502 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Categories: Basque Country, French Customs & Lifestyle

Discussed in this Episode

Paris
Brittany
Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse
Biarritz
Basque Country
Bordeaux
Bayonne
Saint-Sébastien
Saint-Jean-de-Luz
Guéthary
Bidart
Lourdes
Pau

Intro

[00:00:15] Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 502, Cinq Cent Deux. Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:30] Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Ignacio Martinez about how he became French and what drew him to France.

Today is July 14th, our Fête Nationale or Bastille Day, and I couldn’t think of a better episode for today because you’ll see Ignacio is just great. My own husband is about to become French, And by the way, when you become French, you generally don’t have to stop being whatever nationality you were born with, which is kind of cool. Perhaps some of you would also like to embark on such an adventure. Stay tuned.

Podcast supporters

[00:01:04] Annie Sargent: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the southwest of France in my electric car. You can browse all of that at my boutique: JoinUsInFrance.com/boutique.

And Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready and ad free. If that sounds good to you, be like them, follow the link in the show notes.

The Magazine segment

[00:01:36] Annie Sargent: For the magazine part of the podcast, after the interview today, I’ll share my thoughts on the French election, because frankly, that’s all anybody’s talking about, but I’ll also give you a very important update about how to access the banks of the Seine River starting on July 18th.

It is 12 days until the start of the Paris Olympics after the release of this episode. It’s really happening, folks!

Conversation with Ignacio

[00:02:09] Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Ignacio Martinez, and welcome to Join Us in France.

[00:02:14] Ignacio Martinez: Bonjour. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[00:02:16] Annie Sargent: Lovely to have you. So I’m going to call you Nacho because you told me that’s what everybody calls you.

[00:02:21] Ignacio Martinez: Yes.

[00:02:21] Annie Sargent: It’s lovely to meet you, Nacho. We are going to discuss your move to France. You are from Argentina originally, right?

[00:02:30] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah. From Buenos Aires, Argentina. Yeah.

Moving from Argentina to France

[00:02:31] Annie Sargent: And when did you move to France?

[00:02:33] Ignacio Martinez: The first time I tried it out in late 2015, kind of a month before the Bataclan attacks.

I was in France during those attacks. That was during my very first time I came here to try it out, to Paris, because I already had been in Paris a number of times. But that was the first time that I said, okay, I’m in Argentina, I have a remote job, I left my band, I just split up with my girlfriend at the time, so I had no strain, nothing was keeping me in the country.

So the first thing I said, where can I go now? Okay, let’s go to Paris for a couple of months and see what happens. I knew people, I had friends. I had been on tour a couple of months before and I really loved it. So I kind of reconnected with Paris after a long time. So I said, let’s go and see, see what happens.

And then when I came here to Paris, the first time I started going out with my then very early girlfriend, now my wife, we knew each other from, we were flatmates in Buenos Aires, like a couple of years before that. So I knew her too, and then we started dating, and then I said, you know, screw this, I’m going to go home, sell all my stuff, and just come here and see what happens.

Because now I had a reason, for really, to come to France. So, that, I spent the holidays in Argentina and in late January 2016, I came for real and ever since I’ve been here. So, that’s like eight years now, yeah.

Speaking French, English and Spanidh

[00:04:00] Annie Sargent: Wow. Do you speak French?

[00:04:02] Ignacio Martinez: I do, yes. And now I’m… I’m French, actually. I got my nationality last year. I used to speak a lot better when I was in Paris until 2020, I got my… my certificate for the passport, which was a C1 grade, which was pretty nice.

[00:04:19] Annie Sargent: Very good.

[00:04:21] Ignacio Martinez: And I think back then spoke a lot better than I do now because back then I was working for a French company, I was speaking French every day, and now I’m working remotely and with my wife we speak like this weird mix of Spanish and French, and some English in the middle. So, yeah, I speak French, but it’s not the best.

Yeah.

[00:04:44] Annie Sargent: Well, if you got to C1 you’ve got to be pretty good.

[00:04:48] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah. I do. I am bilingual in a way that sometimes I don’t remember in which language I replied to my wife, something she said, for example, I became French in my mind, but I used to speak a lot more fluently, like, you know, like vocabulary and stuff, but I understand it a lot better now.

Now I really understand French, but it took me a couple of years.

[00:05:09] Annie Sargent: Right. Right. So yeah, it takes a long time. And you are young. You’re in your, what, late thirties? You’re 44 now. Okay. And you were 36 when you moved.

[00:05:21] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, exactly.

[00:05:22] Annie Sargent: So that was fairly young. Yeah. You can’t expect the same stuff if you move in your sixties than if you move in your thirties, right?

[00:05:30] Ignacio Martinez: No, exactly. Yes. And back then, everything I knew, I knew because I was trying to pick it up, whatever I could, French. The first time that I came on tour with a band, it was 2013. We did one month in all of Brittany, and I didn’t speak any French, but I had to speak to the people working, the technicians on stage, to tell them what I needed in order to make the sound check and then to play.

And so I said, they spoke a little English to say, okay, how do you say this in French? Table. Okay, so I registered it, I saved it in my mind. How do you say, like, multiprise? The multi-outlet thing.

[00:06:07] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:06:07] Ignacio Martinez: Multiprise, okay. And every time, as long as the tour went, date after date, concert after concert, at the end of the tour, I knew how to say multiprise, table, cymbales, everything that had to do with my work, but I didn’t know how to say bonjour or much that, you know. So I was very good in naming very specific technical stuff, but I couldn’t go to a boulangerie and buy some bread, you know, that basically.

[00:06:33] Annie Sargent: You’re a percussionist?

[00:06:36] Ignacio Martinez: I am a drummer.

[00:06:37] Annie Sargent: You’re a drummer. Yeah.

I used to be a drummer. Now I’m just a guy that plays drums every now and then. Yeah. Right, because your profession, you’re a programmer, right?

[00:06:45] Ignacio Martinez: I’m a computer programmer, yeah.

[00:06:47] Annie Sargent: Yeah, all right. Very good. Do you have drums at your house? Do you still practice?

[00:06:53] Ignacio Martinez: I do actually. We live in a house now and there’s like an attic, there’s a couple of spaces that I turned an attic we had into this, like a studio space, if you will. I got myself a little drum kit, electronic drum kit. So I don’t make noise. So I have my computer and my gear and everything I’ve been getting over the years, everything in that room. So that’s my playroom where I go, you know, whenever I’m just over stressed with work or just to have a couple hours off, just go and play drums and whatever.

[00:07:23] Annie Sargent: Have you joined any bands in France just for fun? Not for pro, but…

[00:07:28] Ignacio Martinez: For fun? Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I was in Paris, I did have a couple of projects where I recorded some music or maybe I did a little tour, or just a couple of concerts, but not really. I really burnt out with music back in Argentina, because I used to play every weekend and then also work nine to five during the week.

I used to have a band over there. They became really famous. And I left, when I left the band, but they still play, and I actually still play with them when they come to Europe. We’re going to do a tour in this fall, in September-October, in Spain, and other countries too. So I have this gig once a year, that they come and I do play percussion with them, but other than that, I try to stay away from professional music as much as possible.

[00:08:15] Annie Sargent: Okay. All right. It’s a tough gig, professional musicians, it’s not easy.

[00:08:21] Ignacio Martinez: You got to love it!

[00:08:22] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:23] Ignacio Martinez: You got to put the hours. Yeah.

[00:08:25] Annie Sargent: So let’s see. You first went to Paris, and now you live in Les Landes, so around Biarritz. So tell us more about that.

[00:08:34] Ignacio Martinez: The town that I live in it’s called Saint-Vincent-de-Tyrosse, which is about 30 minutes North of Biarritz. Yeah. It’s not the Basque country, but it’s right there in the limit, the south of the department of the Landes, which is basically, to put it in this perspective for everybody that don’t know, the biggest city in our region is Bordeaux.

Bordeaux is a little, like an hour north of where I live, and then the Basque country is right south of where I live. So we’re about 15 kilometers from the coastline, which is great because it’s near but not that near, so, you know, we have to make this little trip to the coast. But it’s a great town.

We have a train station that connects with Bordeaux. And also Biarritz and Bayonne and all the nice cities that go around the coastline. So it’s a great place.

The motivation behind the move

[00:09:22] Annie Sargent: Yeah, that sounds good. So what motivated that move? Was it for work? Was it for family reasons?

[00:09:28] Ignacio Martinez: To start with, the house belongs to my wife’s grandparents. It was their, like we say in French, maison secondaire, I don’t know in English. It’s a vacation home, I don’t know.

[00:09:39] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:39] Ignacio Martinez: Second home. She used to come here for summertime since she was born, she was here all the time.

And when I, we started dating together, this was the place where I spent my vacations. You know, we came here for summer vacations. And at some point we were kind of tired of Paris, a couple of months before the pandemic. So summer 2019, we spent the whole summer here, and it was great, and we went back to Paris, it was just depressing Paris, after being here, all two of us alone. And we said, screw this, let’s get out of Ile de France, all together, I don’t know where.

[00:10:11] Annie Sargent: Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but this is a French attitude. So Americans have this thing about Paris, like, oh my God, Paris, it’s so nice! Most French people would talk exactly like Nacho. We’re like, oh, let’s get out of here!

[00:10:25] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, at some point Paris became too frenzy, too expensive, too noisy, too… I don’t know, people were just so eager to get somewhere, and you don’t know where everybody’s going, but everybody has to go somewhere, and the metro, and the thing, and the… I don’t know, it just becomes something unbearable at some point. And I just had, I’ve just gone through some health problems that after I went out of that, I said, I need to just keep it, you know, calm, I need to slow down my lifestyle because this is not going great, I’m too stressful with work.

Plans postponed because of the pandemic

[00:11:00] Ignacio Martinez: I need to reconsider my options, my priorities. So everything got together. At some point we said, let’s go to The Landes. We have the house. The family said, if you want to go, you go. I mean, there’s not much work over there, but whatever. Try it out. So we did and we got everything together and March 2020, that was the date where we were supposed to go and Mr. Macron and everybody else in the world said: ‘stay home’. We’re not going anywhere.

So basically we just stayed home with the car and the boxes, everything, everything ready to move. So at some point I said to my wife, okay, baby, let’s get the casserole out, we’re staying. So we got a couple of forks and knives and glasses, and we stayed home for two months. And after, eventually we did come here in the middle of the pandemic, we were able to move off region because at that time, at that point, you couldn’t get out of your region.

[00:11:53] Annie Sargent: Yes.

[00:11:54] Ignacio Martinez: You could do movings, but within your department. So as soon as we could move regions with everything, the papers and paperwork and stuff we did. But we didn’t even say goodbye to anybody. We just took the car and just left.

[00:12:08] Annie Sargent: Lots of people did that. Lots of people left Paris during the pandemic, as a matter of fact, because if you’re in a small apartment in Paris and you can’t get… you can’t go anywhere, it’s like, drives you mad.

[00:12:19] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, no, it was crazy, but it was great because in the end, I mean the pandemic for us, we knew we were leaving eventually. We took it as it was, you know, okay, we’re here now, but we know we’re going to, we’re going to leave soon. For everybody else, it was a lot harder. And back home for my family and friends, it was even harder because the winter was coming for them, but for us, summer was coming.

Summer eventually, everything just got looser, but in Argentina, it just was months on end of lockdown. You know, it was a strange time, but we, you know, we did it.

[00:12:51] Annie Sargent: Yeah. And you have two children, right?

[00:12:54] Ignacio Martinez: We have no children.

[00:12:54] Annie Sargent: Oh, you have no children. I thought you had two children. Okay.

[00:12:57] Ignacio Martinez: We have a dog and a cat. That’s… for now. Yeah.

Finding Work in France Pre and Post Pandemic

[00:13:02] Annie Sargent: That’s fantastic. Okay. All right. So tell us a little bit about the work situation. So obviously, you’ve worked in lots of different fields, but what is it like finding a job in France and especially in your computer kind of area? Tell us more about that.

[00:13:19] Ignacio Martinez: Sure. So I work as a computer programmer, which nowadays it’s very convenient because there’s lots of work going around. Sometimes with better salaries or worse, but eventually you will find a job if you know how to do it. So when I was in France, I started working with my actual boss now, who is, we went back to working together remotely now.

But he had an agency in Paris that they needed someone. And he’s a friend of another friend that I knew. But at the point, at the time, I didn’t speak any French. We had an interview, like, we had a beer together, because he knew my friend, so it was kind of informal, and he starts speaking French, and I said: Dude! And he’s Brazilian, so he can speak Portuguese, I speak Portuguese, and he speaks Spanish, and English, but he went with French on purpose to make me suffer.

No, but eventually he gave me a job, he gave me the gig, which was amazing. But the first six months were very hard because I didn’t understand anything they said. And I was working. If this is not a bar, you need to understand what your boss asked you to do because it’s a job. I owe him big time because he gave me a shot.

[00:14:24] Annie Sargent: You were starting out.

[00:14:25] Ignacio Martinez: I was starting out. Obviously, he liked me because we still work together today, you know. He gave me a job and I stayed with them for two years because I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t gave me that job at that moment, because after that, that company closed down and I had to look for another job. And I found another job, my first CDI in France.

I founded in a very big company, which is called La AFNOR, La Association Française de Normalisation. Which is a huge group in France, not just in Paris. Those are the guys that write the norms that said that the A4 sheets are A4, because they are every norm, ISO and everybody else.

It’s known as ISO in the US.

Exactly, so I got to learn all that, which was amazing, and I got to work with those guys and working with the website for a whole year.

So, that was amazing. So that was between 2016 and 2019, but then we left. Then it began my whole thing, because I had a couple of interviews here. I had a promise d’embauche, a hiring promise, I don’t know what you call it.

[00:15:33] Annie Sargent: Yep, yep.

[00:15:34] Ignacio Martinez: A company here said, we’ll hire you. But then eventually said, Mr. Martinez we’re going to wait a little bit, because considering the situation, yeah, when I moved here, they said, there’s no job for you because of the pandemic, everything is over. So I came here, zero jobs. So, at that time, just we said before, in France, remote jobs were very unpopular.

Nobody was hiring remote. So I started working for the US. I found a job for a company in the US and I worked with them for, I don’t know, about a year. And then I saw in the job market that people were in France were starting to ask for remote positions. So I said, I might go back because I want to work for a French company.

I was doing okay with that. I don’t want to be like a outsourced consulting for another country. I want to work here. So basically, I found the job then, then I’ve been working remote ever since, you know.

[00:16:30] Annie Sargent: Right, right. What did you find helps most to find a job in France? I mean, as far as I know, it’s connections, you go through your connections and then you branch out from there and you hope to get lucky.

[00:16:45] Ignacio Martinez: First is connections, yeah. Also, if you’re going to deal with recruiters, it’s having a one page CV. Not two, not three. One page, everything there, clear. Nobody likes reading long CVs. You know, in Argentina it’s the opposite and in the US I think it’s the opposite also. But here in France, nobody likes long CVs.

So that’s the one thing that if you’re going to deal with recruiters, that’s the one thing you should know. So I didn’t know this, so I sent this huge thing because I’ve been working like, I I don’t, I’m not in a job more than two years. And I’ve been doing this for like 22 years now. So my CV is like huge.

[00:17:24] Annie Sargent: Long, yeah.

[00:17:25] Ignacio Martinez: I had to like compress it to one page. I really had to put stuff out of the way because, okay, 2006, nobody cares about this.

[00:17:33] Annie Sargent: Out. Right.

[00:17:34] Ignacio Martinez: So I would just, I started working at 2012, maybe. No, I just put out everything before that. So basically that’s the one thing. And also connections and also knowing how to work with the internet.

These sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, and in my line of work, there’s plenty of sites that you should, you can go and look for companies that are looking for different positions.

But yeah, you have to know what’s going on online. That’s the one thing.

Paperwork and criteria for finding a job

[00:18:00] Annie Sargent: Right. And you are a French citizen, so paperwork is not an issue for you. Although that’s the next thing we’re going to talk about is how did you get the paperwork, but as a French citizen, it’s easier, obviously, than if you didn’t have the right to work here.

[00:18:14] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah. Also, speaking French is good because you can be just some guy that speaks English, and stuff. But French companies want to have people that speak French. It’s very important for the culture to have someone who speaks French. Even though more and more companies start integrating English inside their everyday life and stuff, at least for my profession. Still, French companies like to speak French and that’s the end of it.

[00:18:40] Annie Sargent: And they you to be mobile. They also like know that you can go to a meeting if you need to, that you have a driver’s license, that you can get on a train.

[00:18:49] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, especially here where I live, because if you work for a company here, they ask you, you have to have a driver’s license. That’s compulsory, I would say, because you’re going to go to Biarritz, or Bayonne, or Bordeaux, maybe to meet someone and whatever. So that was part of the conditions that I saw here when I was doing interviews.

Becoming French Citizen

[00:19:09] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very important. All right. So how did you become French? How did that whole process work for you?

[00:19:16] Ignacio Martinez: It started after my fourth year being married in France. So that was 2020, the great year.

[00:19:23] Annie Sargent: Mm hmm.

[00:19:24] Ignacio Martinez: The great year where everything got turned down, got postponed, you know. My resident card was about to expire. So I just went on and just started my new residence card. At the same time, I did the language because they ask you for the language test.

[00:19:41] Annie Sargent: B2 right?

[00:19:41] Ignacio Martinez: The B2, yeah, the minimum is B2. So I did that and I just got the paperwork, whatever I needed for that for Paris. So I did that and then… Boom! Pandemic. You know the drill. And I thought, okay, if we’re going to move in March, it was in January. My train of thought, in January, I can have my everything ready to move and my paperwork will be done.

I’m going to be French before I move down, because if I move here, I have to start over here. I was in Paris back then. Of course, everything got delayed. I came down here. I had to start everything over. And my residence card that I had started in January was taking too long. So I actually spent the whole 2020 with little papers called “récépissé” that stated that I actually, I was a legal resident of France, but I couldn’t do anything. I wanted to go to Argentina to see my family that I hadn’t seen for two years. That paper was only one month valid. So I had to renew it every month. And anyway, so I got to a point that I said, okay, I’m going to start this.

I was still depending on Paris back then. Then I said, okay, let’s relaunch this. Let’s reshoot, reboot this whole thing here, I went to the Prefecture here and I said: Okay, listen, I come from Paris and I do explain the whole situation. Of course, Mr. Martinez, yes. Give me everything, no worries. I don’t know, a month later I had my residence card and I was able to start the passport, because without residence card, you cannot start your passport.

So I was waiting for that, and then I started the whole thing.

So basically I got my dossier ready and I went to Bordeaux. When you do it, you have to actually defend your dosier. Someone asks you a couple of questions about first: Why do you want to become French? Who’s the president? Who’s the Prime Minister? How long is the office for being a congressman? It asks you this, all this question, what happened in May say 68? I don’t know. Yeah. But the most important thing that I said to the person when they would say, why do you want to become French?

I said, I want to vote. That’s the thing that keeps me separated from another French person until now. I can work, I pay my taxes, everything, but I can’t vote and I can’t be elected. So I want to vote. And in Argentina, voting is obligatory, compulsory.

Is it?

Yes, it is. I’m used to voting, you know.

I’m used to exercising my civic right. I want to vote. And I want to vote in my municipality because I think that’s the most important thing if you want to become, be part of democracy. You have to vote locally. Start with your neighbor, with whatever going on around you, and then, you know, if you’re interested, you move up.

So I said, okay, good. She was very happy with my response, you know, with that.

[00:22:19] Annie Sargent: Yes,

[00:22:20] Ignacio Martinez: Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay.

[00:22:21] Annie Sargent: That’s a good reason. That’s what I tell my husband. We need you to vote. We need you because he’s doing the process. We’ve been married 30 years or more and he hasn’t ever done it. And I’m like, he finally did the paperwork and he’s now waiting for a response because now they’ve changed the process.

You don’t actually show up. You send everything electronically. They look at your stuff, if they have any questions, they will contact you, which they did not. Then it might take six months, a year before you hear anything to have your appointment with the Prefecture.

So we’ll see.

[00:22:52] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah. Yeah. Everything takes about six months and a year every time you do something and then wait for the other thing to happen and then blah, blah, blah. So yeah, it took me about a year and a half from the moment I sent my dossier on the mail to the moment that they gave me my passport. So it takes patience, but it happens.

If you have everything they ask for, eventually you’ll get your papers.

[00:23:15] Annie Sargent: Yes. And you do need to be very organized and have all your ducks in a row, have all your paperwork. You need to be able to prove everything that you assert.

[00:23:23] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, well, actually, when I was back in Paris, when my wife had to come with me every time I had to renew my residence card, because it was a residence card for marriage. Titre de jour de mariage. You have different types. Mine was marriage, so my wife had to come with me, and she hates it, she hates bureaucracy to a point that every time she came, she would do the, la gueule, she would make bad faces.

And I said, just hide it, this is not good for me. You cannot be this. So she was, she would hate it. We always make fun of that because she, I would come and she’s the one that’s supposed to be, you know, accustomed to this. And she’s the one that totally hates. Yeah.

[00:24:03] Annie Sargent: It’s the same with us. I’m disorganized. I don’t keep anything. My husband does all of that stuff and I hate bureaucracy as well.

[00:24:11] Ignacio Martinez: She hates it too. We’re pretty organized, but when it comes to going to the office and stuff, she has less patience than I do. I’m more patient because, you know, in the end, it’s me, it’s my paper. I need to be the patient one, but you know, but it’s a funny situation. We make a lot of jokes about.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

What do you like / don’t like about France?

[00:24:30] Annie Sargent: All right, let’s talk about what you like about France and what perhaps you don’t like as much. What has been good and what has not been so good?

[00:24:38] Ignacio Martinez: Well, that’s… it’s been changing over the years, because at first, I really liked the music. France entered by the music. The first thing that I learned from French music was Boris Vian. Boris Vian, yes, I love him. And I learned his songs by heart, like just repeating them, like a parrot, you know?

And I, I just, I fell in love with him so much, I don’t know why, because there was a show in Argentina that played his songs and they said, ah, that’s not cha cha cha, cha cha cha… so I really loved the guy. So, then I knew more music and then I just started repeating stuff and I said, this language is amazing.

So I tried to learn some French. I came here in 2008 vacations and I learned, I met French people. And I said, can you teach me this, and that? I fell in love with the whole thing, but it began with the music. And with time, I knew more music, and I eventually got to meet the musicians that I knew you know, one band that I met, that I knew when I was starting out, when I was 24 was Trio. Have you heard of them?

[00:25:44] Annie Sargent: No.

[00:25:45] Ignacio Martinez: Okay, it’s a four piece band, it used to be a four piece band, they’re not working now, but eventually, we had a lot of cassettes of Trio in Argentina way back when, like 20 years ago, and we listened to those, and then eventually when I came here in France, I met them. We became, you know, acquaintance. I went on stage with them one time, I don’t know, it’s really weird stories that, you know, a full circle of stuff that happened, but the music was the first.

And then actually it was Paris. When I first came to Paris, the first time I just fell in love, you know, head over heels for it. It was great.

[00:26:18] Annie Sargent: Beautiful place.

[00:26:19] Ignacio Martinez: I just couldn’t, I had never seen something like that, and I was just, I didn’t speak any of the language, I just was like: ‘ uh huh uh, like walking around like, uh and I loved it, and I said, someday I’m going to live here. And you know when you just fantasize about the stuff, someday I’m going to come here, I’m going to spend some time, and I don’t know when, I don’t know how, but blah, blah, blah.

Eventually it happened, but way, way, way after that, you know, like many years after that it happened, but I just, it was Paris, and it was the music, and it was my wife also, she’s French and I fell head over heels for her too, which is not related to her being French, but you know, by coincidence, she’s French too.

[00:27:00] Annie Sargent: Yeah.

Boris Vian

[00:27:02] Annie Sargent: It’s funny that you bring up Boris Vian because there’s only two songs I know of him. Le Déserteur, Monsieur le Président, Je vous fais une lettre, Que vous lirez peut-être etc. So that’s one. Almost, all French people my age will know that one, and La Complainte du Progrès, which is an awesome song!

[00:27:23] Ignacio Martinez: I love La Complainte du Progrès, I used to know it by heart just repeating … on parlez d’amour, nanana I love it. That was the first one.

[00:27:34] Annie Sargent: Maintenant, que voulez-vous? Tout change, tout change! No, it’s a great song! Yes.

My daughter and I love to sing that song in the car, but she knows all the words. I… I know a few.

[00:27:58] Ignacio Martinez: You know that Boris Vian used to work in L’AFNOR.

[00:28:02] Annie Sargent: Did he?

[00:28:03] Ignacio Martinez: He was an engineer. I don’t know how this guy did all these things and was dead by 39, you know? He was an engineer by trade in like ’44, ’43 during the war, and he used to work in L’AFNOR writing the norms. And he did it, one norm that he did like a joke, about a norm about how to insult people. Made in the correct format of the time, of a norm that you have to make, you know, with all the little things, the header and the description, I’m going to, I’m going to send it to you. I have it as a pdf.

[00:28:35] Annie Sargent: That’s funny I love it. Love it.

[00:28:37] Ignacio Martinez: They still have his desk, like, in a museum kind of space in the AFNOR, like, way upstairs.

They took me up there once. That was a weird coincidence, you know.

[00:28:50] Annie Sargent: That’s great. So these are the things you like about France. You like Paris, you love your wife, and music.

And are there some things you don’t like so much about France that you think, ah, they should improve this or that?

[00:29:01] Ignacio Martinez: I used to think that they didn’t like when you speak to them in English, because this is like a legend of some sorts that sometimes it does happen, not so much, it’s not the case, but it used to be the case in 2008, when I first came, I didn’t speak French, so I had to say Bonjour and blah blah blah blah, and I did speak English.

But I didn’t find so much, you know, resistance as I thought. But this does happen to people that I know, and it’s still a problem, but you know, whatever, it’s France, you don’t like it, fuck you, you know. Now that I am French, I can see the other side of it too, you know.

[00:29:41] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. You should speak French if you’re in France.

[00:29:44] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, just say Bonjour, which is this thing that, I told you before, say bonjour and all doors will open.

Don’t say bonjour and get the f out of here, you know. So, this is the one thing that people should know whenever some family or friends go to France and say anything you can. Okay, first of all, just say Bonjour and it will be alright. So just, even for the French, when you go to somewhere that Excuse moi, bonjour, so they say, bonjour, hey, hey, even between French people, this is the norm, so, you know, don’t forget that. But, you know, actually, sometimes it’s maybe in Paris, when you do some tourist stuff, like you go to a store or something, and sometimes people can be a little rude, sometimes. But, you know, I used to think that was something bad. Now I kind of see it. I’m a little in the middle. I just, I cannot be totally impartial or totally partial to this, you know, I’m lost between French and tourists now. I’m in the gray space. So, in the gray area. So it’s very nuanced, my opinion.

But I would say it’s something that used to be something, and now, with the years, I kind of see it. I kind of see how it happens from the other way, so people could be a lot less rude in Paris, maybe?

But again, I don’t know, you know, we all have our days.

[00:31:06] Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and they deal with a lot of people all day long and it gets annoying after a while. Yeah. But one thing that people should, that I want to point out because I was reminded of this this morning is the proper greeting is Bonjour. It is not Salut.

[00:31:22] Ignacio Martinez: No.

[00:31:22] Annie Sargent: So in school, I don’t know what it is, but there are French teachers in America that teach their students that it’s okay to say Salut.

It is not. If you do not know the person, I don’t care how old they are, do not say Salut. It’s Bonjour. Okay?

[00:31:39] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, yes, actually I learned Salut really long down, down the road, you know, like when I also, when I was speaking French, and also now I say, Hello!

[00:31:51] Annie Sargent: Yes.

[00:31:52] Ignacio Martinez: This Anglicism of saying Hello, which but you have to say, you cannot say Hello, no, you…

[00:31:58] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:31:59] Ignacio Martinez: You have to act it out, you have to be like ‘ Oh, coucou’, you cannot say ‘coucou’, like Bonjour, no, no, you have to say ‘coucou’!

[00:32:07] Annie Sargent: That’s right.

[00:32:07] Ignacio Martinez: Singy songy somehow.

Local visits, Les Landes

[00:32:11] Annie Sargent: Tell me about the area where you live. Where do you like to take your friends and family when they visit? I assume they visited.

[00:32:18] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, actually this Thursday, my father is coming down, so I’m going to pick him up in San Sebastián and we’re going to stay here for the whole weekend. So the plan is, it’s a good example, so to tell you what we’re going to do.

What we do is we go to San Sebastián because it’s one hour drive from here, south, you know, we’re one hour north of the border. So, San Sebastián is really good. And then, also, from San Sebastián to here, we go by Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, which are great places to go. Some of them are on the coastline, and Biarritz is very beautiful, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz also.

Guéthary is also a very small town in the coastline, which is beautiful, and the train station is right in front of the ocean, you know.

[00:33:02] Annie Sargent: I don’t think I’ve been there.

[00:33:03] Ignacio Martinez: It’s beautiful. It’s very small. It’s right next to Biarritz and Bidart. There are so many little towns and stuff. Also Bordeaux. Bordeaux is one hour drive north.

My mom came last year and we went to Bordeaux. We drove during the day. And also, my mom, she was very interested in going to Lourdes. So we went to Lourdes and we saw the stone and stuff. I don’t care about any of this stuff. So I just was going around, but she wanted to go, she really likes it.

And then there’s a lot of people that the thing was going to Lourdes. I saw what a circus that thing, that places, because people from all over. Every store has the same little statues of the thing and they sell you the little bottles, and the water, and the thing and it’s just people all over this.

[00:33:46] Annie Sargent: It’s like, I don’t know. It’s really weird. I’m not a Christian, I’m not religious, so for me, it’s just funny. Yeah. Yeah. You look at it from the outside going, Oh, what is this?

[00:33:54] Ignacio Martinez: I don’t know any of this, but I really, it really struck me of how people just go from anywhere in France, or Spain, or the world, from hospitals and stuff, and nuns that go with people who are maybe who have developmental problems and they just drag them out from anywhere go there.

And the faith and everything, it was just, I don’t know, it was amazing, you know. Even for people who don’t believe in any of that, it’s something.

And then we want, we’re going to Paul, I think. Yeah, Paul. Anywhere in the Basque Country that is worth visiting is great because we have the car, so with the car you can go crazy, but with the train, you know, not so much.

Still, it’s very, very connected. The trains are great.

[00:34:33] Annie Sargent: Yeah, but you cannot go everywhere with the train. But you like the trains, right?

[00:34:38] Ignacio Martinez: I love it. And we have the station here that allows us to go from here to Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz and so forth and so on, which I love. I don’t like being on the car that much and I love the trains.

Advice for people wanting to move to France

[00:34:51] Annie Sargent: So if you had to give some advice, imagine that somebody is listening to you and they’re like, Oh, I would love to do this. What advice would you give people who would like to move to France? If they are from Argentina or whatever, what would you advise them to think about?

[00:35:07] Ignacio Martinez: Okay. First, know some French. I think that’s maybe the first thing you should know, I didn’t know any French and I wish I had known some French when I moved here. Because my wife speaks very good Spanish, and we speak Spanish between the both of us in the house.

She’s never been helpful, you know, in that way, because obviously I speak Spanish to her. So she replies in Spanish. Now we’re beginning to introduce the French part. But you need to know some French. That would be great. Be ready to work on any line of work, you know, most people that come here they work in bars, and restaurants, and stuff. If you don’t have any experience with that, no problem with that, but be ready to just forget everything you thought you could do, because sometimes people come here, I am a lawyer, and ra ra ra, and the stuff. No, it’s just be ready to do anything for, you know, the first few months, or the first year, maybe. And then, you start looking, seeing how it works.

You need to come here and see how it is. And it also depends where you’re coming. Paris is one thing. Toulouse is another. Lyon is another. Lille is completely different also. Every town has its things. The people are different too, you know, so Toulouse, you are from Toulouse, is very laid back, Latino kind of vibe.

People are very relaxed, it is one thing, and you go to Paris, maybe, and it’s completely different. You need to know where you’re going to, also, what type of, how’s the city, how’s the vibe, know some local people, Argentinians, in my case, I knew other Argentinians who lived in Paris.

Renting in France

[00:36:37] Ignacio Martinez: We have a group in Facebook that we make like, meetings and stuff, they are very good for giving you advice also, you know. Hey, I’m coming in two weeks, like you post a message, what should I know? Everybody know like a flat, or a room I can rent? That kind of stuff, in big cities, can be like really difficult, so try to make as much work beforehand as possible.

[00:37:00] Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, it’s for sure that finding a place to stay is not as easy as we’d like, and finding a job is not as easy as we’d like, and so if you’re willing to be flexible and you’re younger, yeah, you can do this, it’s just matter of don’t look for any certainties. Like nobody’s going to promise you a great house, and a great job, and a great everything, you just need to come and figure it out as you go, I think.

[00:37:26] Ignacio Martinez: Well, it took us one year to find a flat for us, my wife and I. We went one year from place to place. Like, okay, a friend is going on vacation, we have the flat for one month, and then we go back to my in laws, and then we go back to whatever. So we were like, yeah, with our bags from, you know, bouncing around Paris until, yeah, for like 10 months until we found a flat. Because a friend of mine who was French-Argentinian was moving to Brussels and he said, come check my flat before somebody else takes it.

So that’s the only way we found a flat. If it wasn’t for him, had it been for him, I don’t know, maybe we’ll still be in Paris looking for a flat. I don’t know. Who knows?

CDI

[00:38:05] Annie Sargent: And early in the conversation, you mentioned the CDI, which is I didn’t stop you, but it is a Contrat de Durée Indéterminée, which means that you have a job with no end date, which means you’re hired for the foreseeable future.

[00:38:20] Ignacio Martinez: Exactly.

[00:38:21] Annie Sargent: And banks and renters, they look for that, because it doesn’t matter how many millions you have in the bank, should you have millions in the bank, that’s good for you, but they don’t care about that.

They want to see that you have regular income.

[00:38:34] Ignacio Martinez: In the US, that would be a credit score, but here in France, credit score, it’s not the same.

[00:38:39] Annie Sargent: They don’t care about that at all. They want see that you have a CDI and they will ask you for all sorts of paperwork just so you can rent. That’s just how it is, you know, it’s different from the US. So that’s one of the difficulties that people find.

Opening the First Bank Account in France

[00:38:52] Annie Sargent: Getting a bank account. Did you have any problems opening your first bank account?

[00:38:57] Ignacio Martinez: I did, because when you want to have a bank account, they ask you for the social security, but then social security asks for a bank account, so it’s like an endless loop of nobody giving you anything. So I found one bank that they said, sure, come here, we’ll receive you. And they’re still my bank. I stayed with them because they were the only ones who actually replied.

So thanks to them, I was able to have a social security and everything. As I said, I am married, I have three residence cards,I had two CDIs, two contracts, and I’m a how do you say it?

Self merchant? Entrepreneur? How do you say in English?

Self employed.

I’m self employed too, you know, now I’m self employed. And every one of those things took me like a couple of months, I think, of paperwork to get it done, to begin having this thing.

Also, every year I have to file tax file returns and all of that, you learn it year by year, you know. Now I’m more savvy, if you will, about a few things, but the first year was like, oh, I don’t know, the taxes, and the thing. So yeah, it can be overwhelming, but you get the gist of it.

[00:40:04] Annie Sargent: You can do it. You can do it. All right. Well, we’ve been talking a long time, so we need to end our conversation, but it’s been delightful talking to you. You have so much energy. It’s wonderful. I love it.

[00:40:16] Ignacio Martinez: Well, thank you, thank you.

[00:40:18] Annie Sargent: And I love that, because sometimes I feel people ask me, you know, how easy is it to move to France?

And I, I have to tell them, you know, well, it’s not that easy, but really if you are determined and if you keep at it, clearly you can do it. You’re a perfect example of that.

[00:40:34] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, never be afraid to raise your hand and say, I need help. Somebody know a person that has this, and you should rely on your community also, because we all have a community. If you come from, I don’t know, somewhere in Latin America and Africa or whatever, you always have people that can have your back somehow. Go learn that you’re not alone.

Find your community, you know, and then get in touch. And that’s it, basically. And everything will turn out somehow. But you know, not be afraid to raise your hand and say, Hello guys, I need this, I need that, or do you know a guy, or whatever, yeah.

[00:41:08] Annie Sargent: Wonderful. Thank you, Nacho. You’re awesome. And I hope to meet you in person someday. That would be wonderful. I’d love to have you play some music for me.

[00:41:17] Ignacio Martinez: Yeah, you know where I live, so yeah, so I’m going to send you some music. We did open for Paul McCartney in 2016 with my band from Argentina. I was in Argentina by chance, I was there visiting with my wife, so I got to play with them. And I have a picture with Paul, so I’m going to send you the picture.

[00:41:34] Annie Sargent: Oh, I would love that. I love Paul McCartney.

[00:41:37] Ignacio Martinez: That happend also by chance, yeah.

[00:41:40] Annie Sargent: That’s amazing. Merci beaucoup, Nacho. Au revoir.

[00:41:44] Ignacio Martinez: Bye bye. Au revoir.

Thank you Patrons

[00:41:53] Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patreon supporters get new episodes as soon as they are ready, and ad free. If that sounds good to you, just do the same as they did, follow the link in the show notes. and patrons get several exclusive other rewards for doing so. You can see them at patreon.com/JoinUs.

And a shout out this week to new patrons: Barbara Schmidt, Peggy Lane, Becky and Rob Eggman, Sharon Talbot. Theresa and Denise D. Thank you Sylvia Vogel and William Paul for upgrading your support to the Groupie du Podcast tier.

And to all my current patrons it is wonderful to have you on board in the community of travel enthusiasts and Francophiles who keep this podcast going.

And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysArt.

And thank you for your one time donation, as well as your continued Patreon membership, Carol Mellinger.

This week, I set up a time for my Zoom with patrons, and I’ll share my casual convo with Elyse as well, so I’m always in touch with my patrons.

Congratulations on 500 episodes!

[00:43:13] Annie Sargent: About my 500th episode, one of my patrons, Liz Rivera Goldstein, left a lovely message that I would like to share with your permission. ‘Congratulations on 500 episodes! You confirmed my dream of moving to France when I listened during COVID lockdown. You really helped me to make my dream come true when I moved to France in 2022.

Now that I live in Paris, you make life so much more interesting’. Dreams do come true folks, especially for those who don’t give up. And thank you very much, Liz!

And also some very sweet audio feedback from someone very special to me. I have been a very lucky person because I was born in Toulouse into a loving family, not a rich family, but a hardworking, loving bunch of people.

And then I was very lucky to marry into another loving, wonderful family all the way around the world in America. And for that, I am forever grateful.

Martha Sargent’s Congratulations Message

[00:44:12] Martha Sargent: Cher Annie, Félicitations, I wanted to send hearty congratulations to you on reaching 500 episodes of your podcast. What an amazing accomplishment! I know you didn’t imagine reaching this milestone when you started it over 10 years ago. I’ve listened to nearly every episode and thoroughly enjoy each one, usually as I walk for exercise.

Even though my chances to visit France are very limited, and I will never see most of the places you talk about, I enjoy learning about the cities and villages, their history and architecture, and about famous figures in French history. Your friendly, casual approach is almost like being there with you and Elyse, and other guests.

I loved doing the boot camp last year, and look forward to more years of delightful Francophilia with you.

Congratulations and love from your mother in law, Martha Sargent!

Annie’s Tours

[00:45:11] Annie Sargent: Somebody left this review of my tour this week. This is about Montmartre, just a beautiful area, especially at the beginning and middle. Yeah, he doesn’t like the touristy track. Most people don’t really when I think about it. Directions were very clear and gave honest views of what was worth it to see.

Ile de la Cité tour

[00:45:33] Annie Sargent: Another person says: ‘This tour was such a delight. Annie’s directions were very precise. I barely needed to look at the map. Early evening is the perfect time for this tour. The tour reflects the current state of Notre Dame construction, looking forward to trying more of Annie’s tours.’

So this one was about the Ile de la Cité tour.

Montmartre Tour

[00:45:51] Annie Sargent: And also about the MontMartre tour: ‘Lots of interesting information, especially the unique stories about the man in the wall in Saint Denis. The app was especially easy to use and quickly corrected us when we were off the path.’ That’s great.

Eiffel Tower Tour

[00:46:07] Annie Sargent: Somebody about my Eiffel Tower tour called Paris’s Iron Lady. A walking tour from the Trocadéro Gardens to the Eiffel Tower. This person wrote: ‘Great tour. We did it on a summer evening and finished there at sunset.’

Wow. Thank you very much for those reviews and podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website: joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And just click on the VoiceMap tour area. This week, I did several itinerary consults, as I do most weeks, they were both of the VIP and the Bonjour kind.

And I talked to someone who is a teacher from Texas. Hello to you!

She says she can’t afford to come to France as often as she’d like to, you know, I hear you! The more she listens to the podcast, the more she adds places to her list such that she knows she cannot do it all.

And she was hoping for some clarity with our conversation. I’m sure lots of you feel the same way that you can’t possibly visit all the places that we discussed that sound wonderful. But it’s really about what will make you happy. Do you want to hear the ocean? Do you want to hike to some castle in ruin and then enjoy the view? Do you want to see world class museums? Stunning avenues? Are you into remarkable chateaus and gardens? Visiting beautiful churches? Is there some place you’ve always wanted to go? Let those things guide your choices. But even more important is what is a great vacation day for you? Write it down please. Write it down.

Mine might go something like this. Take a long walk but not too steep and not too many stairs because I’ll kill my knees and then I’ll hurt and wake up in pain. That is not my idea of a good time. Visit either a church, an abbey, or a castle or a museum. Visit a building. Something of the sort.

Museums are also great. I love to have a nice meal that I could not easily cook at home. If I’m by the water I like to go on a boat ride, I love spending an hour looking at every details in a church, trying to figure out what the statues and the paintings are. I take lots of photos, I stop for photos all the time. I like to look at museum stores, I love to go places that I never saw before that surprised me, and some vacation days I get to do all of these things, and some vacation days, I can only do a few, and that’s fine.

And maybe your list is totally different. Perhaps you’d like to go bungee jumping or ziplining. Perhaps you’d like to a cycle, yeah, like you’re in the Tour de France. Perhaps you love horseback rides, or you like to go to concerts and festivals. Those are all things you can do in France with a little planning. But it all starts with you putting your finger on what makes you happy.

And I’m surprised how many people I talk to cannot tell me that when I ask them. So give it a think, you know, it will help you decide which of these many places we talk about would be of interest to you.

French Elections 2024

[00:49:22] Annie Sargent: All right. Let’s talk about French elections for a minute.

This week I discussed French elections with my patrons, and that exchange was positive and informative. I also brought it up on the Facebook group. And of course, on the Facebook group, it quickly devolved into name calling and personal attacks. The Join Us in France Facebook group is not a place to discuss American politics.

The moderators and I are very clear about that, but when appropriate, sometimes I decide to discuss French politics. It’s part of French life, and that’s what everybody is talking about in France right now. If you don’t want to hear it, you know what to do.

Nobody is keeping you hostage. Thank you. Thank you, moderators, for the work that you do, I could not do it without your help.

So what happened last Sunday? Participation was high with just under 67 percent of eligible voters going to the polls. In that same election in 2022, only 46 percent of voters went to the polls.

So we went from 46 to 67. That’s a big increase in participation numbers. Fantastic. Opinion polls were giving a huge lead to the Rassemblement National, which is the Le Pen’s party, or the extreme right. Let’s call them RN for short. The estimations were that they would win a majority of seats in parliament, maybe even a super majority.

That did not happen. They didn’t even get close to a simple majority. That is a massive relief for me and most people. There are 577 seats in the French Parliament and the RN got 125 of them. They arrived third in this election. But in the last parliament, they only had 89 seats, so they added 36 seats, which is terrible. The party that got the most seats this year is the Nouveau Front Populaire, which is a coalition of the left, including the radical left, with 178 seats.

They were the biggest winners. This was surprising because these people normally can’t agree on anything, and they have been steadily losing ground over the last 10-15 years. It’s not anywhere near majority, but this time they did great.

Ensemble, which is Macron’s party, came in second with 150 seats. So, I should point out that Ensemble had 245 seats in 2022, so by calling this snap election, they lost 95 seats, making them the biggest losers.

The left coalition came in first, Macron’s party came second, and Le Pen came in third. But nobody has a majority or is even close. Most European countries are used to making the most of a situation like that, but in France, we are not.

The French Constitution, we call it the Fifth Republic, is organized around a strong president who’s supposed to get a strong majority in Parliament. Macron did that in 2017, even though he was surging out of nowhere, seemingly.

I mean, he had been a minister under François Hollande, a socialist government, but he was not very well known at all to the general public. And yet, he got himself elected president, and a month later, he had a strong majority in parliament. Full sweep for Macron in 2017. By the time the next regular elections came in, in 2022, he was re-elected, but a month later, failed to get a majority in Parliament. That meant that he had to use unpopular methods to get his reforms through, such as changing the retirement age. He did it, but he forced it through using the 49.3, which is the article of the Constitution that allows this tactic, but it’s widely seen as too aggressive.

So, add on an extra layer of unpopularity for Macron. Following the 2024 European elections, where again the folks running under Macron’s party did poorly, and the folks running under Le Pen’s party did great, the president decided to call a snap election. Why? Don’t ask me. He didn’t have to do that, it makes no sense. And it did not work out so great for him, as he lost even more of his seats, not only in the European Parliament, but in the French Parliament as well.

That’s what I call scoring twice against your own team in the same game. In the same year. It’s a Miracle Macron’s Party came in second in this election. And it happened because while the majority of French people don’t want Macron anymore, they want Le Pen even less. And as a result, the folks who came in first are an unlikely coalition of left-wing parties with lots of inflexible doctrinaires who really don’t like each other at all.

There’s another really important thing here. French politics are like the 31 flavors of Baskin Robbins. Well, almost. We have 22 official groups in the French parliament. Seven of those are officially registered, but have not gotten a single person elected in 2024. But these groups persist because for each vote they get at the voting booth, they receive a stipend, it’s a few cents per vote, but it adds up, because in France, public funds are used to pay for elections, so we have a lot of tiny political associations that survive on public money, good or bad, that’s how it is. We do love our associations in France, don’t we?

So, we have 14 groups that have at least one person elected. And all of these representatives need to decide where they’re going to be sorted. I wish we had a sorting hat to make sense of the 22 flavors of French politics, but we don’t.

They’re all having meetings and cooking up alliances to make proper groups. We’re all waiting to see what comes out of this process and we should know within a week, or two.

Now, I thought that the prime minister was necessarily someone from the group with the most parliamentarians, but it turns out that’s not quite right, because it’s a tradition, not a rule.

That’s how it’s always been done my whole life, but it’s not in the constitution. What is in the constitution is that the president chooses the prime minister who then holds a big meeting in parliament and presents his or her project. The parliament then either says we have confidence in this person, or we do not.

That should happen by July 18th. Well, actually, the new parliament needs to meet on July 18th, so we’ll see. Do they have a prime minister or not yet? We’ll have to see. But they’ll get to vote yes, or no on the prime minister, and when we have both, parliament in place and the prime minister and his cabinet or her cabinet, then they can start to work, but the parliament can reject whoever the president puts forward.

And that’s a big deal because you start over again.

All we are hearing is a lot of grandstanding, but French politicians will have to learn to compromise instead of all trying to sound like they know the one and only way. Because this election showed that French people know how to compromise. Many left wing voters had to cast a ballot for a centrist because it was either that or Le Pen.

Same with centrists who had to vote for left wing politicians just to stop Le Pen. So let’s all have a moment of clarity and decide that we can work together. It’ll take a few days, but I hope we can get there.

Olympics 2024

[00:57:31] Annie Sargent: This whole election thing had us forgetting about the Olympics, but the current team is staying on long enough to get the Olympics off the ground. And that’s one thing nobody is complaining about. Because that’s a lot of work. One thing that’s very important is that starting on July 18th, and at least until July 26th, you’ll need a passe jeu. So it’s a Game Pass, just to walk along the river, ok?

French people are not going to be surprised by this because we had something similar during the pandemic, but I think some visitors are going to be scrambling to get their pass at the last second. If you’re going to be in Paris before or during the Olympics, no need to wait, you can apply right now and you’ll get your QR code within a few hours.

To read the details and apply, go to joinusinfrance.com/gamepass, and I’m just linking you to the official website, which has a long, complicated name that you wouldn’t remember. So, joinusinfrance.com/gamepass.

How this works is that everyone that enters the area around the Seine River, and it’s, you know, sometimes it’s quite a few blocks away from the Seine, they’ll have to produce this QR code that security will scan before they let you in. They’ll also probably search your person, and I highly recommend that you show up with as little stuff as possible. No big backpack or purse, as always. A small crossbody purse with a zipper is all you need. They’re not going to save all the details of all the people who are in the area forever.

They just want to make sure that the people they let in have taken the time to register and produce a valid form of ID. And if they can just scan a QR code, they don’t need to ask each person for ID. It’s fast and efficient, so do it if you’re going to be in Paris for the next few days, get the Game Pass as soon as possible.

Again, joinusinfrance.com/gamepass we’ll get you started in the right direction.

Many thanks to podcast editors Anne and Cristian Cotovan who produce the transcripts.

Next week on the podcast

[00:59:45] Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about driving in France versus driving in America with Matthew Gamache, a returning guest on the podcast.

It was a great conversation about what it’s really like to drive in France and since he’s done it a lot, I thought his perspective was going to be helpful.

And remember, patrons get an ad free version of this episode, click on the link in the show notes of this episode to be like them.

Thank you so much for listening. And I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together. Au revoir.

Copyright

[01:00:20] Annie Sargent: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and Copyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 502: Becoming French: Cultural Integration into France