FRENCH BULLET POINTS THAT DESERVE FULL POSTS

I try to post on my blog once a week. I try to keep my blog mostly about our life in France. Occasionally, I miss a week. Occasionally, I stray off point. I try to keep a list going, bullet points that can be expanded to full posts. 

Here are some to consider...

Order a café in France and you are served what Americans call espresso. It comes in a tiny little cup that is not bottomless. That's OK. You learn to sit with it in front of you for more than an hour, just hanging out and watching the world go by. Perfectly satisfactory way to spend an idle morning.   

Whether you call it global warming, climate change or use some other descriptive, Mother Earth is pissed and letting us know. Defunding studies and scrubbing terminology from websites will not affect outcomes already barreling down the pike. Seek higher ground. Now.

A sandwich in France only needs three ingredients - a fresh-baked baguette split lengthwise, a full schmear of creamy French butter (lightly salted), and a slice or two of jambon blanc - deli ham sliced to order by your local butcher. It's called a jambon beurre. You can add other stuff, but you're just gilding the lily.

A Facebook friend that I have never met personally posted a screed about Israel recently that was so full of horse hockey that I felt the need to respond. Of course, he doubled down. The amount of asserted 'facts' that were simply garbage was astounding. It has become impossible to have a serious conversation about the Middle East given the manner in which the narrative has been controlled by folks with agendas. 

In theory, capitalism gets it right. The marketplace can and should provide workers with a fair share of the of the fruits of their labor. Consumers should be able to trust that their purchases are safe to use and environmentally friendly. Entrepreneurs should be able to bring their ideas to the marketplace without encountering a regulatory system that favors monopoly over competition. In other words, capitalism should be about creating a fair marketplace, not about rewarding the accumulation of capital. How do we get there?

We live in a small square in the center of our village called La Placette - literally The Little Square. Three small streets feed into it. If you stand in the middle of the square, you can easily see three number 2s without turning your head: 2 Rue de la Placette, 2 La Placette, and 2 Rue Saint Antoine. Amazon drivers short circuit from the confusion.

 

PRIMARY RESOURCES FOR MOVING TO FRANCE? HINT: NOT FACEBOOK

I was planning on writing something frivolous this week. Maybe commenting on changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake Obama. Or wondering whether Reblochon, Cantal or Bleu d’Auvergne will taste different because the milk cows will be allowed to eat a higher percentage of imported fodder. (Stick around if that sounds weird. I'll explain at the end of this post.) That was the plan. Then, I read a Facebook post from an American family considering moving to France. A question was asked. What will they need to do in order to satisfy the requirements for a visa? 

Advice solicited. Advice received. Stupid, contradictory advice given as though being read from the Gospel.

As I read those comments, I remembered how our own journey began. In 1999, when we first considered moving outside of the USofA in retirement, Facebook wasn't a thing. Zuck was a teenager, a poor nerdy teenager having trouble hooking up. I had to actually do real research. In the intervening years, Facebook has indeed become a thing. Zuck is no longer a teenager, no longer poor, and I would guess would have no trouble hooking up. Still a nerd, looks like to me. But I digress. Facebook has become a morass of AI-generated garbage, a battleground for keyboard warriors, a font of content seeking to monetize engagement. There are a gazillion sites touting their connection to Americans in France, English speakers in France, English speakers in every department in France and every city in France, driving in France, investing in France, living in France, dying in France. Unfiltered. Wild West. 

Save Facebook for shits and giggles after you get a handle on things from research in the real world.

What did my research uncover? How did I mobilize resources to accomplish the move? I have been reluctant to name names. I have preferred to give generalized advice. But that previously-mentioned post on Facebook changed my mind. Some stuff needs to be said. I'll be relatively brief and to the point. Do your due diligence.

Start with the website of the French embassy in the United States. The English version is not the easiest to navigate, the answers to the question of obtaining a visa are not clearly laid out in bulleted form. But you'll be sent to https://france-visas.gouv.fr where you'll find FAQs, checklists, and the actual online form that you can fill out without submitting to get comfy with the process. Go to the source. Always go to the source.

I will now demonstrate that I may be opinionated, but I am also flexible. I came across Allison Lounes on Facebook. (Imagine that.) I have found her to be on point most of the time, with only the occasional nit to pick around the edges. I would certainly trust her when it comes to decisions around relatively uncomplicated visa questions. Here's her website. https://www.yourfranceformation.com/ffv/. 

For more complicated matters that require multiple areas of expertise beyond visas and some serious hand holding to go with it, friends swear by French Connection HCB. https://frenchconnectionshcb.com/ They sorted problems across multiple countries, schengen and otherwise.

Two publications of interest have served us well. International Living helped us settle on the Languedoc (now Occitanie) as a desirable retirement location. https://internationalliving.com/ While here, we subscribe to The Conexxion. https://www.connexionfrance.com/ English language news and guides that used to be very Brit centric but now recognizes that they have an American audience.

Finally, two real estate sites. With a huge database of properties searchable by price and by region, I still subscribe to notices from French-Property.com just to keep up with the market. https://www.french-property.com/ Poke around the site. Lots of info arranged around adverts because, after all, it's a real estate site. And then there's Freddy Rueda. I've bought and sold two houses from Freddy who specializes in the expat market. His agents all speak English and are all very accommodating. It says something that the agent who sold us the house that we bought in 2004 was still with Freddy and showed a house that we were selling in 2022. https://realestateoccitanie.com/

I hope that this helps. Questions in the comments will be answered as best I can.

Cows. As promised. Certain French cheeses, such as the ones mentioned above, have rules as strict as French wines. (For instance, up to 10% of the juice of the grapes making up wine in Bordeaux can come from outside of Bordeaux and the wine can still be labeled Bordeaux wine.) What the cows eat effects how the cheeses taste. Of course it does. So a high percentage of the feed for cows in the protected cheese areas must come from within those areas. Because of recent droughts, if the dairies would not be allowed to increase the percentage of imported fodder allowed, cheese production would have to be curtailed. So accommodations have been made. We'll see if there are hoots and hollers if the taste changes.

BUYING A CAR IN FRANCE: UPDATED

 As you may have recently learned, I consider cars to be disposable drivetrains. That is, if the body of a car does not show signs of rust or major previous body work, everything else is replaceable. Even the motor. Especially the motor. I routinely have purchased cars with well above 100,000 miles on the clock. If the rest of the vehicle, from the body to the tires and brakes to the transmission to the suspension, if all is in good order and recently serviced, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the motor will blow for some reason beyond my responsibility. While some might call it throwing good money after bad, I have always worked with good, competent mechanics. I have replaced a couple of motors under such circumstances with bench-tested used power plants with perfectly satisfactory results - continued, relatively bug free motoring at a cost substantially under that of starting over. 

Coming to France, I was entering unknown territory.  Twelve years ago, the most reliable cars using the most economical fuel were European made and diesel powered. In France, Renault, Peugeot, and Citroën. At the time, I had never owned a diesel and I had no preference. A friend took me to a road on the southern border of Beziers known for its long stretch of used car dealerships. Shady reputations. Comes with the used car territory. After a couple of stops with no joy, we found a small lot that featured a couple of promising cars, in particular a clean looking Citroën Xantia, a stylish sedan with back seats that folded flat to create decent storage. With the owner watching, I did my dance. Popped the hood. Started it up and let it idle while I walked around and poked and prodded for rust or filler. I put a rag over the exhaust and it almost stalled. No leaks. No little drops of oil under the motor after idling for enough minutes to get hot and to concern the salesman. Time to drive it. Front end felt solid at speed. Didn't pull under hard braking. 5-speed shifter a little loose but not a concern. After 15 years and 130,000 kilometers on the clock, to be expected. So I bought. 2500€ with new timing belt. Inspection good for two years.

My Xantia gave me four good years and was running just fine when the AC gave up. You need AC here. New AC parts were just no longer available for a system that old and used parts wouldn't work. So I went looking again. This time on leboncoin, the French equivalent of craigslist without the personal ads for traveling companions and nude models. Over the years, I had discovered an interesting class of European MPVs that I wanted to try. Smaller than a minivan, taller than a station wagon, modular seating. Both Renault and Citroën had good-looking models. Nothing shaking in the lots that I had visited prior. Two parking lot meetings with private owners were a waste. A Renault Scenic in the side lot of a garage in an industrial park looked hard used. But behind it, shoved into the weeds at the back of the lot, blocked in behind rows of cars on both sides, a bright red Renault Megane station wagon caught my eye. I asked if it could be pulled out. It could. I did my dance. I drove it. I made an offer throwing in the Xantia. And for 3000€, I drove it away, drove it all the way to Spain from right off the lot.

I wasn't quite through with the Xantia yet though. A parking ticket came in the mail two years later. Apparently, the garage hadn't complete the process of taking my name off the registration before they resold. The town cop and a local lawyer shrugged in a very French way, suggested that paying the fine would be less of a hassle than contesting it, and told me how to separate myself from the Xantia online if I had the paperwork. I did. Advice that I took. 

Ruby gave us eight good years. (What else would you name a bright red car? You name all your cars, don't you?) Then, after a pleasant dinner with friends in a town not far from us, a wild boar decided to cross the road in front of us, one assumes to get to the other side. Pow! By the time that I stopped and got out to take a look, the boar was gone. So was about 1,000€ gone from my wallet to the local body shop. And so was my entire front end suspension gone, according to the inspection agent about a year and a half later. (French cars are inspected by businesses dedicated to the task every two years. Independent. Very strict.) I argued that I had been driving down the expressway at 130kph - about 81mph - without a shimmy or a shake, even under hard braking. Solid as a rock. But you can't argue with the inspectors in France. You either do the work prescribed or you are illegal. To pass the re-inspection would have cost more than Ruby was worth. Back to the drawing board. Back to leboncoin. 

 

I considered electric or hybrids, but used vehicles in my price range had the range of a bobsled on dry land. And France was discouraging the manufacture of new diesels for environmental reasons. What to do? The answer came to me late one night. I really did like my old Renault, they still made the same model with the same motor. Screw the environment. I started looking and immediately found several Renault Megane station wagons in our price range, about 4,000€ give or take, clustered in used car dealerships not far from us. I made three appointments, one after the other. At my first stop, I once again did my dance. Very clean in and out. Complete mechanical history. New cambelt. Drove like a dream. I didn't waste time. Canceled the next two appointments and bought on the spot. Seven years newer than Ruby, a bit wider, a bit heavier, a bit more civilized. After several thousand kilometers, about 5% less gas mileage, probably due to the extra weight and seven years of improving the exhaust system. Comfy and utilitarian and a decent sound system too. The French call the color marron, also the term for a chestnut. I suggested the name Marnie. Cathey suggested Coco(a). Guess.

I made certain that all necessary paperwork was complete this time. Ruby's carte gris (title) voided. Application for the new carte gris submitted. There's no separate registration document in France. The title stays in the car and is handed over in a traffic stop with your license.

One last thought. An all-electric Megane is available at about 35,000€. Recharge cost minimal. Even at the ridiculous current price of diesel thanks to the war against Iraq that America won several weeks ago, I can drive Coco for the next eight years, purchase price and gas included, for one-third that price. 

So far, so good. If I have to buy again, I'll post again. Fingers crossed.

FRANCE: THE BEST SINGLE BIT OF ADVICE

 

Lots of folks are throwing content onto the interweb about moving to France. Rightly so. A small but growing segment of American society is considering the benefits of packing up and leaving the USofA, and those benefits can be substantial. From nomad content creators to retirees on fixed incomes, countries on just about every continent provide a more satisfying lifestyle at a more affordable cost than is available to them at home. It's a simple question of the math. From the quality and cost of groceries to housing costs to healthcare costs and outcomes to cultural opportunities, the USofA has been dropping down the list of desirable, affordable options year after year. Yes, it don't come easy...he said, channeling Ringo. (It's a song, for the children in the group. And Ringo is the name of one of The Beatles. And The Beatles were...oh, never mind...) Not easy, but doable. And it's getting done.

About 125,000 Americans are resident in France, not by any means the largest expat community in France, but still one of the largest American expat communities in the world once you get past Mexico, Canada and the UK. We live in a rural community of about 1,600 souls in the south of France without any particular geographical or touristic attraction and a couple of dozen Americans either live in the village permanently or spend considerable vacation time in property that they own here. In cities like Paris and Bordeaux and Marseilles, large and thriving American communities exist, sometimes to the consternation of long-term expats who would prefer that Americans be less insistent on broadcasting their heritage. 

For those of you considering making the move to France, there are books and books and magazine articles and books and books and newsletters and consultants and books and books. By all means, do your due diligence. I spent 15 years studying before we moved and we've lived here for 12 years. I've made many mistakes and continue making mistakes. But I have found the one piece of advice that is the most important. Two words. Get Frenchified.

Get Frenchified? What the hell does that mean?

To be Frenchified is to mimic being native French. You won't succeed, but you should try. I first used the term in connection with my car, a trusty Renault diesel-powered wagon that was 13 years old when I bought it and that ran faithfully for 8 years and 100,000 kilometers thereafter. I would be driving it today if I hadn't had a late-night conversation with a wild boar. I was initially attracted to the Renault's perfect-looking body. In my view, cars are disposable drivetrains. That is, if the body is solid and rust free, pretty much everything else is replaceable. In short order after purchase, driving down one of the narrow village streets designed more for horse carts than motorized vehicles, I swiped the corner of a garden wall taking a turn. I was mortified until I began taking serious notice of the cars parked adjacent to mine. Each, even the newest of them, had a scratch or a ding or a dent. They had been Frenchified. Now my Renault had been properly Frenchified too.

What does being Frenchified mean in a discussion about moving to France? 

Learn the language. You don't have to be fluent, but it's a Romance language. It's just not that hard to learn the basics. Learn your address and phone number in French. We carry little cards with us that have our names and address and phone numbers and email addresses. We give them out to avoid confusion if we must. But rattling off your address and phone number is a necessary part of daily life in France.

Say Good Morning. Please and Thank You would be nice. You don't have to do the cheek-kissing thing. But everybody gets a Bonjour. Your waitress. The shopkeeper. EVERYBODY.

Drive European. A Renault. A VW is acceptable. Even a Dacia will do. (A Romanian maker but owned by Renault.) Ford has a European presence. Don't. Just don't.

Get a French bank account. Get a French phone number. Read a French newspaper. Listen to Radio Classique. If you must, watch France 24 - English-language TV news - instead of CNN or BBC.

Learn the basics of football (soccer) and rugby and pétanque. The Western Europeans aren't sending armies after each other any more, but they do meet regularly in more structured, and usually less fatal competitions. Your favorite bar will extend hours and/or open on days normally closed to accommodate fans during major competitions. And if you are serious about becoming Frenchified, you will definitely have a favorite bar.

You will never be mistaken for native French. Cathey and I, dressed from head to toe in clothing bought in France, without uttering a single word in any language, are consistently greeted with an English Hello as soon as we walk through a shop door. Can't be helped. We've done everything that we can to get Frenchified. We've mostly succeeded. The effort is as important as the result.  

TONGCOCO: RESTAURANT HOT TAKE

 

Pop-up beach restaurants come in all shapes and sizes. Two distinctly different examples of the genre sit within meters of each other on Serignan Plage. We've visited Latino Beach several times. It's as close to a full service restaurant as these pop-ups come, and as well-appointed as a restaurant packed up in a container for most of the year can be. Apparently, I've never written a review. I'll correct that next time that we visit. 

This week, we visited Tongcoco - just Coco as we learned it. Different vibe. Looser. More bar than restaurant. And with the same wonderful view and beach access, for sure. But just a touch more folksy and less formal. And family friendly too.

The menu is limited, mostly tapas and salads and a sandwich or two. But portions are reasonably generous and served hot. I had wings and frites. Tasty and a full meal. The girls had salads. I have to say, the garlic shrimp were kinda bland. The French are not known for hot spices. We asked for help and were given a small cup of sauce piquant that the French use on pizzas along with a bit of hot mustard. Did the trick. 

With cold beers for me and various softer drinks for the girls, we spent a leisurely two hours, shaded with a bit of an onshore breeze, for about 20€ per person. We'll return. 

 

VEGGIE SHOPPING IN FRANCE: ACTUAL REGISTER TICKET

I've discussed the cost of living in France often enough on these pages. In general. And in general, we've been surprised at the affordability of a fulfilling lifestyle here in the south of France. I'm not talking about simply existing, keeping our heads down, eating three squares a day, and keeping the cats fed and healthy. No. I'm talking going out to eat reasonably often to restaurants that are way beyond fast food burgers and fries, going to concerts with ticket prices ranging from a passed hat for free-will donations to national/international artists charging $50 a ticket and more, going to the beach and sipping a cold one while watching the tide roll in. Yes, we watch our bank account and occasionally have to hitch up our belts when the car needs work or the the dentist decides that an implant is the solution. But that word 'fulfilling' comes to mind - a life in retirement beyond mere existence that you imagine you deserve after a lifetime of work.

Part of the affordability question centers on groceries. I've played around the edges before. Let's do a deep dive. Let's talk veggies. Grand Frais is a grocery chain throughout France that specializes in fruits and vegetables from around the world but with an emphasis on local produce. Understand that in Europe, local produce has a slightly different meaning than in the USofA. Back home, you can certainly buy locally grown fruits and veggies in season in many parts of the country, but odds are that for most of the year, California and Florida producers are as likely to represented on your table as the farmer in the dell. In France, with Spain as a neighbor in one direction, Italy in the other, and North Africa a short ferry ride to the south, 'local' is a relative term.

The actual grocery receipt for a shop at Grand Frais is shown below. Lots of stuff beyond veggies - pasta and rice and yogurt and such. We'll get to meat and poultry soon. Grams and euros have been converted to pounds and dollars at the current rate. Keep in mind, these prices are for the best, freshest produce that you can buy.

Carrots: $1.04 per pound

Limes: $2.60 per pound

Celery: $1.30 per pound

Green Beans: $2.07 per pound

Cherry Tomatoes: $1.30 per pound

Batavia Lettuce: $1.30 a head

Fresh Coriander, Parsley et al: $1.13 per bunch 

 

Now for some miscellany. 

 

8 Brioche Burger Buns: $3.41

Red Label Free Range Eggs: $5.25 a dozen

Premium Feta: $0.44 per ounce 

 

THREE 19.90€ ($22.75) LOCAL LUNCH MENUS IN FRANCE

If you haven't figured out by now that one of the neatest perks that life in France provides is the quality of the food, you just haven't been paying attention. I'll do a deep dive into the quality and price of fruit and veggies at the grocery store in a subsequent post. Today, let's do lunch. 

At first glance, one might conclude that lunch choices in France don't differ that much from what's available in the USofA, particularly in such small cities near us as Beziers and Narbonne. Both with populations under 100,000, they host chains painfully familiar to Americans - Burger King, McDonald's and KFC. In Paris recently, I've seen Popeye's and Whataburger franchises.  And France-specific joints also dot the landscape. I've reviewed La Pataterie, a chain with franchises throughout France that serves burgers between patties of hash browns instead of buns. (But the beer is cold.) Pizza is ubiquitous, some with cracker-thin crust, some wood-fired. The best is Sicilian and we have a couple of good ones close by. Believe it or don't, pizza vending machines are a thing. I've had the urge to try one. I have resisted the urge.

 

Bar food can be interesting in the States. In my old stomping ground of Allentown, PA there's a place called Ringer's Roost that has an interesting menu of mostly fried food. And Stahley's has been around for 60 years and knows how to put together a cheese steak. I've enjoyed lunching in both joints and I have nothing against American bar food. But the lunches served in local bars here in France, one within walking distance, two more that I'll discuss a short ride away, differ substantially in quality from similarly situated American establishments. And are probably cheaper as well. Again, it's been awhile. You decide.

 

BAR LE 40

Quarante is the name of the town that we live in. Quarante is also the French word for 40. Thus, the local watering hole has taken the name Bar le 40. (The reason for a town founded by the Romans a bunch of centuries ago being named for a number is a topic for conjecture to this day.) Bar le 40 sits near the center of our little village, a couple of hundred meters from our house, and is open for a morning coffee and croissant plus full lunches and dinners from Tuesday through Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday. Dinners feature relatively simple fare - burgers, dinner salads, steak and fries. But the lunches can be a treat. 

 

The lunch menu features daily specials that are announced at the beginning of the week. Fridays are always seafood. Choose a small salad or an assortment of charcuterie to start. (Charcuterie is French for little pieces of ham and sausages and paté or whatever to pick at, maybe accompanied by a gherkin and butter and slices of baguette.) Then the special of the day. Then the dessert of the day or ice cream. This week's specials, excluding the fish on Friday were:

Tuesday: grilled hanger steak with sauce Bordelaise and mashed potatoes,

Wednesday: grilled chicken skewers marinated in honey/mustard sauce with rice, and

Thursday: pork tenderloin with smoked paprika sauce and new potatoes. 

 

Start plus main plus dessert plus a glass of wine = $22.75 at the current exchange rate. Less than a DoorDash combo meal and not the same old, same old.

 

LA BELLE EPOQUE

In a little collection of small businesses and restaurants in a small town down the road about 20 minutes, La Belle Epoque calls itself a brasserie. I suppose that a bar with decent food can call itself a brasserie if it wants, although to me the appellation implies a bit more upscale establishment. Not the La Belle Epoque is in any way seedy. It's just a bar with decent food. And speaking of the food...

 

La Belle Epoque posts the lunch special of the day on Facebook every morning at about 9am. The special changes daily and includes a start, a main, and a dessert. One of the starts is typically a charcuterie plate like the one mentioned above. One of the mains is typically a steak with sauce - might be pepper or parsley butter or Roquefort. Tiramisu seems to be a favored dessert. If those three standard choices don't interest you, try picking from one of the recent menus:

* Rustic salad with mushrooms followed by sauteed pork with olives and panacotta for dessert,

* Gaszpacho followed by grilled pork tenderloin in garlic cream with lemon tart for dessert,

* Fresh melon with ham followed by breaded turkey in mushroom sauce and panacotta for dessert,

* Salad with goat cheese followed by stewed Basque chicken and yes, panacotta.

 

Again, $22.75. If you are worried that you won't like the day's special, you have to check in early to make your plans for the day. But then, there's always charcuterie and steak if the special doesn't suit. 

LA BONNE FRANQUETTE PIZZERIA

On a main road between Quarante and La Belle Epoque, La Bonne Franquette has recently reopened after a bit of a makeover and upped its game. Of the three I'm talking about today, this is the one that comes closest to being a full-on restaurant. Oddly, although it calls itself a pizzeria, La Bonne Franquette only serves pizza in the evening. France. But the lunch menu is varied, very French. 

 

I'm not going to translate. Check out the slate. This is the sort of thing that you will see when you visit a rural restaurant in France. You should be able to recognize gazpacho and salad. Thon is tuna. Enjoy figuring out the rest.

PART 3: 12 YEARS OF SPORTS IN FRANCE

 I grew up a roundball fan. In the USofA, that meant basketball. Watching Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, and the rest of the Boston Celtics win and win and win made me wanna be them. Well, maybe I didn't want to be Jungle Jim Loscutoff, the guy designated to come off the bench and give a hard foul. But then again, maybe I did want to be Jungle Jim. Anyway, I played full court five-on-five at the Y until I just couldn't keep up any more. But I did keep up with the latest news. Even today, I wonder why LeBron's longevity has elevated him to GOAT status when he's spent his entire career snubbing teams that invested in him and flopping his way to the foul line. (GOAT = Greatest Of All Time) And if you're French, ya gotta love Wemby. (If you don't know who Wemby is, you are neither French nor a roundball fan.) But seeing as how I do live in France now, basketball must take second place to both football (soccer) and rugby. Third place? Whatever.

France has been in the finals of the World Cup of football (soccer) three times during the past five Cups, winning once in 2018, four years after we moved here. Very big deal. We watched the finals at a local bar. After the win, a bonfire on the street melted the tar, leaving a scar in a main thoroughfare that remains to this day. The experience was a heady one, particularly since I already knew a bit about the sport. My first broken bone came as a result of a collision playing soccer (football) during a grade school match about 65 years ago. Even so, before the match in 2018 I decided that it was necessary to brush up on the sport. As a result, eight years ago I wrote the following:

I don't have a television and I don't miss it. But the World Cup has started and my European friends will be paying careful attention, particularly my Brit friends starting at noon tomorrow. So I found a site that streams all of the matches for free and I am trying to pay attention. Here's what I have learned so far.

Things get going on a very nice lawn in front of groups of drunken men in color coordinated clothing. Women can be in the stadium, but only if they don't wear shirts. Meanwhile teams of men who forgot to shave kick a ball back and forth, sometimes even kicking it with their heads. The object of the game seems to be to find creative ways to fall down and, if you are standing, finding creative ways to kick the ball past your own goal tender and into your own net.

It seems that the world champions lost convincingly to the Netherlands, apparently due to superior cannabis. At least I think that's right. I can't understand the announcers. They're speaking British.

Although Quarante seriously celebrated the France's World Cup football (soccer) championship, the truth is that this region of France is not football (soccer) country. We are, rather, a hotbed of rugby. Two of the top three pro rugby clubs with the most national championships all time in France come from our region - Toulouse and Beziers. And as an amateur club, our very own boys won the national championship for their tier a couple of years ago. As a result, I clearly had to brush up on the rules.

Like football (soccer), rugby is played on a manicured lawn about the size and shape of an American football (not soccer) field, except that the netted goals are replaced by goal posts that, you guessed it, are similar to the goal posts used in American football (not soccer). The game begins with the team in black performing scenes from Michael Caine's movie ZULU while the team in white warms up by attempting to swivel their heads back and forth, difficult to do considering that they have no necks. Eventually, a ball looking suspiciously like an American football (not soccer) is put in play. The teams throw and kick the ball back and forth until they get tired, fall in a heap, grunt and groan with their heads next to each others bums, until the ball squirts out from underneath the pile and the running and kicking begins again. When the referee gets tired, he allows one of the teams to score by trying to kick the ball through the goal posts. The other way to score is by belly-flopping, ball in hand, into the opponent's end zone. Points are awarded for style and degree of difficulty. The winning team is the team ending the game with the most intact ears.

Somehow, I don't think that my friends in Quarante, my French friends in Quarante, will appreciate the humor.

CHANGES AFTER TWELVE YEARS IN FRANCE: PART 1

It's been twelve years since we sold out in the USofA and made our permanent move to France. In the modern world, that's the equivalent of three jobs, two marriages, or the time it will take to get the taste of Trump out of our mouths. In our case, having retired and remained married for 54 years, it's enough time to have settled into our new home, tried some things out, and decided what works and what doesn't. If nothing changes, there's no growth. Here's our list. Yours may differ.

I DRIVE SLOWER

As the t-shirt proclaims, only bikers know why dogs stick their heads out of car windows. And I logged tens of thousands of kilometers on my last two-wheeler in the three years before we moved to France. I tend to drive cars the way I rode motorcycles, as reasonably fast as road conditions allow. Never an accident, on either two or four wheels, except for a blown rear tire at speed just before moving to France that put me on the ground, broke a toe, and ruined a pair of jeans. So after hundreds of thousands of miles on American roads, wide lanes with ample verges, I enjoyed testing my new (used) French car during my first couple of years navigating our local narrow two-lane blacktops. I have slowed down for two reasons. First, packs of cyclists, the tractors of vignerons working the vines, ambling tourists navigating their wide-bodied campers in unfamiliar territory, all make passing on the curvy, narrow and hilly back roads that I routinely travel a dodgy proposition. Not worth the frustration and tension. But more importantly, I have taken to heart something that I said in passing to Cathey early on. "If I ever fail to see the beauty that surrounds us while driving through it, stick a fork in me. I'm cooked." I've slowed down.

 

I EAT LESS CHEESE

Le Centre National Interprofessionnel de l'Economie Laitière cites over 1,200 varieties of French cheeses and there could be several hundred more if of you count every minor regional variety. Tasting as many as possible was an early goal. A cheese plate arrived for every lunch on the terrace and at the end of every dinner party. Isn't morbier interesting with its thin black line denoting the difference between evening and morning milkings? Have you ever smelled a cheese as nasty as livarot? Can you taste the barnyard in Tomme de Savoie? So much fun. So much calcium. And so, after 20 years, a second attack of kidney stones. And so, another story to tell at parties, a story about a nurse with long, black rubber gloves who looked like Rosa Klebb as I sat watching her approach with my feet in the stirrups thinking "I'm not in Kansas any more." 

 

WE BUY ONLINE MORE

We moved from the third largest metro area in Pennsylvania to a rural French village of 1,800 souls without a gas station or an ATM. Even with grocers and a small hardware store in the next town over, and even with the small cities of Narbonne and Beziers within about 25km, you can't always get what you want. (But if we try, sometimes, we find we get what we need. But only sometimes.) And then there's Amazon. Big vans navigate our narrow village streets daily. How else are we expected to find hypoallergenic kitty treats? Or inexpensive knockoff water filters for our Samsung fridge? Or a replacement cable for a portable hard drive at least twenty years old? So, we download the app and we find what we need and what we need appears in our mailbox in a day or two. Yes, when we can, we buy local. Always. In small villages with diminishing populations because the kids are drawn to the jobs and the life of the cities, patronizing local merchants becomes a survival mechanism. But I still can't believe that that obscure cable showed up in 24 hours and saved the 5,000 tunes I'd archived on my old drive.

 

WE KEEP FINDING NEW WINE

Back in the States, I drank lots of flavored waters and diet sodas. (I know. Mea culpa.) Now I'm in France. Wine is the daily beverage of choice, although it's recently been reported that young folks are turning to beer. Sacrilege. When we arrived, friends recommended two or three local wineries and they were perfectly suitable for our needs. Tasty and inexpensive. Rosé for the equivalent of 5USD or so a bottle. What's not to like? But the truth is, in our Department of Hérault, an area about the size of Delaware, there are as many as 600 wineries, from boutiques producing only a few thousand bottles to large cooperatives that measure liters by the millions. And Hérault is only one of five departments in our wine-producing region. First by word of mouth, then thanks to new friends who established a wine exporting business based in our village, our cellar expanded to include bottles from wineries far and near, Finally, we discovered vrac, bulk wine that the co-ops sell for under 2USD per liter and dispense through contraptions like gas pumps. The result? Not a single diet soda in 12 years.

 

Check out PART 2 coming soon to a theater near you. 

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.