cyrian

Reminds me of when we took our kids to the "French" Xmas party in the UK.
There was a French/Irish boy (9-ish) who gruffly objected to anyone talking to him in French - he was perhaps a bit embarrassed talking in French.
Today, he is fluent and at ease in both languages.

Bonnet

This has to be one of the more stupid posts I have yet seen in here.

First I never mentioned a Sunday...my own experience involves an 80+ year old single man who had a small vineyard. Every year he invited friends and neighbours to his recolte and to the usual party afterwards. It was a long standing part of HIS social life...So enough of the sniping.

Secondly Paris is NOT France. It is a capital city. It has a totally different demographic than the rest of France. It has nothing to do with France's biggest earner...agriculture. The way you live in a city is not comparable to the way you live outside one. So once again, enough of the sniping.

In case you hadn't heard, GB is suffering from a spate of grooming underage girls and hoiking them off for some jollies. It hasn't stopped even tho the press has lost interest...it has, according to the police, gone underground. In cities all over GB there are incidents of violence and if you think it doesn't happen, then YOU take off your rosy spectacles.


I worked my socks off for over 40 years in GB watching it slowly go downhill. I knew what I wanted when I came here and made damned sure I found it. I looked at new builds when I was moving two years ago and found them to be pretty bloody awful. I don't want a city or a lot of people in one place...I had had enough of them.
What I DO understand is that every one who comes here has a different idea of what they want. Not what YOU want...what THEY want. I'll let you do the talking about raising a family here tho I suspect it isn't very different from GB but you DON'T get to deny the FACT that it is perfectly possible to find another kind of life here if you do the homework first.

As for what the French think of the Brits, my experience is different. They dislike those who don't speak French and they dislike those who refuse to integrate...just as Brits dislike immigrants to GB who do the same things. But then be careful...as Intours said, they may be laughing at you.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a varied view of France and what can be found here. I am perfectly aware of the poverty, hardship, good sense and practicalities of living here...it has been long enough. But there is another side and I don't think anyone has the right to deny it if they have never either looked for it or found it. And I will stop offering it when the others in here stop whingeing about France and how dreadful it is and warning people to stay away. I repeat...if you don't like it, move away. Practise what you preach.

Touraine

Ohh la la. I think Bonnet you have more of a bee in your Bonnet about the expats in your area than you do about the expats on this forum. Yes there are a lot of Brits in France who don't know how to integrate. But that is what happens when you live in an expat hotspot.

What is integration by the way ? Am I integrated ?

I have lived all over France from tiny villages (not expat areas) to big cities. I will say again you will have a better more representative experience of French culture living in a large town or city than living in the middle of nowhere.

Remember, the top places where the French want to live are cities...!!!!!!

InVinoVeritas

Is GB the same as the UK cos its sounds like a completely different country to me.

dmu

I repeat what I said in an earlier post. Most of our "whingeing", as you call it, is to draw unsuspecting potential expats' attention to the unknown. It's amazing the number of potential expats who have no idea about the French Social Security system, whatever their status will be, the lack of benefits available upon arrival, the status of self-employed and their social charges and taxes, the rules and regulations about running a B&B or gîte, the French Education System, renting, Property and Inheritance Laws, the list is endless.... Everything is so different from the UK and, as they are asking advice on the Forum, it would be unfair to leave them in ignorance. Once they know all the cons in advance, they can decide for themselves. We certainly aren't warning them to stay away!
Referring to another thread, I suppose integration is accepting all of these French quirks and thinking and acting as a French person, WITHOUT COMPARING WITH THE UK.

InVinoVeritas

Depends if the French person is Bonnet

Chatter Static

You should dig back through the old posts more there are some gems back in the past.

Cities tend to have a great influence over agriculture who do you think all the food is being produced for? Remove cities and farmers would spend most their life bored.

Sniping? Other posters are allowed to disagree with you and in all fairness BP is being polite accept the disagreement debate it and debate it some more.

No matter how well you get on with them you will remain an outsider for forever it's the nature of being a foreigner here. Expat enclaves naturally develop all over the world it has been a normal part of migration for centuries and you will always get migrants that think they are above it I see the middle class migrant syndrome everyday numb nuts that won't talk to you in your and their mother tongue because of language snobbery and half the time their French sucks.

You don't work for a living in France and probably have less experience in how hard it would be to find gainful employment here, Honestly there are jobs but it is hard work to get one especially if you arrive with the UK mindset for job hunting and a UK formatted CV.

But hey retiring here is easy once you get your head around the bureaucracy same in Germany and the same in Spain but moving anywhere to work is a whole different kettle of fish Imho.

dmu

[QUOTE=Chatter Static;.
You don't work for a living in France and probably have less experience in how hard it would be to find gainful employment here, Honestly there are jobs but it is hard work to get one especially if you arrive with the UK mindset for job hunting and a UK formatted CV.
.[/QUOTE]

From another post, Mrs B does say that she runs a B&B and does internet work in her spare time. Yet there hasn't been much advice forthcoming on either status. She also gave a figure for their income which suggests that there's also a comfortable salary and/or Pension coming in. Her life doesn't concern us, but some factual advice to potential expats based on her own experience might be more useful than comments on our Greymalkin curses.

babyposer

What a relevant comment, thank you

This is an anecdote. Plus I don't think a single old man represents what France is, sorry.

It's not France but it's a big part of France. It's where most people work in this country too.

It's not as bad as in France. I'm not talking about London and Paris.

France is going downhill too FYI. Just because you're sick of the UK doesn't mean it's different or worse than any other countries in Europe.

Blah blah blah... Unfortunately if GB decides to leave the EU, you will have to move away

Chatter Static

Yeh but no but yeh but, thats not mainstream employment and not integrating getting something as simple as unskilled supermarket work here is hard because lot's of people fit the criteria for that sort of employment whereas any numpty with a few pounds in their back pocket can open a B&B "Chambres d'hotes" and or Gites.

babyposer

Thanks!

Exactly. I looked for a job for more than 1 year in France to no avail
AND I'm fluent in French. AND I have a degree.

Some interviews in France (About 10 in one year). There was always something 'wrong'.

Tried to find an unskilled job, to no avail. Wanna be a cleaning lady? Well you better have a degree. Yes in France it's possible to get a cleaning lady diploma. It's not a joke, I know someone who has passed this test. You have to know things about bleaching, water temperature and so on.

Anyways I gave up after a year. Headed to the UK. After 4 interviews in the North East, I got a job. Yes, North East, where the unemployment rate is the worst!

So it's possibly a bit of luck as well but I strongly believe it's easier to find a job in the UK.

Chatter Static

Im not sure what skill set your looking in in relation to your degree but we removed anything from our CV's that tended to skill us above the interviewer buy stamps in bulk and keep sending CV's to the same employers every one to two weeks in shops they tend to interview the top 15 CV's in the pile and one of the first 5 to be interviewed will get the job but all of this will walk you into a CDD as in shops CDI's tend to be like rocking horse poo but they do come with time.

Most of the supermarkets around here top half of the Loire just string folk along on CDD's because whilst on a CDD you don't qualify for the 13 month pay check don't qualify for yearly bonus's you get no staff discount and if you complain to the "inspection du travail" or go sick contract is not renewed when it expires.

EuroTrash

I do think it's a bit dangerous when people assume that the situation today is just as it was when they moved to France x years ago and refuse to believe that people moving now won't have the same experience they had. It is harder to find work now. Several of the jobseekers in Paris that I taught had been looking for work for well over a year - and these were bright, intelligent, well qualified young French people. They found it very demoralising. It's fine to say if you keep trying for long enough you'll get something - maybe you will, but what about the years of one disappointment after another, feeling depressed and hopeless and waiting for your savings to run out. That's not scaremongering and it's not whingeing and it's not dissing France, it's the reality.

Novocastrian

But wrt the bolded bit, it's not just the French reality.

YMMV but everywhere it's the case that young people are finding it very different in a bad way than the previous generation had it.

This is a bit obvious, but I think some of the so-called whinging should be placed in a wider perspective.

It's shit everywhere these days.

BEVS

I'd go along with that. It's the same for New Zealand. The place , the opportunities and the cost of living has altered big time over the past ten years. More caution is needed these days .

As some of you know, my eyes were set for France but we took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up at the bottom of the world.

May or may not have been for the best. I had reasonably good french language skill at the time. Mr BEVS however may have picked it up by ear but probably never been able to read or write it as he is dyslexic.