Talbert Pipes Life in France Adventures One Year On We've passed our first Christmas in France One Year On, Various Thoughts and Reflections At the end of May we celebrated the anniversary of our arrival in France. It's hard to believe that only a year ago we were being thrown to different airlines, lost in the CDG airport, nearly fallen under the TGV bullet train, riding all the way to Brittany sitting on our luggage in the drinks car because we'd lost our ticket in the fall under the train, and arriving with all of our worldly possessions in ocean transit. It seems like 10 years ago! That was just the beginning of a hellish experience beyond words - bureacratic delays and fumbles, power company fights, workshop re-education, foreign language grappling, and especially cultural transition shock. I can say without any reservation or second thought that it has been the worst year of my life, and that doesn't even begin to cover the level of all-encompassing frenzy that has dominated our existence since our plane touched down. But as the saying goes, "They were the best of times, they were the worst of times"... it has been an education as well, and there have been many moments of wonder and excitement that many people never get to experience, so in that respect there's a certain balance going on. In some respects, we really haven't lived here a year - not in the true sense of "living here". The US economy began to go south last year when we were moving, and because of plant closings and general local economic malaise back home we have not yet been able to sell our old house in the US. This has meant that we've had two full houses with all attendant bills to pay for, and it's hard enough to make ends meet on a pipemaker's salary with just one set of expenses. As a result, we've had to work constantly - day, night, weekends... we take off around one afternoon every month or two and that's all the time we've had to spare. People keep asking me what France is like and what the local area is like and all I can tell them is what I can see out the workshop windows - for many months now, daily existence has consisted of getting up, answering a small mountain of email, eating a quick lunch, working all afternoon, eating dinner, going back out and working until 11pm or so, and coming in to fall on the couch and watch TV or read. I have no time to study French or meet the locals so my language skills have not advanced at all and we only know a few people in the area, and our working schedule is usually so exhausting that we really haven't had the energy or time to learn "French living" (cooking local meals, exploring area restaurants, seeing sights, etc). It's not all bad, however - we have met a few people in our town and they are extremely nice folks. The picture above was taken when we had dinner with some of our neighbors, and we were later invited to their daughter's wedding party. We've made a number of English-speaking friends in the area, which is nice. We have had the extraordinary good fortune to have parents and friends back in the states who are nice enough to send us goodies from home on occasion, so we have some videos to watch and popcorn to enjoy them with. We just passed our one-year anniversary by opening the online version of our brick & mortar retail shop and it has been a great success, so our business has not only survived but expanded a bit. The stress of the whole experience has pushed us into a true zen-like existance, where time is measured by surviving one more day instead of being filled with long-term worries or schemes. I'm amazed that we're still here and still relatively sane after all that has been thrown at us. Looking back on this first year, I've put together a few thoughts on various subjects - "Francophiles" and other expats: People who move to other countries, or spend their days wanting to move to other countries, are a weird crowd. I say this from the perspective of having never been one of these people, but having now met a lot of them by virtue of being an expat and therefore automatically expected to associate with other expats. Our decision to move was made based primarily on three factors - the advantages of having the workshop equipment and proximity to supplies that came with working in Europe, my wife's desire to see more of the world and do something more creative with her life, and my desire to live near the beach, any beach. I did not grow up wanting to run away from home; I never idolized traveling abroad; I never had any desire to live anywhere stranger than the North Carolina coast. I've never really understood the people who are "fans" of another country (at least except for those who are living under a dictatorship or something, and have bloody good reason to want to go somewhere else). Most of the people that I've known in my life who do move abroad tend to do so for a couple of common reasons - either a rosy-tinted view of life in another country or a driving dislike of their home country for whatever reason. I don't share either of these, and have been amused to find myself as much of an odd duck among our fellow world-travelers as I always was among our "normal" US suburbanites. I am probably more sentimental about the USA now than I ever would have been had I lived my whole life there, and while I enjoy many things about France, I have never had any illusions about French life being some sort of wonderland existence - we did not come here "to live in France" but rather "to have a great pipe workshop near the coast" and the specific country was never really an issue. It could just as easily have been Italy or Norway as far as I was ever concerned, so I'm often somewhat amused at the sort of worshipful attitude that some folks have toward France. A common and somewhat unpleasant thread that runs through many of my meetings with other expats is a combination of slavish exaltation of everything French and total derision for their homeland (typically England, as we rarely meet other US expats, so I can't judge the right or wrong of this antipathy having never lived there). The typical conversation is, "Oh you speak English too?? We're from UK/USA/etc and oh, isn't it just awful there! They're all fascists/capitalists/madmen and we hate everything they do or say now." I'm not a particularly patriotic person nor am I a fan of our current administration but I still find this sort of hostility unnerving - it often seems as if the people in question are doing their absolute very best to convince themselves of how awful their old country was so they will miss it less. What makes this annoying enough for me to be writing about it is the fact that I often find myself avoiding other expats because of it - I prefer to talk about the here and now and future, and I'm not afraid to say I miss many things about my old country. I guess I prefer wistful nostalgia to embittered acrimony, or perhaps I'm just being American by wanting to focus on the positive. The flip side are the folks who don't care either way about their old country but worship France for some reason, and assume that because we chose to move here, we must worship France also. I sometimes get emails from people who are true francophiles and are upset that I sometimes complain about the difficulties we've had here, or about aspects of the French system - the general message being, "You are living in France. What is there to complain about?" Amusingly, these letters come 100% from two groups - people who lived here briefly and had a company pay all their traveling and moving expenses (and held guaranteed, salaried jobs), and people who came here as students and had their parents pay for their "absolutely wonderful" year abroad. This is as different from the real-world experience of life and business in France as a shoe-shiner is from a Wall Street broker, but it's hard to convince people of this who've only seen the romantic website pictures of castles and oceans and don't understand the sheer insane frustration level of having to go to four different government offices and endure a 2 hour wait at each just to get a bus pass. Anti-Americanism in Europe: It's here and real, whatever the EU leaders may say - anti-Americanism is becoming the new state-endorsed form of racism in mainland Europe. One only has to read the news of savage criticisms of any US-friendly EU nation to see this - the opponents of globalization and technological progress have found their perfect scapegoat in the US, and every new attempt to create "US-free" institutions (EU organizations duplicating NATO jobs, for example) only drives the point home further. There are many people on this side of the pond who see the US as a force that must be checked, balanced, and/or blocked and obstructed at every turn. At the same time, these people don't realize how infuriating and confusing it is to Americans to suddenly, and apparently without provocation, have people we've considered our allies begin taking the attitude that "Everything the US wants must be blocked because the US is already too successful/powerful/aggressive." Opinions vary on how permanent this phenomenon is - some say it is only beginning while others believe that relations will settle comfortably once the Bush administration is out of office. However (and THANKFULLY!), we haven't been affected by this at all - the locals, real-world working people as opposed to headline hogs and pundits, have all been remarkably friendly and nice to us and we've never even experienced the "invisible stares" feeling that other "minorities" speak of. It creates a strange bipolar experience. On the one hand, I read daily of politicians riding to office on a platform of anti-Americanism or stirring up national support simply by opposing the USA. On the other hand, I don't encounter this at all in real life, and it makes me wonder where the papers get their polls and stories. The media may make heroes out of nuts who drive bulldozers into McDonald's joints, but plenty of regular local people go to eat there (and this seems to be the crux of the problem - one great truth is that Americans will not "exert their influence" anywhere that they can't make a buck, and if there weren't a whole lot of people happy to eat at McDonalds and drink Pepsi, these businesses wouldn't be here) If there is any hostility towards the US, it is invariably directed solely at the government (specifically the Bush administration) and not at us. Lady Dewar put it best today when she said, "The people here take you just as you are, and don't see you as part of a country or political system." It's very true, and unique in my experience. It makes an odd contrast with Americans and my life experience among my fellow countrymen, because I think Americans are much more prone to view foreigners as tiny walking symbols of their nation's politics. This is a topic for a sociologist and not me, but I do wonder why this is, and if any of it has to do with the fact that we in the US have always been a democracy from our founding, and therefore tend to believe that everyone else must have leaders of their own choosing also - ergo, the individual citizens must be a lot like the country's politics because they are the ones who selected the leaders. The US/France Spat and the Iraq War: Talk about bad timing! When we were planning our move, France was riding a wave of popularity in the US through popular entertainment. Movies like "Amelie", "Brotherhood of the Wolf", and "Crimson Rivers" had caught people's eye and made them interested in things-French. Then came March, 2003, and the beginning of that whole unbelievable squabble at the UN. I'm not going to put forth any opinions pro or con about the Iraq war except to say that I personally feel that the governments on both sides miscalculated badly and bungled the situation terribly. The news of the moment seems to be good - everyone is trying to cooperate now in a positive way and move forward, but there are many threads left dangling and only time will tell how the world relationships will shake out. Our personal timing could not have been worse - we'd been planning our move for 2 years almost, but we were only really getting the business re-established and visible again when the international arguing got started, and we spent some nervous months worrying that our US customers would turn hostile to us for "going French" in their eyes, while simultaneously our new customers in Europe would turn cold to us because we were Americans! It really put us in a difficult situation, but thankfully we needn't have worried - pipe collectors are a well-educated and thoughtful bunch, not given to histrionics, and we didn't get a bad word from anyone (at least no one who had the nerve to speak to us directly!). Now I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that the US and EU will work together to rebuild Iraq and strengthen their own ties in the process. Living in a Foreign Language: This is a weird experience. I can speak a lot better than when I arrived but my French is still survival-level and a long way from conversational, much less "good". It creates a strangely alienated sensation to live in the middle of an entire world where you can't speak to people or read anything. I think that, were I a social person or one who really craved regular human contact, this would have driven me nuts after the first couple of months because it is profoundly distancing - you literally cannot understand anything, not movies, not TV, not radio announcers, not casual conversations in grocery store lines, not headlines, and on and on. Amusingly, I've found that I really enjoy many aspects of this! I've never liked socializing much, and it's sometimes very nice to have that barrier there, especially when confronted with poll-takers and door-to-door salespeople (A quick message to all the grifters trying to sell small-panel ads in a thousand local tourist flyers - WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN ADVERTISING!). So, for me, the language alienation hasn't been all that bad - I certainly don't miss understanding the radio announcers, for instance, and find it really wonderful to have my radio listening experience consist solely of music interspersed with occasional bits of incomprehensible babble, rather than being forced to listen to some inane disk jockey's political ranting. It creates a strange sort of "private zone" feeling - one wanders through large stores and public places feeling as if you're wrapped in some sort of muffled blanket due to being filtered from all the conversations you would otherwise overhear. However, there are disadvantages too. The main thing I REALLY miss is being able to read - I would very much like to be able to walk over to the magazine shop and pick up papers and zines but all I can do is look at the pictures, and this is extremely frustrating since I've always loved reading. Food and Wine: I come from the US South, where even drinking an occasional beer is sometimes seen as "sinful", so it's initially a little startling to live in a society where daily alcohol consumption is measured in barrels. Interestingly, this has not created a nation of alcoholics as the prohibitionists keep telling us it would - we've only met one true certifiable alcoholic since we arrived, though everyone here enjoys their wine. Here, one has wine with lunch, wine with snacks, wine with dinner, and wine before bed... at least the locals do. We, however, have continued our savage customs of drinking soft drinks with meals, much to the amusement of our local friends (Our friend Guy once came by during supper and was stopped in his tracks to see me drinking Pepsi with my meal... This produced a startled, "You are drinking Coke with your meal! You are... deeferant, oui!") I have nothing against wine but, having not been raised with it from birth, I simply can't drink half a bottle with lunch if I want to be sharp and clear-headed all afternoon. I do enjoy it with dinner sometimes, however, and especially in the evenings with a nice pipe when I can relax. Wines in France are exceptional and quite inexpensive - I can buy good wine cheaper than Pepsi, though my definition of "good" would probably be seriously lacking to the tastes of serious wine people. Still, I've found quite a few types that I enjoy. What I really miss is strong beers - for some reason, the French consider amber beers to be "dark" and thick malty black brews like Sam Smith's Taddy Porter are not found anywhere here. I would kill for a Sam Adams Cream Stout now! There are plenty of great blond beers and Pilsners to be had, but the few darker beers I've found have tended to be wretched. On the topic of food, we are split down the middle - French food is either incredibly delicious or downright terrifying, with little middle-ground. One minute you're savoring a plate of sliced veal smothered in sumptuous cheese sauce, and the next you're staring at a decapitated pig's head surrounded by an artful display of chopped-off pig's hoofs nestled in a bed of raw eels. Generally, most of what we've tried has been exceptional and the only real disappointment has been the French-tinted Chinese food we've tried, which is heavily adulterated towards French tastes (unlike, of course, the Chinese food in the US ;>). When it's scary, however, it is very scary - there are a couple of shops in town I make a point NOT to visit because of my American squeamishness towards seeing so much of the normally-discarded parts of what I'm eating. I have learned to order with great care in restaurants! Cultural Adaptation: This one is hard to judge - I don't feel very adapted but I know that I daily handle things casually that would have sent both of us into a panic a year ago. We can now change fuses and quickly decipher the house & workshop wiring, we know reliable local electricians and plumbers and so forth, we know a few good places to go out to eat, we can find decent milk and a lot of familiar foods, and we have some idea of where to start when a new crisis presents itself. I don't feel very French though - as I said above, my language skills have barely improved, I don't have time to study, and we live very much apart from the local culture. However, I'm not sure our changes would be visible to us since we live inside of the new culture... it's likely that we'll only notice our new habits when we visit the US and find ourselves saying "Merci" instead of "Thank you". Once we've sold our old house and can relax a bit, I expect things will change, especially in the language and immersion departments. As it is, I suspect we are functionally closer to immigrants of 3-4 months instead of the one year that we've been here. It's frustrating because we have gone from expat homesickness and hostility toward the new culture to curiosity and a genuine desire to explore it, and we don't have the time to do so! But, the one thing certain is that everything changes, and I am ready and revved to see what this second year will bring.