-hole people and their actions?

I am sure, most of us would accept many relocated to la belle:

1.    For wrong reasons; mainly due to lack of initial research:

2.    They were affected by the rose tinted specs perspective and, to employ the vulgar Americanism,  "Sold a false bill of goods".

Much of this was thanks to endless media property porn programmes and articles; shows; magazines; and multiple newspaper articles extolling how Fred Dipstick and his partner Sally Silly, sold up in Britain, moved to, say, the Gard and set up a Chambre d'Hôte/Vineyard whatever and gushed how wonderful it all was! And how their kids were loving it too!

One wonders if they are, still?

The huge differential between crazy UK house prices and French house prices clearly was a massive driver back in  the late 1990s and early 2000s. People could sell up and for less than they had post-mortgage settlement, buy what appeared to be paradise. Detached house; land; space.

Common in Brittany and indeed, Pas de Calais. They tended to spend most of their capital on a mix of renovation and critically, turning their innocent French house into the sort of suburban Surrey faux residence they had always dreamed about. Yet could never ever afford...

Only after all this, did they realise they must WORK! To earn a living and pay the bills and put food on the table!

Learning the French language and etc, came later; when they realised the only gainful work was plucking chickens in an abattoir or similar. For peanuts.

However, those fools apart (most of them have scuttled back to Blighty, now), many more sensible people, relocated for different reasons; obviously work being just one.

Much of their own personal reasons, I would suggest, are regional: clearly, France and life, tends to be wildly different in different regions. Which is one of the things I love about metropolitan France: it is almost a number of different countries in one.

Same with Spain, really; since Catalonia is very different from Andalusia and say Galicia:

¡ viva la difference !

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Interesting and very assorted reasons for moving to France.

I'm not permanentently in France, but thought I'd add my twopennorth.

I fell in love with France and everything French at the age of 13. I went to St Nazaire on a school exchange, my first time away from home.

My first couple of days were uncomfortable, as I had been badly seasick, and the first meal I was offered by my host family involved oysters, moules and artichokes, all things I'd never heard of or seen before. I also wasn't able to speak to the host family, or them to me, having no common language.

After that, though, I really took to life there, enjoyed visiting small villages and much time was spent by the sea, eating chocolate stuffed into baguettes for each beach day lunch. The weather was superb and life was so good. I've never forgotten those 3 weeks.

As an adult I took holidays in France, spent 3 months studying in Paris, got engaged there during my stay there. We later took our children to France on holiday most years, spent many holidays in rental properties after they grew up, spent a summer working in the Alps, and 12 years ago decided to buy in the Drôme. Not having found just what we wanted, we bought in a town in the Gard that we'd loved and visited for years.

We had a happy and very fulfilled life in England, and only intended to spend some time away from winter in the grey Thames Valley, parts of November and February, with possibly a couple of weeks in summer. But we enjoyed being there so much that we were very soon spending 6 months of each year there.

We love the town, the area, our many friends and neighbours, our whole way of life there, but also our life in England. But if we didn't have our son, DIL and grandchildren living just round the corner from our family home in England, we would have moved to France permanently by now. We feel we have the best of both worlds.
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Gluestick wrote:

Much of this was thanks to endless media property porn programmes and articles; shows; magazines; and multiple newspaper articles extolling how Fred Dipstick and his partner Sally Silly, sold up in Britain,....

I could not agree more. The point I meant to make, but forgot, when posting about Nigel and Nippy, is that by the time we got to the last agent on our list to visit (about episode 4) he commented how in the last few days there had been a marked increase in the number of British people asking for appointments to visit.

The power of the media over the gullible.

Chancer,

No idea what happened to Nippy, but Nigel died several years ago.

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Gluey said:

"The huge differential between crazy UK house prices and French house prices"

That is the biggest myth about France. That is where those moving to France make such a mistake and will continue to do so.

Houses in 'mainstream' France are as expensive as the UK. In rural France, the houses appear cheap but they are not cheap relative to salaries and the cost of living.

I have made that point so many times. If you want to move to France and live in 'prosperous functioning France' you need at least a budget of at 350,000-400,000 euros for a half decent place.

If you buy a cheap property and do it up you may not be able to sell. For me, that is a very expensive property.
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