SELLING OUR HOUSE IN FRANCE: TRUE STORY #1

 Transacting business in France is always an interesting undertaking. 

Don't get me wrong. I am not one of those sourpusses who has moved to France and complains that French people live there. But French people do have ways of doing things that do not often correspond to the way that I am accustomed to doing business. We are selling our home of seven years in order to finance the move to a house more suitable to our age and old bones. (Links and pics below.) We'll have fewer, more gentle stairs to climb. More room to display, store, repair, and otherwise deal with the stuff we've accumulated over those years. We're talking about multiple opportunities for cross-cultural misunderstanding. Take the case of applying to our French bank for a mortgage.

I won't go into numbers. But I walked into the meeting with the young, casually dressed banker hoping to borrow about 40% of the cost of buying the new house. (It's strange calling a house built over 1,000 years ago a 'new' house.) I documented our income through a combination of French and American tax returns. We went over the payoff of our current mortgage (with a different bank) and the net from the sale. I told him how much of our savings I was willing to contribute to the deal. And I asked that the bank finance the rest, that 40%. 

A lot of typing ensued. Understand, we were both wearing masks and Frederick was seated behind one of those clear plastic shields that they fit around office desks these days. (Future archeologists will struggle to determine the function of thousands of oddly shaped examples of wasted hydrocarbon.) I could see that Frederick was seriously crunching numbers to make things work. He finally looked up, said that he couldn't loan me the money, and scooted his chair around to my side of the desk to pinpoint on paper exactly why he could not. Long story short, basing our lending ceiling on our age and the income on our tax returns, primarily showing only Social Security income thanks to the surprisingly reasonable cost of living in France, I was asking to borrow too much.

He was a nice, earnest young man. I listened closely. I waited. Perhaps you can guess what I was waiting for. I waited for five minutes and I would have waited forever. So I asked the question.

"Suppose I put some more money into the deal. Could I borrow 30% instead of 40%?"

More typing. Smiles. Yes, that would do it.

I'm from the USofA. When two people want to do a deal and one can't quite get it done, negotiations begin. Avenues are explored. The French, not so much. They don't seem to want to make the first move. Anyway, that's done. Now I have to sell our house. I'll keep you apprised of the process. Meanwhile, here are some pics. If you know anyone looking for a lockup-and-leave in the rural south of France, send them my way. Have them bring about $150,000. I just might accept a bit less.

https://www.leboncoin.fr/ventes_immobilieres/2042201070.htm

BAR LE 40: RESTAURANT UPDATE

Quarante has a takeout pizza joint, an upscale-wannabe restaurant just outside of town, and the Bar Le 40.

Tito's Pizza is OK. It offers thin-crust French pizza, if you like that sort of thing - or can at least get used to it. Christophe, the owner, also runs the local wine co-op. (Why is Christophe's place called Tito's? I've never asked.) Because it's the grape harvest now, Christophe is busy day and night. Tito's is closed. Pizza will have to wait for a few weeks.

The Terminus, as you might surmise if you have a bit of French, is in the old train station just outside of town. The owners have spent the past few years 'upgrading' the menu to the point that they have priced themselves out of our rotation.

And then there's the Bar Le 40, which most of us just call Bar 40 because who needs the extra syllable?

The management of Bar 40 has changed hands several times since we moved here more than seven years ago. The latest owner, Alex, is the son of a previous owner who has opened a restaurant in a neighboring town. Alex is a young guy, a rugby player, hooked into the local scene and well-liked by all. More importantly, he has upgraded the menu while keeping the price low. Lunch is the only meal that he serves, although he does do bar-appropriate tapas in the evening and takeout burgers on weekends. (Really fine takeout burgers, by the way.) 

Given the uptick in quality, we have taken to checking out the week's menu that Alex posts on Facebook and on a slate in front of the door on Monday mornings. This week, we took special note of the slow-roasted leg of lamb for lunch on Thursday. If you have read my scribbles, you know that I am of the opinion that lamb in France tastes the way that lamb is supposed to taste. If you like lamb, and I like lamb, you will love the lamb in France. I love the lamb in France. We booked for lunch on Thursday.

We began with a choice of starters, fresh melon wrapped with serrano ham or a mixed salad topped with little balls of deep-fried bleu cheese. Both were full plates, well presented, with fresh ingredients and appropriate dressings. The lamb that followed was superb. The French use a word that was fully appropriate in this case - impeccable. The thick slice of meat was roasted to perfection, soft but still firm, smothered in its own reduced juices. Some of us chose the French beans for the side, some had frites - fries. For dessert, a little lemon tart, more like a cookie, with a bit of salty caramel sauce. (One of us chose two scoops of ice cream instead.) The five of us finished a liter of wine between us and three of us had coffee at the finish.

Here's the kicker. The tab came to just over 16€ apiece. About $19. How can you beat that?

RANDOM THOUGHTS NOT FRENCH: SGT PEPPER, TALIBAN, iPHONES, AND MORE #2

SGT. PEPPER

Music is essential. Spotily brings classical music to our house in the morning, jazz in the evening. When I need to, I put on my headphones and let Led Zeppelin get loud. Very essential. 

 But I need more room on the shelves in my office and my CD collection is so old school. So I'm verifying that all of the tunes on all of my CDs have been ripped to my portable hard drive. (I only ripped my favorites on some of them.) As a result, I've been listening to stuff that I have put aside for a while. In that vein, I listened to St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (SPLHCB), all the way through, from start to finish without stopping, for the first time in over 30 years. At least.

I'm going to pick nits. SPLHCB is not my favorite Beatles album. Revolver is. SPLHCB is basically a pop album, and their pop is my least favorite Beatles music. Fully half of the songs on SPLHCB fail to impress. On Revolver, only Yellow Submarine doesn't work for me. And that may be because I don't have kids. On SPLHCB, my favorite may well be Within You Without You. Yes, I'm one of those folks who enjoys Harrison's work at least as much as Lennon/McCartney's. Maybe more.

Oh, and Ringo is the best drummer ever. Only the fact that his drumming is so damn appropriate to the song draws your attention to it.

AFGHANISTAN 

Like a virus, unless they are totally flushed from the system, the Taliban were always going to recur. The question was never whether or not the Taliban would attempt to return to where they left off twenty years ago. The only question was whether or not they would succeed in doing so. And that turned out to be no question at all.

Get in. Punish the Taliban. Kill bin Laden. Get out. That was the mission.

Why have we waited twenty years to leave? Is there any chance that we have learned our lesson? Is there any chance that the USofA will turn itself into a modern, slightly decadent European-modeled social democracy any time soon? Hope springs eternal...

iPHONES

If I ever return to the USofA again, and if I happen to find myself near the cemetery where Steve Jobs is buried, I just may stop by to give the SOB a piece of my mind. 

I used to own a perfectly good tablet with WiFi that cost under $100 that connected me to the internet whenever I needed to. I used to own a flip phone that cost less than $50 that made and received telephone calls with ease. (You remember telephone calls, don't you? You called a friend and you talked to them. Actually talked.)

Noticing my ancient phones, friends made fun of me. It became a running joke. I didn't care. But then, suddenly, tragedy struck. I was gifted an iPhone 7 from a friend who had upgraded. Hearing that, another friend pulled an old 5 out of a desk drawer to give to Cathey. Both phones were kind of funky, chipped and cracked. But displays weren't effected and they worked just fine. And just like that, we became addicted. Like crack cocaine, all that it took was one hit. And now, Cathey and I each carry an iPhone Xr.

If I find Steve Jobs' grave...

STUPID

It's no longer funny. It's hard to remain polite. I don't care if Eric Clapton is tired of dealing with it.

COVID is real. It's killing people, possibly twice more than the official count. The hospitals are full of unvaccinated people dying of COVID. Hospitals are NOT full of people having bad reactions to the vaccine. Refusing to wear a mask in public spaces is not a choice. It's attempted manslaughter.

We got into this mess by abiding stupidity in too many aspects of our lives. The herd has not been sufficiently thinned. I don't know how we make up for this failure to adhere to the laws of natural selection.

LIVING IN FRANCE: THE SEASONS, EXERCISE, AND HANGING PICTURES #2

LANGUEDOC COUNTRYSIDE

I grew up on a dirt road surrounded by woods, cow pastures, and corn fields. I wasn't Opie. I could walk into town, we had access to both New York and Philadelphia network and local TV and radio programming, and both families of my parents had within memory lived for a time in New York City. We weren't hicks. But I could splash in a clean creek, pick gallons of blackberries without working very hard to find them, and drink milk that had very recently been inside of a cow that lived just down the road. Can you imagine going into a dairy barn, running the mixer to incorporate the cream, drawing off a gallon of fresh milk into the jug that you brought, and putting a dollar into the cigar box atop the mixer?

I feel at home in the Languedoc.The cow pastures and corn fields of my youth have been replaced by horse pastures and vineyards. Stone walls and tree lines separate the one from the other outside of Quarante as they used to do outside of Flemington before the housing developments ate up significant acreage. But French community planning is a topic for another day. My point is that I can walk out of my front door, turn right or left, it doesn't matter which, and within a few minutes be in the woods or on a hilltop with a beautiful view of fields and woods close by and mountains in the distance. I feel at home.

SEASONS

I think that there are more consequences of climate change than we realize because so many folks live urban or suburban lives these days and don't notice subtle changes. Seasons speak to the land, and folks in the south of France have long lived off the land in one way or another. For the vignerons, spring gets the vines up and running, summer sees them grow and mature, autumn brings harvest, and winter prepares you for the next cycle. The rest of us here sort of fall into that rhythm.

Its harvest now. While on our walk today, we saw tractors pulling trailers filled with freshly harvested merlot and sauvignon grapes. Older trailers aren't proof against liquid, so the roadways actually get sticky and smell of grape juice. I have a feeling that a more thorough discussion of the seasons and of the grape harvest are in order. Stay tuned!

WALKING FOR EXERCISE

A group of us walk three times a week for exercise, from two to eight people at a time, up to five miles at a clip. When we're done, we stop for a coffee together. Pictured are the markings that act as guides on walking trails. Blue lines and arrows would indicate local trails. There's a stylized symbol for all-terrain bikes. These red and white lines indicate that this trail is a part of the Camino de Santiago that marks St. James' wanderings through this part of Europe. Following these marks in the right direction will lead you right to the famous cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

HANGING PICTURES ON THE WALLS

In France, that activity is not as mundane as it might seem. To affix pictures on the walls of old French houses, like our old French house, can require serious plans of attack. Walls that are covered with plaster might hide the French equivalent of a cinder block, concrete, or a chunk of granite. Adhesive-backed hooks don’t stick well to rough plaster. And drilling into a rock that’s been a part of a wall for 1,000 years requires seriously manly tools. Picture hanging may sound like a simple task, but neither The Southern Woman That I Married nor I look forward to the endeavor. 

MOVING TO FRANCE: OVERVIEW AFTER SEVEN YEARS #1

We arrived in France on 16 April, 2014. I had retired just two weeks before. Our house in Pennsylvania had been put on the market but was as yet unsold. But we made it here and we have been here for just over seven years. I posted about our experiences after three years. It's time for an update.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

We have not regretted the decision to move to France for one second. Not one single second.

BUREAUCRACY

It's been an unforgettable couple of years for French bureaucrats. Brexit and COVID have generated the need to design, distribute, amend, interpret, and enforce all manner of forms and procedures.  

There are tens of thousands of Brits who spend from a few weeks to many months in holiday houses or primary residences throughout much of France, although the major concentrations are on the French side of the Channel and down along the Med. No longer citizens of an EU country, Brits will have to live by different rules. They will be limited to the number of days they can stay in France if they do not choose to become legal residents. There are driving licenses to consider, tax questions to consider, healthcare choices to consider.

And each change of status requires a new form. The French are getting better at new forms, though. COVID has caused electronic submissions to replace many face-to-face encounters. And they usually work reasonably well, against all expectations.

COVID has been a true test for a high-functioning bureaucracy. There were times that you couldn't leave the house without a piece of paper that detail your justification for breaking confinement. And the rollout of the vaccine was painfully slow. But once the French figured it out, the process that we went through through to get our two jabs was easy to navigate and efficiently accomplished. In fact, just about every expat that we discussed it with agreed that the vaccination centers were admirably well run.

We can only hope that, once COVID has been put behind us - to the extent that it can be - the French will go back to their normal, everyday blizzards of paperwork. To make a successful submission to a French bureaucrat, you just need to get good in the language and be polite. It's the best that you can do. Oh, and maintain a folder of every official piece of paper that you own, with a copy, and translated.

FOOD AND WINE

I can't say it too often. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries. (Google that quote if its origin doesn't immediately pop to mind. We are the makers of music and the dreamers of dreams. But I digress.) Veggies in France are not grown for their ability to be shipped across a country. They are grown for their taste. And since we live close to the Mediterranean, Spain and Italy and North Africa are as close to us as D.C. is to Boston, so most everything is in season somewhere nearby all year round. But we try to buy as local as possible because local French strawberries in season are exquisite. Mouth candy. Tomatoes come down to just about a dollar a pound when they start coming in. The asparagus farm down the way will sell you spears pulled from the ground today, sorted into whatever thickness that is your favorite, for a few dollars a pound. Apricots and peaches are sold in sheds at the edge of the orchards for a couple of dollars a pound. You get the picture. Diet changes with the seasons to take advantage of brief periods of peak local ripeness.

You're a meat eater? So as not to put off my vegan friends, I won't go into full, lyric mode when describing the taste of locally sourced lamb and poultry and pork. They taste the way that they are supposed to taste. It’s that simple. If you like lamb, you will REALLY like the lamb in France.

That's not to say that French comestibles are perfect, at least to this American expat. Corn on the cob here is just a step up from what we'd call field corn in the Northeast, nowhere in the neighborhood of Jersey sweet corn that literally melts in the mouth. Beef has a different taste, as it should given the differences in medication and diet. It needs getting used to...or a nice marinade. Peanut butter is expensive, particularly if you insist on it being mindfully produced. But I pick nits. 

Wine? We drink vrac, wine dispensed from a vat into a five-liter container in bulk at less than $2.00 a liter. When we have company, bottles of tasty sipping pink start at $5 or less. You can spend as much or as little as your taste coupled with your budget allows, all directly from vineyards just down the road.

Bottom line? We eat great for less money. I’ll tackle restaurants and other aspects of shopping in subsequent posts.

HEALTHCARE

Cathey and I have each had serious medical conditions requiring hospitalization since moving here. (We’re fine.) Our care could not have been better. In fact, when Cathey’s surgeon asked if she would like to go back to the States for the procedure, she just laughed. 

Healthcare in France is less expensive than in the USofA, about one-half of the cost per person. And healthcare in France has better outcomes, with life expectancy higher than the USofA and infant mortality lower. How can that be? Well, costs are kept low both because it’s a single-payer system and because prices are controlled at all levels, from office visits to your general practitioner to your prescription medications.

And the cost to the consumer is more than reasonable. Your ‘social charge’ is based on your income, certain pensions are excluded from the calculation, the amount of income exempted is reasonable, and the percentage is not dissimilar to FICA. Approximately 70% of costs are covered and, if you want supplemental insurance to cover the rest, costs for that are reasonable too. There are lots of choices for top-up insurance, from hospital only plans to plans that cover everything. We pay about $75.00 apiece per month for a plan in the middle. We pay nothing for drugs, doctor visits, most tests, and most hospitalizations. There's an active, competitive insurance marketplace that might seem odd but that works well in a sophisticated socialized system.

The fact the the USofA can’t institute a similar system is one reason that we won’t be returning any time soon.

NEXT UP

I will be continuing this series for a couple of weeks. Let me know in the comments if there are any particular topics that you would like me to discuss.

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, GUNS, AND D.C. STATEHOOD

Some stuff to get off my chest...

INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL

Check out a guy named Cameron Smith on YouTube. 

Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CprziVZHqBk 

Settle in. It's over an hour long and he's not the most dynamic speaker. But if you want to think seriously about how the human race might colonize planets in solar systems other than our own, this guy has done the initial serious thinking for you.

 

Some of my favorite science fiction stories have been concerned with generation ships, interstellar conveyances that recognize that sub-light travel between solar systems requires planning for, at the very least, hundreds of years of travel. These works of fiction vary widely thematically. Many end badly or, if they end well, are initially presented to the reader as being a failed project that required saving. Regardless, I think that one of the reasons that I enjoy these stories is that, in order to be serious, they have to take the time to create scenarios that explain the effect on culture of living as isolated populations of humans in a hostile environment. 

There are, of course, differences within the genre. In Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clark, we're not talking about humans at all, but rather an apparently uninhabited generation ship from an alien system that enters our solar system, slingshots around our sun, and leaves for interstellar space without seeming to pay too much attention to either our solar system or the humans that were attempting to explore it. Cities in Flight by James Blish avoids the question of evolving cultures almost entirely by simply putting bubbles around Earth cities and having them leave Earth and bop around space as a backdrop for relatively mundane economic and political story lines. Mundane for hard science fiction fans, anyway. Perhaps the first book that I read that attempts to seriously approach the question of culture on a generation ship is Starship by Brian W, Aldiss. Oddly enough, it's not the work on which the Jefferson Starship based their first album, but my love of acid rock is another story entirely.

Back to Cameron Smith. This guy has given serious thought to a project that he admits is a century away from viability. Given the requirements of establishing a human outpost without the prospect of communication with the home world more quickly than at intervals of light years apart, there is much to consider, from genetic diversity to language and governance and viewscapes and so much more. 

 

Did you know that on a space station with low air pressure and high oxygen content, humans lose the ability to whistle?

 

Smith posits that in order to ensure success, a generation ship should carry 40,000 humans plus all of the necessary plants and animals to approximate human cultural norms. Because, he says, that's one of the main reasons to embark on such an adventure, to preserve human culture. As I said, he's not a very dynamic speaker, but I find the subject matter fascinating. See if you do, too.

GUNS

People who don't see the logic of banning high caliber, rapid firing, large magazine rifles are not the type of people to be swayed by logical argument. I therefore try to use their own twisted logic against them. I tell them that their two most sacred mantras in favor of their idea of Second Amendment rights are actually the most persuasive arguments for gun control.

 

They say: Guns don't kill people. People kill people.

I say: Then explain to me as if we're in kindergarten why you want to make it easier for people who want to kill people to get their hands on the means to kill as many people as they could possibly want to kill. I'll wait.

They say: If you criminalize guns, only criminals will have them.

I say: Good, then the alienated teenager won't have one and the deranged fired worker won't have one and the abusive husband won't have one and toddlers won't have one to accidentally kill a playmate with. If criminals are the only ones with guns, we'll all be safer. Real criminals don't shoot up suburban malls for no good reason. There's no money in it.

There's a logical reason that stricter gun control can be demonstrated to be Constitutional, too. If you happen to be debating about the subject with someone who might be susceptible to a flash of reasonableness now and then, try this...

 

They say: My Second Amendment rights are enshrined in the Constitution.

You say: Explain to me, like we were in kindergarten, why the right to keep and bear arms is not a part of the First Amendment. Let me suggest that the Founders didn't find it necessary to define or add modifiers to First Amendment rights. Freedom of Speech. of Press. of Religion. By right. Every other right does need and receive appropriate modification. No billeting troops in private homes EXCEPT in times of war. No searches and seizures WITHOUT a warrant. Trials for major crimes can ONLY take place AFTER an indictment. And that's why that pesky phrase about militias is in the Second. It was meant to be there. It modifies the right. Otherwise, that right would be in the First, unmodified. Do you think that the Founders just threw the phrase about militias in the Second for the fun of it? Show me another place in the Constitution where they did something like that. I'll wait.

The Second guarantees that the federal government will not prevent states from forming militias. That was a non controversial statement not so long ago. I believe that it is, to coin a phrase, Original Intent.

D.C STATEHOOD

Speaking of the Constitution, these days it seems as though the Constitution is like the Bible. The folks who talk about it loudest are folks who haven't read it or don't want you to read it. 

The Constitution did not create Washington, D.C. The Constitution didn't even require that a federal district be created that would be the seat of American government. The Constitution says that Congress MAY create a federal district. MAY isn't SHALL. It was up to Congress. 

 

And Congress did. And once Congress had, the Constitution says that Congress has EXCLUSIVE authority over ALL of the District. Article 1, Section 8 doesn't require D.C. and does not prohibit Congress from using its legislative authority to make that district a state. That’s what Congress does...legislate. And what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away.

 

DOES THE NEW BLOG NOTIFICATION SYSTEM WORK FOR YOU?

 

Greetings,

Google has forced me to change the app that I use to notify subscribers of new posts. It's not as easy as they make it out to be, kind of like putting together IKEA furniture - even if you find a YouTube video, it's still a pain to get right. But I've tried. Now I need to know if it works for you.

The first notification should go out on Monday, 23 August. Obviously, you can't tell me if you DIDN'T get the email. But if you did, let me know if you have any problems with it. Did you understand what it was about? Did it link properly to my blog.

And PLEASE. Let me know if you want to unsubscribe. I don't want to clutter up your Inbox if you would prefer that I leave you alone.

Stay safe. Be well.

Peace Out!

Ira