GERMANY: A SURPRISING REASON TO LIVE IN FRANCE

That might sound counterintuitive, I suppose. Why would proximity to Germany be a reason for deciding to live in the south of France, just about as far from Germany in France as you can get? Recent history aside, it shouldn’t be hard for the seasoned traveler to understand my thinking. 

Imagine surveying the menu of the best restaurant that you can imagine. All sorts of interesting bits for starters. Main dishes from surf to turf and beyond. Excellent local wine. And top it all off with a sweet dessert and a cup of coffee. Now imagine the sparkling, icy Scandinavian fjords, the riotous blooming of the Dutch fields, and the dark woods of Germany. Next come the gingerbread chateaux along the Loire and the lavender landscape of Provence. Finish with a sweet, fortified Occitanie wine, almost port, as a digestif. And there still remains the Iberian Peninsula to the west and gems like Prague to the east to explore. Drive. Take the train. Fly an array of full-service and budget airlines.

Recently, Cathey and I boarded a train in Beziers in the south of France, had lunch in a cafe in Paris, and met friends for dinner in Cologne, Germany. I'm not going to attempt a full-on travelogue. I'll share some pics and tell a story or two. But my point has already been made. In one easy day, at a reasonable cost and in comfortable surroundings, you can change countries, languages, histories and cultures as easily as deciding to do it.

And by the way, on the way home, we stopped off for a couple of nights in Brussels because...we could. 

Cologne Cathedral stained glass windows were dismounted during WWII. Some say that the Allies ordered bombers not to target the cathedral. Others say that the height and weather around the tower swept bombs away. But some bombs did hit and would have blown out the windows if they hadn't been saved.

This reliquary is said to contain the remains of the Biblical Three Magi. It's apparently opened for display once a year and there are reported to be three nearly complete adult skeletons inside. Serious stuff. Below is a different display of craftsmanship whose purpose escapes me at the moment. But it's beautiful, ain't it.

Just a taste of the goodies available at a local tea room. Germany isn't all meat and potatoes.

The Lindt chocolate company operates a chocolate museum and cafe on the Rhine River. You walk out with pockets full of little chocolates in addition to serious knowledge of the industry. And the desserts...

Expansive and carefully tended botanical garden was just beginning to properly bloom in May. The greenhouses and the cafe were closed, but there was plenty to see over 10 acres of curated grounds.

The René Magritte museum in Brussels has a gathered a wealth of works and ephemera.

I like that Magritte, although he associated with folks like Jean Arp, never went so fully abstract that you needed an explanatory label to understand what he was trying to convey on a particular canvas. 

LEAVING THE UNITED STATES: THREE REASONS

We sold our house in Pennsylvania and moved to a small village in the rural south of France a little over ten years ago. We haven't regretted that decision for one moment. It's been five years since we were last in the United States and we don't anticipate returning, even for a visit, any time soon. I've been writing a blog since before we accomplished the move. Poke around in it. www.southfranceamerican.com

Here, I'm going to discuss the primary reasons that we decided to establish residence outside the United States and why we continue to believe that the decision to do so was a correct one. But I'm warning you. American politics was not one of the reasons that we left, although the politics of such topics as health and healthcare did play a role. And yes, Bush the Younger was President at the time of our decision, so one could imagine fleeing his goofy act. But no, we chose as we did for personal reasons that trump elections. (Gives you pause, all of a sudden seeing that word, doesn't it? First and last time.)

TRAVEL IN EUROPE

What did we want to do when we retired? Travel. Where did we want to travel? Europe. Why not live there? Simple as that. Really. Simple as that.

We've been to the Roman baths in Bath, England. We've seen parmigiano reggiano cheese production in Parma, Italy. For our 50th anniversary, we saw Tosca performed at the Opera Bastille in Paris. We've shopped a couple of times a year in Spain, sampled the fascinating assortment of pintxos in San Sebastian, and visited the Guggenheim in Bilbao. We traced Cathey's family back into the 15th Century in an archive in Switzerland, a seven-hour car ride away. Seven hours on a train gets me to a friend's place in Germany.  And did I mention that the clean sand, clean water beaches of the Mediterranean begin less than 25 miles away from where we live? Get the picture? Retired. Traveling in Europe.

Politics? I suppose that you can say so. We admit to being Eurocentric. We've studied Romance languages in school, visited museums displaying European cultural relics and art, listened to European music that's considered classical. At our age, we'd rather dig deeper into what was in our air growing up than try to inhabit a new cultural space. We have plenty to keep us busy right here in our old neighborhood.

WEATHER

Simultaneous with the decision to concentrate our search for a retirement destination in Europe, Cathey set one of her foot-down conditions, a primary condition. "I will never shovel snow again." If it's going to be Europe, that limits the geography. As I write this, Thanksgiving is just a few days away. As I write this, friends in Cologne, Germany are reporting snow. Cologne's latitude runs through Alaska. As I write this, friends in Paris report snow. A little early, but not unexpected. After all, North Dakota shares its latitude with Paris.

Researching for moderate climates, we centered our search on the Mediterranean Coast, not because we are beach people but because the sea moderates both summer and winter weather. There's lots of pretty country in that European strip of land up against the Med, and not all of it is super expensive. We found a nice pocket in the rural southwest of France, in Occitanie. Hot summers, but manageable with judicious use of the heat pump. Temps touch freezing a night or two in winter. The fireplace place makes it cozy. No snow shoveling.

COST OF LIVING

It may seem counter intuitive to some, but a couple with average Social Security Retirement checks can live quite comfortably in our neck of France. Of course, having additional pension income or regular income from an annuity or other investments makes life more comfortable. And having the equity in hand to purchase a suitable place to live is important. As an American, you can't just walk into a French bank and get a mortgage. But if you figure out your housing at a reasonable cost, the rest comes fairly easily.

We eat foods that are in season and locally produced, not a hardship since growing seasons are long around the Med, including in nearby North Africa just a ferry ride away. And the food is grown for flavor. I don't know if we serve the best carrots that you've ever tasted, but we have had visitors who have said so. If you're an omnivore like me, in addition to veggies that taste like veggies, look for a village butcher who locally sources his meats. But beware the beef. Local beef is often grass fed and chewy, nearly game meat. 

Electricity can be expensive, sufficiently so that heat pumps are ubiquitous and it's not uncommon to see private/communal solar panels/farms. Healthcare is among the best in the world and the French single-payer system is affordable and responsive. The French spend about half as much as Americans do per capita for health care, and they live longer. It's nice not feeling as though you are profit point in a health plan's spreadsheet. 

When you add it all up including internet/phones (one-third of what I paid in the USofA before we left ten years ago) and taxes and water/sewer and gas/diesel and wine/spirits and restaurants and such, a pleasant and comfortable existence is easily doable with those two average Social Security checks that I mentioned.

YOUR EXPERIENCE MAY DIFFER

There are plenty of places in the world that provide even more affordable options for retirement living. If I read the current buzz correctly, Central and South America have replaced Mexico as the flavor of the month. And they probably are less expensive. But after research, expense became a secondary consideration for us. We knew that we could find a place that we could afford to buy where we wanted to live. And that's the point. We weren't running away from American politics. We were running towards a pleasant, adventurous retirement. 

If you are going to live in Europe, best learn the language in the country of your choice and learn it well. While it's true that just about everyone in Europe understands some basic English, requiring them to speak your language in their country does not build community. And rural life in general is not for everyone. Not exactly a hotbed for Uber Eats. Rural folks in France are nice folks, don't get me wrong. but they are not American folks. Be prepared. Businesses close on odd days and at odd times for a variety of unexpected and unforeseen reasons. You have to learn the customs. 

Renting for the long term before you buy is good advice, both in terms of France in general and your permanent landing spot in particular. We have a large house in the center of a very old town - small terrace, no garden, no garage, no pool. For each of those amenities, there's an extra few tens of thousands to pay. You have to decide what's important to you and what will be important to you ten years or more from now when the stairs are harder to climb and the garden threatens to get out of hand. All that I can do is repeat, we have not regretted our decision to move to France for one single minute.

ELECTRICITY IN FRANCE: IT'S DIFFERENT

Moving across the Pond from the United States to France is easier than it sounds. And harder.

Language has to be the most difficult adjustment for those not already fluent. (Speaking English slowly and loudly really doesn't work. Trust me.) You need a basic vocabulary and an ability to speak to the present, the past, and the future. It's true that most of the French in the region have some English given that it's taught in the schools and that Brits have settled here in considerable numbers. But I didn't come here to make France more like America. They already have Kentucky Fried and Subway. I came here to learn. That includes the language.

Once you have the language basics in hand, you can conduct the business of day-to-day life surprisingly easily. I do all of my banking online as I do most of my bill paying. Most every retail establishment, including the post office, accepts credit cards. At restaurants, they can even come to your table with a little wireless device that reads your chip. We do keep a little cash on hand for our fresh bread at the bakery every other day and for Fanny, the local farmer who sets up her produce stand in the church square twice a week. We get our cash from the ATM in the next village over. But otherwise, our commerce is all electronic and works as well as it should.

Which brings us, boys and girls, to our lesson for today. Finally. Electricity. It's different.

If you've traveled at all, you know that electrical service is fundamentally different in Europe. Not only are French outlets configured differently than American outlets, but French outlets deliver 230 volts as opposed to the 120 volt American supply. Thus most American appliances will not work in France, will in fact overload dangerously. Exceptions can include such items as the power supplies for laptops and chargers for cell phones and tablets. Always check to make certain. Find the small print on the device or its power supply. American chargers that will accept the more robust European current will have something like Input: AC 100V - 240V printed on them.  With the use of an adaptor, not a voltage converter that actually steps down the voltage but a device that simply configures the plug so that it will fit into the wall socket, you can use that device in France. And keep in mind, if you are going to travel to other European countries, that French sockets are configured differently from those of the rest of Europe. One size does not fit all.

In addition to a supply of adaptors for my laptop and those of our chargers that would accept French current, we brought a high-end voltage converter to France with us. Somewhat smaller than a bread box and heavy as lead, the converter steps the 230 volt supply down to 110 volts, allowing my wife Cathey to plug in various of her American kitchen appliances that she would otherwise have had to replace. The cost of replacing her KitchenAid alone would have been several times the cost of the converter.

So, we're set to go. We have an account with EDF, the major supplier that serves Quarante. I'd prefer a local co-op like we had in Cazouls, but we'll see. I pay EDF an estimated bill monthly, drawn automatically from our bank account and, in another six months or so they'll read the meter again and we'll settle up. We haven't had problems until recently. Lights, washer, dryer, fans in the summer, all OK. So far, so good.

But...

When we turned on our oil-filled electric radiators in mid December, the main breaker tripped and we lost all power. Here's the deal. Every room in the house has its own individually thermostatically controlled radiator with some fancy programming available. You can turn the radiator on or off manually and you can set the temperature up or down manually. Or you can use one of four 'Eco'
presets: heat for a couple of hours in the morning, heat for a few hours in the evening, heat both morning and evening but not in the middle of the day or at night, or heat right through from morning to evening but not at night. Of course, none of that matters if you can't turn on multiple radiators at once without tripping the main. We can't turn on multiple radiators at once without tripping the main.

I checked our EDF contract. In France, you don't simply pay for the electricity that you use. First, you decide how much electricity that you think that you will draw and pay an annual fee for the right to draw that much. Without going into too much detail, I discovered that our contract was for less than would be recommended for a house of our size with electric heat, hot water, and laundry. So when we turned on the radiators in several rooms at once, the main breaker determined that we were drawing more electricity than we were entitled to draw and shut us down.

After determining through trial and error just how much electricity we could afford to pull and therefore how warm we could be without tripping the main, I went to the EDF office in Narbonne and contracted for a higher level of draw. By appointment two days later, an EDF worker came by the house. He inspected our equipment and decided that the outside feed and the main breaker leading into our relatively new interior breaker panel wouldn't handle the extra power. They would need to be replaced. There would be an extra cost. He took pictures with his phone and promised to get back to us. This was on December 17th. I asked if we might have the better service by Christmas. He gave a very French shrug of the shoulders and noted that the holidays were coming up. Who could tell?

Three weeks later, well past the holidays, having heard not a peep from EDF, I called EDF's English language customer service help line. Even though my French is reasonably sufficient for face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations are difficult. I can't see the other person. I can't use my hands. I don't seem to have time enough to think of what I want to say. So I called the English language number. I talked to a nice, thoroughly unhelpful fellow. Unfortunately, technical services is different from customer service. And this particular guy in customer service didn't particularly want to talk to the folks at technical services. And the folks at technical services don't speak English.  So back I went to the Narbonne office.

There, the young lady was most helpful. Once she understood the depth (shallowness) of my language skills, she promised me that she would speak doucement (slowly). She pulled up our file. She called technical services. She waited patiently on hold. She were connected. She explained our problem. She took notes. I picked up a bit of what she was saying. They knew who we were. They had our file. They would call us at home after lunch. They would speak doucement.

We went home and waited for the call that never came. Instead, Miles called. You remember Miles. Franglo Fix It. He had set up our EDF account for us before we arrived and they still had his phone number attached to the account. Apparently, the call from the Narbonne office had stirred up the ant hill. Check your email, Mies said. And I did. And there was the devis (estimate) from the technical guys at EDF. 514.14 Euros. Print, sign and mail back the contract. Pay by credit card online. So I did and I did.

I'm a little concerned that I wasn't provided with a receipt for my online payment. And we haven't been given a date for the work to be done. So stay tuned. I'm going to post this and update later.

Electricity certainly is difference in France.

EDIT: The guys from EDF have come and gone. No nonsense, hardworking guys who came to do a job and did the job. Installed a new branch feed and remote meter reader outside and a new meter, breaker, and other bits inside. Made a mess and were good about cleaning it up. I'll need to build a cabinet to hide the workings but I was planning on doing that anyway and I'm glad that I didn't get to it before this work had to be done. All of the heaters are up and running. So far, so good. We'll see how long it will take to warm the house up to a comfortable temperature and keep it there. The only problem I can foresee is that the meter won't be read for several months. We may be in for a shock. Maybe one more edit in spring?