LUCY BURDETTE: You've heard that John and I were in France for 10 days at the end of May. In Paris, we had the amazing opportunity to meet American, English, and Australian people who have moved from their home countries to France. This fascinates me! After I tell you about some of them, I would love to hear whether you would have either the urge or the nerve to move somewhere unfamiliar.
First, we had a glass of wine with a group of people who follow Heather Stimmler’s Secrets of Paris blog and newsletter. Heather is an American who moved to Paris in the 1990s. She started giving tours and now has a paying blog with exactly as the name says, secrets of Paris: places to go, how to get into a popular museum, meetups for those interested in socializing. At our table were two couples who have sold everything in the US and now rent apartments in Paris. We were interested to hear about their experience with medical care (good!), Learning the language (so hard!), making French friends (not easy.) One of the men is a musician who spends a lot of time playing with others and also listening to music so he’s met people that way. Another of the women knits and has joined knitting groups. John interviewed one of the men from our cocktail group and I know you will enjoy reading that article.
We also took a tour with an English man who moved to Paris with his wife in the 90s. He’s built a business giving tours and doing podcasts through his website, the Earful Tower. His introduction into the world of Parisian people came through playing basketball.
The real Emily in Paris, whom you’ve heard me speak of, came to Paris from London (she is Australian by birth) and then met and married a Parisian man. They now live in Paris with their two small children and his daughter from a previous marriage. She says her in to Parisian life is through her kids and also other expats in the city. She feels she will never be accepted totally as a French person.
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| The Real Emily in Paris |
Jane Bertch, who we've featured twice on the blog here, is also an American who first moved to London, and then to Paris in the banking world. She got the idea to found la cuisine Paris, and has written a memoir about the transition called the French Ingredient. She seems so comfortable in her new life! You can also read the cookbooks and newsletters of Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, Americans who have mostly transplanted themselves to Paris and feel very much at home, while at the same time are aware of not being French.
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| Lucy with Dorie and Jane |
My takeaways from meeting these folks? A big move like this is really hard! It’s important to love the city that you are joining and be patient with yourself. Parisians are not famous for easily accepting people. The truth is, much as I love that city, and would love to know it more thoroughly, I have a deep tap root that connects me to the US. Along with friends and relatives that I would miss dearly. Plus a husband who wouldn’t go. So alas, I can’t see myself joining the ex-pats. I will have to do this through my fiction.
What about you, Reds? Can you see yourself moving to another country? If you’re tempted, where would it be and what draws you there?
I can't see myself doing this, Lucy . . . more than anything, I'd miss my family far too much . . . .
ReplyDeleteI know you would!
DeleteI am a solo retiree without any family left in Canada, but I haven't found another country where I would want to be an expat (yet).
ReplyDeleteBut becoming a snowbird to escape an Ottawa winter does sound tempting. So far, I have only left home for 2.5 weeks for SE or Eastern Asia (Singapore, Taiwan) where temperatures ranged in the low 30C/mid 80s/95F.
The snowbird life is appealing Grace! I wouldn't move to the US right now:(
DeleteDon't worry, I never visited FL or AZ as a snowbird and have no intention to do so!
DeleteTry Florida (smile) it is totally weird, we speak English (sorta) and is like Canadian Summer in the Winter. (right Lucy?)
DeleteCORALEE: No, if I decide to leave Canada, I am also leaving North America!!
DeleteLower living costs, excellent cheap healthcare, great food/culture and easier/closer travel to other countries would be necessary criteria.
My husband would adore it if I were so adventurous! He has traveled all over the world and would move to anywhere in the Alps in a heartbeat. Me, not so much. Due to his work, in the 1990s we lived in the D.C. area for three years, then the Bay Area for another three years. This span "away" taught me that I can adapt eventually to other places but I will always be a New England Yankee at heart. (The northern Adirondacks are not all that different from northern Vermont.) He has the soul of an explorer. I'm afraid I have the soul of a farmer -- or a barnacle. (Selden)
ReplyDeleteI love the soul of a barnacle Selden!! I feel the same way now about being a CT Yankee.
DeleteVisiting, yes, but moving to another country, no as I would miss my family and friends.
ReplyDeletethat's what I found the hardest to understand about people retiring in another country...how to leave the roots behind?
DeleteMy husband and I are in the process of doing this. We are approaching the end of 6 weeks in France. The first week was in Nice, where we signed a year’s lease on a flat. We don’t know if Nice is where we will end up (it feels very much like Long Beach - a large city on the water, but with even more tourists). Since at this time we are planning to split time, I think we are leaning more towards a smaller village so we can enjoy the quiet and nature. But Nice is a very practical first step - international airport, good train connections, lots of ex-pats, so English is widely spoken, which is helpful as we work on improving our French. If we don’t decide to stay here long-term, it is still a good base of operations.
ReplyDeleteWe are in Carcassonne for the month of June (planned before the Nice rental) and I really love it here. The medieval City is very touristy, but the “new” town of Bastide St Louis is so convenient. The Tues-Thurs-Sat markets are only a couple blocks away, and the main square, ringed with cafés and restaurants, is around the corner. Pharmacies and boulangeries in all directions.
We love the feel of the Occitanie region (very similar to SoCal), but worry about heat and water availability. We’re in the midst of two weeks with highs in the 90s F (upper 30s C) and the old stone house is starting to heat up.
We also like the Dordogne region - lots of water, very green, but humid in the summer and gloomy in the winter.
We realize that it will take a lot of work to become part of a community. We are both introverted, which means we need to push ourselves to get out there, but is helpful because we are fine on our own. As retirees, we love the slower pace of life here and how we can have daily activities and interactions just by going to get bread or croissants or going to the market. We plan to start the process for a one-year visa when we are back in the US so we don’t have to arrange our visits to comply with the Schengen limits (90 days out of every 180).
this is so fascinating and exciting! You must come back and write about it for us when you're further along in the process.
DeleteHappy to do so!
DeleteLISA: This is soooo exciting! Enjoy exploring possible locations in France, and keep us informed!
DeleteYou and your husband have really researched this, Lisa. I wish you luck, and hope you will check back on how things are going.
DeleteWe are both engineers, so yes, we are being very analytical about it. I am very much enjoying our time here and discovering favorite places that we return to in Carcassonne. Looking forward to doing the same in Nice.
DeleteAnother one here hoping you'll post regularly!!
DeleteI did it, and after two years I came home to Connecticut.
ReplyDeleteIt was the winter of 1975 and I was going to get tenure in my elementary school teaching position in a suburb of Hartford. It was a good job. Some of the teachers there had been in rheir classrooms for 20 to 30 years already. I was reading Mila 18 by Leon Uris. I knew a lot about the Holocaust already, but this story is about the Warsaw Ghetto and the uprising. At the end of the book, the heroine decides to go to Israel. I put down the book, picked up the phone and made plans to go. "If she could do it, I can do it."
I had already visited Israel for two weeks in the summer of 1968. My step sister had married an Israeli and was living in Jerusalem. Growing up, idealistically, I had thought about moving there some day. I made plans to study Hebrew at an Ulpan in Arad. From there, I moved to Tel Aviv where I got a teaching job and an apartment. I stayed for two years but in the end, I moved back to Connecticut.
That was adventurous Judy! You must have had so many reasons to feel tied to Israel. What made you decide to move back home?
DeleteOMG, Roberta, I was deeply unhappy with Judy. If you've ever heard this saying, which I'll paraphrase here, "You can travel the world over to find happiness, but unless you bring it with you, you will find it not."
DeleteI went home and found a great psychiatrist who helped me control my deep dislike for the person I was becoming.
Good for you Judy! It's hard to be that age and lost--I relate.
DeleteIt has been hard enough moving from Minnesota to Florida, so no I would not want to relocate to another country.
ReplyDeleteMy niece, who is very fluent in French, spent a year in France as an English teaching assistant. I think she had her fill of it.
I certainly get that Brenda! The hub and I talked about bringing his kids to france for 6 months but the plan never got off the ground.
DeleteWhile I can't realistically see myself moving to another country, if I was getting all those goofy romantic type ideas of how great it would be to live somewhere other than the US, it would Ireland.
ReplyDeleteHome of my ancestors, rolling green hills and way too many Ireland-set movies or TV shows to be considered healthy are the likely reasons why it would seem cool. But that's probably also where the fantasy would die too. It would be nothing like the movies and so it would just be changing location with the same damn day-to-day issues of life. Except cut off from any support system I might have here and now.
But it would be cool to visit.
Yes Jay! Ireland is very appealing these days...
DeleteI am like Judy, I already did it. The year 1969-1970 in Okinawa, Japan. It really was not living in a foreign country, it was living the live of a military dependent. I was so young, so scared, and learned so much about what I might become some day.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I am concerned, Florida is a foreign country. Everything is not what it used to be. But then maybe this is true for all of us.
A lot of Florida is foreign for sure. Key West feels a little different, but for how long?
DeleteI have lived all across Canada and have discovered the wonder and the hard work of moving to a new region that is so different from where I was moving from: Alberta to Nova Scotia, for example, in 1986. Same country, different culture. Very wonderful though very different. These days, I'm rooted in Manitoba and cannot see myself moving elsewhere. Never say never, but the world is so unsettled these days, with unrest and issues everywhere -- including my home province -- that I cannot see myself willingly moving elsewhere only to deal with similar issues in a foreign culture and language.
ReplyDeleteSo true, the wider issues are everywhere in one form or another.
DeleteI loved travelling to places ( often linked to the books I had read ) and exploring . Currently, I have less taste for travelling and certainly not the taste for going to live elsewhere. It’s so good to live here.
ReplyDeleteI admit that I don’t really understand the desire to live in Paris. To begin with, I’m not a big city girl and even as a French Canadian, Paris wasn’t my favourite place in France. I preferred Dordogne.
I was maybe influenced by a Parisian couple that immigrated here in Quebec about twelve years ago because they wanted to have children and they didn’t consider Paris or France being a good place to start a family.
My friend Emily has kids and feels the French are very good at supporting families. But if you don't like cities and city life it would be a bad fit for sure.
DeleteI find the word 'expat' to describe people who move from the US or UK to other countries very curious. How are expats different from immigrants? Is it the idea that they bring wealth with them, rather than fleeing somewhere for a better life? Is it because they have the ability to freely return home for visits? Or is it because they tend to settle in communities like San Miguel de Allende in Mexico where there are other expats? Other immigrants do that too, settle with people who speak their language. I thought of my dad as an immigrant, who moved from the UK to the US for a better life. Anyway, I have pondered the word "expat" for a long time. I don't think I could move anywhere else, although sometimes I'm tempted.
ReplyDeleteI never looked at it that way. I guess in my mind, expats are citizens who choose to live longterm in another country, while immigrants are people who seek to become citizens of another country. But perhaps that distinction exists only in my own mind. And yes, I guess the ability to return home and back at any time seems like a part of it to me, too.
DeleteGood question, Gillian. I would also like to know the difference.
ReplyDeleteWe have thought about moving somewhere, even just for part of the year, but I am rooted here in SW Ohio like an oak tree. My husband would move "out West", unspecified, in a heartbeat. He says. He lived in rural California for a year, while the kids and I stayed in Cincinnati and just visited back and forth, but it took him a long time afterwards to start saying he wanted to move there, once he got back home.
All three daughters have lived in other countries: Bangkok, Sydney, London, Nairobi, and now Athens, along with Charleston SC, Miami FL, Boston, Detroit, Traverse City, Boulder, Portland OR, and Cleveland. I visited all but Thailand while each were there. And that's really how I prefer it. I'd much rather work to make THIS country better than to attempt to insert my square peg into some round hole of another place, especially at this time of my life. The lush green Ohio Valley holds my heart and always will.
Karen, it is always a revelation driving south on 23, when the hills start appearing as you head farther south to the Ohio river and the valley opens up. Love it! Or driving 71 to Cinci from Columbus.
DeleteI wonder how many of you exploring ideas of living in another country are ‘young’ old-people. Are you people with good health, endless (almost) energy, and no mobility issues? Will you be able to just explore and enjoy the new country? How close to becoming body-compromised (means some or many parts no longer work well) are you or your partner? What will you do for health care, or need of a care-giver? I think that would influence my idea of moving somewhere else more than anything else. Then there is the fact that I could not live in a city, so walk-ability to local markets is not a drawing point.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like I am staying here.
Yes, I am a "young" healthy retiree (not yet 60) in good health, with no mobility issues. That is why I felt safe travelling solo on those DIY trips to SE Asia. But so far, none of the countries visited made me want to live there long-term as an expat. But I am still looking & open to the possibility.
DeleteYou are right, this is an important consideration. We have been warned against moving to the Dordogne as it is a “medical desert.” We are fortunate to be at a time of life where we do not need regular medical appointments, so that probably won’t be a major driver for now. I have wondered how I may feel when I’m in my 80s and trying to have a nuanced discussion about medical issues in French. I know how frustrating those conversations can be in my native English from talking with my parents’ doctors.
DeleteA very timely question, Lucy. Lately I have been thinking about moving to Canada. The border is less than a 4 hours drive. I mentioned it to one son and he said he'd move in a minute, but he has a young son so that wouldn't work. I haven't discussed this with my other son, although he and I are planning a trip to Alberta next year. I think he has thought about living there, but from here it is very far away. So, I guess if my family wouldn't come with me, it makes no sense for me to go. That doesn't mean I have stopped thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteIn reading your essay, I was slightly amazed at how many people that you interacted with while in Paris, and I wondered if these meets were arranged before you left the US? Were they just random interactions with the natives, or would you be able to join a knitting group and then become part of the culture?
ReplyDeleteMy brother and wife used to go to Portugal for 6-8 weeks in the winter. They went to the same house – AirB&B each time, and after the first time as a tourist, just lived there as they would have if they were at home. It involved buying their own groceries and for instance having the same stir-fry that they would have had for supper on Thursday night at home, but instead in Portugal. Rarely did they partake of the local community café and cuisine. I cannot comment on the economics of buying and cooking rather than visiting the local for supper – was there a difference?
What strikes me, is that in this extended period of time, they never spoke of meeting anyone, being friends with anyone, or becoming a winter-friend of the community. I have no idea if they would like to live there forever?
One more thing and then I am going to garden – it is cold out there so I am procrastinating! My husband picked up sticks and moved from Ontario to Nova Scotia after living all his life in Quebec and Ontario. All his family had moved on in the final sense of that word, except his sister who lived in Halifax (she too has since moved on…) We moved here to be with my parents – also gone now – so now his family is us – here. Our kids have their own families and live in Halifax, Moncton and British Columbia. Twenty-five years since moving, he will still never be a Cape-Bretoner, even if he can dress like one (think baggy pants, plaid shirt, and possibly a hat when he needs a hair-cut), but life is satisfying. He does say that since going through boxes of family history all winter, which he was never interested in before, he does want to talk about it with other family members, but there are none left. Maybe that connection with what went before is also something that you would lose in moving to another country.
ReplyDeleteI have deep roots here in Maine but we were lucky enough to move to England years ago and we loved it. I would absolutely love to love to another country again (UK, Ireland, France - just returned from a trip to Provence -already looking at apartments in Aix haha! Or Canada would be my first choices). My husband is pretty adventurous so I think I could persuade him if I get serious about this. We have a beautiful place in Maine that I would like to keep as my safety net… now that I am typing this, maybe just long-term stints in another country is more realistic… Aix is the first place in many years I could picture myself living in (besides Maine). The markets, walkability, proximity to hiking/beaches/countryside is very appealing to me. As an introvert, not being accepted by the French is not a concern of mine. I’m not French, and that’s okay. I just appreciate the lifestyle and of course the beautiful scenery. Living in a beautiful place is one of the most important things for me. I’ve lived in large cities and urban areas before and very quickly understood that is not for me. While the US has some beautiful spots (I’m partial to the quaintness of New England), nothing really compares (for me) to the architectural and bucolic beauty of Europe.
ReplyDeleteYour question caused me some real introspection. I mean, there is zero chance my husband and I would relocate to another country now, but it made me wonder why we never even discussed it when we were younger. My honest answer is that we both came from what most people might call lower middle class families, and while we pursued a lot of dreams and adventures unknown to the previous generation, the idea of relocating to another country was just too far outside our sphere of knowledge to even occur to us.
ReplyDeleteI have mentioned here many times that our son is currently living in Japan, and I feel like it is about 50/50 whether that will be for a few years or forever. Living there for at least some period of time was a lifelong dream of his. (So I guess we succeeded at giving him broader horizons!) There is much he is loving about living there, but even for a healthy 31-year-old, medical care is one of the biggest challenges. He has plenty of access to care, but communicating with enough nuance to discuss symptoms has proven quite challenging.
I've thought about such a move often in my life, but have never made the leap. I'm introverted, so being alone isn't much of a worry--except I've found that I do need the company of friends to get me out and about. Places I've thought of include Corfu, northeast Spain, southern France, Merida, Costa Rica. But my roots run deep in the US--all branches of my family were here long before we were the USA--no upstart Ellis Island riffraff! :-) and I'd much rather have a place to retreat to for part of the year than to move away permanently.
ReplyDelete