French Life-expat France

For those of you who have never visited France, or are planning a first trip, here is a light-hearted but handy alphabetical run-down of trivia that it might be useful to know.

A is for….Asterix the Gaul, a pugnacious little fellow who completely encapsulates the French personality. Created as a cartoon character by Albert Uderzo nearly fifty years ago, his ongoing battles with the Roman Army in 50 BC have entertained a generation of readers world- wide.

B is for …boules, a game played mostly by men, in dusty village squares the length and breadth of the country. Played with heavy metal balls, the rules to a non-French bystander are pretty obscure but don’t let this alarm you as you will rarely be invited to join in.

C is for… cassoulet, a type of bean stew found in multitudinous restaurants in the southwest of the country. The ingredients can vary from town to town, but Toulouse sausage is a vital part of the dish, along with ‘lingot’ beans ( a dried bean of the haricot variety, grown around Tarbes). Duck, lamb or pork is added depending on which town it is being served in.

D is for… De Gaulle, the famous wartime leader who directed the Free French from exile in London, and returned to become France’s first post- WW2 president. Equally famous for persistently saying ‘Non’ to Britain’s application to join the EU (or Common Market as it was then) in the 1950’s.

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Every year the gite business brings new challenges, and staying ahead of the game is not always easy. This becomes especially apparent in a year like this one where some potential holidaymakers are having financial difficulties and the overall level of holidays being booked is down.

I don’t know if there is over-supply of gites, perhaps there is in some areas, but there are always rental properties that get rented out for many weeks each year, and others that barely get the main summer weeks booked. And the well booked gites are usually the nicest…

…but not always though. There are other reasons why a gite may not be well booked, including being new. A well established gite will tend to have people that come back each year or recommend it to their friends and family, so it gets more bookings, but new gites don’t have this benefit.

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I wake up early in the morning - usually between 5am and 6am, and long before anybody else. No idea why, I’ve been the same since I was young. But it does leave me with a challenge. What should someone do for two-three quiet hours every morning?

Typically I drink too much coffee, answer lots of emails, check what’s happening on a couple of forums etc and try to catch up on things I intended to do the day before. Happily there are always lots of these, so it is never a problem amusing myself, and I often get more achieved in those three hours than I do in the rest of the day.

But it does leave a nagging suspicion that I should be doing something more exciting than work at such an unearthly hour. Learn Japanese, teach myself to paint, chop some wood, or take up yoga perhaps?

An alternative is, well, not to wake up early. This is what Mrs B and the children and the rest of the world think is the sensible solution, but is harder to do than you would think. When I go to bed, as soon as I close my eyes I go to sleep - literally, within 60 seconds. While much of the rest of the world apparently tosses and turns and struggles to get to sleep, I have no such problem.

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Living as we do near the Dordogne region, we see our fair share of tourists. Which is good because we have gites to rent out! Most of my exploring of the region is done on my bike, often with a group of local cyclists. This helps me discover loads of hidden away places I would otherwise never come across.

The opinion of the group is divided on one thing - should we visit ‘tourist attraction’ type towns, or should they be avoided at all costs. One of the group is only happy when we have seen a key site, most are indifferent, and one goes to great lengths, especially during the summer, to make sure we avoid tourist traps of all types.

This is the same person who drove for three hours to see Millau Bridge, and said it was well worth the trip, but waited until February to go, so there were no other tourists around.

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I’m in the attic of the house this week, treating about a zillion beams with wood protection and treatment. This involves wearing a protective mask and goggles, handling noxious chemicals and generally looking silly, but seems preferable to waiting for the roof to fall down.

Funny thing is, the attic of the house is probably the best room in the whole property and it played a large part in why we originally bought it, but is also the least visited. It is used for storing old boxes, a dusty heap of LP records, and about 100 wine glasses and knives to replace those that get broken or lost every week by people renting the property.

The ‘room’ has about 100 square metres of floor area and up to six metres height, and it has the most amazing traditional wooden structure you have seen. It would make an amazing open lounge or a couple of bedrooms but really the house doesn’t need any more bedrooms and we moved across the courtyard into the barn, and we can’t jsutify the expense of a full attic renovation in a gite.

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It’s only about two weeks until we open our doors to the first of this years visitors (we are ‘closed’ October to April) so we are busy making sure everything is looking good in the house and garden.

This becomes less of a chore each year, but there are always things to do in a house that has had a few months full of holidaymakers and then been left empty for a few months - mending dripping taps, regrouting bathroom tiling, checking gas tanks actually have a bit of gas in them and so on.

While I tinker in the house, spending a quiet morning touching up chipped paintwork or quietly flicking at cobwebs, Mrs B is outside making superhuman efforts to stop weeds taking over the garden. More or less a lost cause really but I shout a few words of encouragement from the window occasionally…

…”get on with it”, “can’t you work any faster’, you know the kind of thing. Rude and objectionable, of course, but said with a kind of half-smile so she doesn’t know if I’m being rude and objectionable or just trying to be amusing in my own peculiar way.

She usually shouts something back but I don’t hear what it is because I have the radio on quite loud so I can sing along to Cherie FM (’all your favourites from the good old days’) and also I have the kettle constantly boiling so I can get through my habitual 20 cups of coffe a day.

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I’ve gleaned a few useful facts about starting a business in France that might be useful, and more importantly could save you loads of money, so I thought I’d share them. Note I am not an expert, I’m just trying to point out some potential pitfalls and things to be aware of. You need to see a professional accountant rather than rely on anything below - every one will have different circumstances and the rules about French businesses change quite often!!

In France there is a type of enterprise called a ‘micro-enterprise’. Broadly for a service type business you can earn about 27,000 euros a year, get an exemption from preparing ‘proper’ accounts, and deuct about 50% of your income as assumed costs before your tax is calculated. For businesses that involve gites, or buying and selling products, you can earn 76,000 euros and deduct about 70% as assumed costs.

Because of this generous treatment of gites, most of the comments below probably don’t apply if you only plan to operate gites, where a micro-enterprise is often still the best solution. I say ‘probably’ because there are separate implications to do with your need to be a paid-up member of the French health system, which may be easier to achieve with & ‘real, registered business’ than a ‘non-commercial micro-business’.

An accountant won’t usually be necessary for a small business of this type in France, although you do still need to keep records of your income and expenses.

So you would think that the most natural way to start a business therefore is to create a mico-enterprise, because of the simple paperwork, and then convert to a different type of company when and if your business starts booming.

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It seems that packing up and moving to a different country can be a bit confusing - presumably people enter into a state of delirium and nervous excitement in the weeks before moving. Now I mention it, so did we…this is a guest blog article, see credit below, although I have rudely added my own comments as well…)

1) Forgot to tell friends and relatives

Tip: Let people know you’re going. Don’t forget to tell relatives and friends you are moving. Better still, send them all Change of Address cards before you go.

Mr B edit: you should also tell them to use a ‘Europe’ stamp not a UK 1st class stamp otherwise La Poste will stick the letter in a cupboard for a few weeks

2) Forgot the BMDs!

Tip: Put all important documents, such as birth certificates, marriage/divorce certificates and medical records together in an envelope to take with you.

3) Forgot to sort Utilities over here.

Tip: Whether Electric, Gas, Phone or Water, let all your suppliers know you are leaving and when you are moving out. This also applies to your car and house insurances and council tax.

Mr B edit: It is very possible to move, miss a bill, and get a court judgement for non-payment (happened to Mrs B once and she only found out years later when she applied for a loan)

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Yesterday was the first proper outing of 2008 for our cycling group, and despite the impending danger of snow the six of us set off courageously into the countryside. The wintry weather held off and a good time was had by all.

It constantly amazes me how much there is to discover in the lanes and quiet roads near where we live, and yesterday was no exception. If you live in France (or are just visiting) I strongly recommend that you walk, cycle or drive as often as possible (Mrs B goes off with her walkiing group once a week) and make a point of exploring the remote backroads of the countryside.

Hidden up those small roads that don’t really go anywhere in particular is the real France. Isolated farms, small hamlets with big churches, beautiful views - all the sights that aren’t grand enough to make it into the guidebooks, but are the reason why France is so popular and so beautiful.

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We are always searching for photos of France, and frequently people are kind enough to send some in to us to be used on the francethisway site.

All we ask or hope for is holiday snaps - not especially great photos, just those that show what a particular town or location really looks like to visitors. While the pictures then get used on the site they don’t appear here in the blog, so today as a thanks to some of our most recent contributors I thought I’d show some of the photos here to show what a beautiful and varied country France can be.

(If you do want to improve your travel photos see this article, take better travel photos.)

Sorry if you’ve sent photos in and they are not included here, I’m afraid the blog would take all day to load if I use too many, it doesn’t mean we aren’t grateful!!!

And if you have some France photos to submit to us we would be ever so pleased!!

Beaune in Burgundy (Peter and Jenny Schofield)

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We live near quite a small town, about 3000 residents including those of us who squeeze into the surrounding fields. All the same, our town has most facilities that you want - primary school, 2 supermarkets, DIY store, 2 butchers, bars and restaurants and so on. And four estate agents.

A few years ago when we arrived the town had just one estate agent - how did they manage. Then, every year or two since another has opened - the most recent opened its doors just a few weeks ago. Well choice is good I suppose. But of course opening lots of estate agents doesn’t increase the choice of properties, it just spreads the properties around a bit.

There might, I suppose, be slight differences in the commissions they charge but I would guess these differences are marginal - most of the extortionate cost of buying a property in France ends up in the hands of the government, or as charges levied by the ‘union of estate agents’ or whatever they call themselves, so will be difficult to reduce very much.

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Between the 17th and 18th centuries, four generation of the Cassini family set out to draw detailed maps of France, and given the poor condition of roads and information available they did an exceptional job of it. The ‘final’ versions of these were published in the years following the French revolution, based on pre-Revolution information, and they contain a very impressive level of detail.

I found out about the Cassini France maps because a couple of years ago we bought a copy of the one for our region - on which I’m pleased to say that our property features. This is useful of course because whenever somebody boasts how much older their own house is than ours, I can wave my map around, say ‘Funny the Cassinis didn’t mention it then’, and smile politely.

I was reminded of this map when I heard that the entire French cadastrale system is now available on the internet - the whole of France is divided into loads of small plots of land, which are individually numbered and marked on these plans.

Getting these live on the internet is another amazing feat since I had assumed the number and details simply stayed locked away in a dusty cupboard at the local notaire’s office.

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Our house is on a small hill, overlooking our field below, down to the road about 150 metres away at the bottom of the field. It is a quiet road - a few cars, an occasional tractor, a school bus and so on. Very tranquil.

This morning, in a terrible stroke of bad luck, a car going down the hill met the school bus coming the other way, head on. The bus went into the ditch and the car went under the bus.

The bus driver escaped with reasonably light injuries (although he lost a finger so he perhaps won’t be able to carry on driving) and the one school child on the bus escaped injury although he is in hospital in shock. The driver of the car was killed - a young lady apparently, although we don’t know who.

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Pretty impressive don’t you think. The Dune de Pilat is just south of Arcachon, and is the highest sand dune in Europe. One side pushes up against the great forest of the Landes department, as you see, and the other side is a nice sunny beach on the Atlantic coast.

Nearby you have the attractive and lively town of Arcachon and a little bit further is Bordeaux. Good seafood restaurants abound, and if you are given to drinking you have the Medoc wines just to the north and lots of other vineyards in the region.

The perfect French holiday destination? Perhaps (although in truth there are places with more historical interest and more hills for cycling up and down).

Mrs B tries to go with the girls once a year, but until now, because of looking after the gites, I have never had a holiday at Arcachon. This year we thought (well, Mrs B thought) that a family holiday might be nice. And the one place everyone more or less agrees on is Arcachon. But it does seem a bit, well, close! If I only take one holiday every few years perhaps it should be somewhere a bit harder to get to? Read the rest of this entry »

The events in the financial markets last week were so significant that we even heard about them down here. Wow, they must have made some noise. In fact it was the noise of expats worrying about their savings and pensions that we heard first, followed closely by the sound of the dollar crashing into the Atlantic.

I didn’t shed a tear for the head of Bear Stearns, who thought he was worth $1 billion only to find he now only has about $11 million in shares. I do feel a lot more for some of the employees of the bank. Not all, you understand, I have worked in investment banks and can assure you there are many who don’t deserve sympathy, but there are some.

Employees at Bear Stearns were encouraged to put money into company shares. This is a fine idea, building up company loyalty and so on. As a result hundreds of secretaries, office staff, personnel assistants and so on had substantial savings in the company - they were to be pension funds, school funds etc. These have now all disappeared in a flash of smoke as $100,000 one day became $1000 the next.

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