Table of Contents for this Episode
Category: Moving to France
Discussed in this Episode
- French healthcare system (CPAM)
- OFII (Office Français de l'Immigration et de l'Intégration)
- Banque de France
- AXA
- AARO (Association of Americans Resident Overseas)
- France Formation
- Normandy
- Loire Valley
- Château du Clos Lucé
- Amboise
- Château Royal d'Amboise
- La France Miniature
- Giverny
- Mont Saint Michel
- Auvers-sur-Oise
- Château Miniature Park in the Loire Valley
- Impressionist Museum in Giverny
- Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions
- Van Gogh Museum in Auvers-sur-Oise
[00:00:16] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 520, cinq cent vingt.
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, I bring you a trip report with Allisson Lounes, an expert on moving to France, and the author of France Formation.
In this episode, Allisson shares her incredible journey of relocating to Paris, top travel tips for exploring lesser known French gems and invaluable advice for anyone dreaming of living in France. Her company specializes in helping folks who want to move to France.
I’ll put links to her resources in the show notes, which you can find at joinusinfrance.com/520.
Moving to France
[00:01:08] Annie: We recorded this episode on October 1st, 2024, before the US election took place. And anytime there are elections, the folks who are not happy about the result like to think about starting a new life somewhere else.
If this is the first episode of Join Us in France you’ve ever listened to because you’re anxious about American politics, I recommend you listen to this one, of course, but also go to joinusinfrance.com and type ‘Moving to France’ in the search box. You’ll find more than 20 episodes around this topic, buying property in France, moving to France with children, moving to France on a long stay visitor visa for retired folks, growing old in France, renovating a house in France, starting a new life in France in different areas of the country, having a baby in France, et cetera.
Thousands of folks born in English speaking countries move to France every year, so this can definitely be done. But it can get complicated, depend on your exact situation, and that’s why you might want to avail yourself of the services of professionals, like Allisson. They do this every day. They can really help you.
The Magazine part of the Podcast
[00:02:21] Annie: After my chat with Allisson, for the magazine part of the podcast, I’ll explain that there is one type of person who is ill suited for a move to France.
And also, my husband had his interview to become a French citizen this week, and I’ll talk about that. I’ll also mention the reopening of Notre Dame de Paris.
Thank you Patrons
[00:02:42] Annie: 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.
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.
Toulouse – The Best Place to Visit in 2025
[00:03:13] Annie: And guess what? Toulouse was selected as the best place to visit in 2025 by Lonely Planet.
Am I surprised? No, not one bit. It’s a great city and it’s not overrun by tourists yet. We like having visitors in Toulouse, we have lots of things for you to enjoy, lots of food, lots of wine, lots of beautiful attractions and things to do. I am very proud of the fact that of all of the places in the world to choose from, they picked Toulouse, the place of my birth and the place where I live today.
Bootcamp 2025
[00:03:50] Annie: And also, where the bootcamp takes place. So reservations for Bootcamp 2025 are underway. We have some spots left, you can join me and Elyse in France in real life for Bootcamp 2025. This is a 10 day immersive tour starting on the morning of May 10th 2025 of course, and ending late on May 18th in Toulouse.
You’ll have the possibility of taking French classes every weekday morning, and the rest of the time we’ll visit some of the best attractions of the southwest including Albi, Carcassonne, The Painted cave of Pêch Merle, The Castle of Foix and several more.
You can hear previous bootcampers talk about their experiences on episodes 445 and 498 of the podcast because this will be the third annual bootcamp.
And if you’d like to read more about the specifics, or secure your spot, head over to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2025.
You can make 2025 a year of unforgettable French memories, even if moving here is out of the question for you.
Welcome Allison Lounes
[00:05:13] Annie: Bonjour Allisson Lounes, and welcome to Join Us in France.
[00:05:16] Allison: Bonjour. Thank you so much for having me, Annie.
[00:05:19] Annie: Wonderful to have you. So we want to talk about your experiences in France and also about the company that you run called France Formation. You help a lot of people move to France, and we’re not going to go straight into that. We’ll first talk about you a little bit and what you enjoy about living in France, because you’re not from here originally. And then we’ll get to your business and how you can help people.
So why don’t you introduce yourself a little bit, please, Allisson?
[00:05:43] Allison: Sure, thank you so much.
Allisson’s Journey to France
[00:05:44] Allison: So, my name is Allisson Lounes. I have been living in France for 15 years, I just celebrated my 15th Franceiversary. And I originally moved here, I studied abroad. I went back to the US and spent my whole senior year of college trying to figure out how to get back to Paris. And so I moved here in fall of 2009 to do a master’s degree independently, and I have been here ever since. The early years that I spent living in Paris, you know, first I was a student, then I married my husband, French husband. I started a business. I was a young mom.
And so really, I was kind of on that low budget student travel situation for quite a while.
But I mean, I’ve always loved living in Paris and now, you know, especially since COVID, I’ve really been enjoying traveling throughout France and getting the opportunity to go to many places that I didn’t get to go to the first couple of years that I was here. Or I went, but you know, I didn’t have the budget to really enjoy seeing everything.
Exploring France: Favorite Destinations
[00:06:50] Annie: So what are some places you like to go, or perhaps where you like to take visitors when you have family or friends that come see you?
[00:06:57] Allison: Sure, so I’ll start by saying there’s no place in France that I haven’t liked visiting. There’s pretty much every place in France I could see myself living in, except for maybe the Grand Est because it’s very cold, and a little bit too German for me. But most recently, the one of the best trips that we’ve done throughout France, we’ve done two big sort of “périples”.
One was in 2020 when we couldn’t go back to the US during the summer. Usually, I take my son back to visit his grandparents, but that year we took a road trip through the south of France, and so I was able to visit many spots. You know, Aix en Provence, Cannes, for the first time. And then one of the best trips we’ve done is my parents came in, April of 2022, and we took that two week spring break that we have, and we took them to all the places that, sort of the highlights of Normandy, Brittany, Loire, that they would want to visit.
Because my dad, for example, is really interested, like many dads, in World War II history and D-Day and the Normandy beaches. So we wanted to take him up to see that, and then we went, I love visiting Brittany, and then we went down, we went through Nantes, and then we went up through the Loire Valley, and saw really the highlights of what I consider to be the highlights of those areas, and many places that we had been before ourselves, but then wanted to bring them along.
So that’s kind of my best of Northwestern France.
[00:08:27] Annie: Yeah.
Visiting Historical Sites with Kids: Clos Lucé
[00:08:27] Annie: You have young sons, the Loire chateaus, does he do good with them or does he get bored with them after a while?
[00:08:34] Allison: Well, yeah, some of the more historical sites, he gets a little bit bored. The World War II stuff, he really liked, and he’s especially into airplanes. So he really enjoyed that part. For the chateaus, we mostly focused on the Clos Lucet, which is where Leonardo da Vinci was invited by François Premier, and the great thing about the Clos Lucet, it’s one of my favorite places to visit.
You have the inside of the chateau, which is pretty small, and you have, you know, what his studio looked like at the time, and it almost looks like, you know, magic potions, and…
[00:09:06] Annie: Yeah…
Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions
[00:09:08] Allison: It’s so funny, because he did lots of stuff like, he stole dead bodies from cemeteries, so that he could do drawings of the anatomy and things like that. So there’s no bodies in the chateau. But you know, it’s that kind of like the scientific tools of the time.
So that was really interesting for Grant. And then, in the basement and outside in, there’s a very large garden, there’s models of all of DaVinci’s inventions. And so that’s really cool because they even have like, you know, there’s a little pond and they have working paddle boats. They have the, he invented a sort of tank, so the kids can go in the tank and you can climb in everything. It’s like designed for kids. And so that’s really cool. That to me is one of the best, the best setups for, you know, historical learning for kids. And then they have like his flying machine, which doesn’t fly because he didn’t, he couldn’t invent a motor, but you know, they can spin it around.
[00:10:08] Annie: Yeah. Yeah, you can see that he had a crazy imagination and all of the things he came up with, most of them don’t work, but some of them do work, it’s surprising,
[00:10:21] Allison: Yeah. But some of the things, the only reason they didn’t work was because he didn’t have like electricity at the time, you know, like he didn’t have, his flying machine, or his helicopter, or whatever it was he invented, might have worked if he had had a motor. Or had been able to invent a motor. He just didn’t, he was so far ahead of his time that the technology for making some of his inventions usable was just not there.
[00:10:48] Annie: Yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah. I really like Amboise, of the two chateaus, ’cause there’s also the Chateau Royal d’Amboise.
And also it’s a good place to do bike rides if you have the time, you can rent a bike and go along to between the different chateaus or along the Loire River.
I think it’s a, just a really nice pleasant thing to do, even with kids. You don’t want to do three, four chateaus every day with a kid, they would just go nuts, but if you do one or two, I think it’s doable.
[00:11:16] Allison: Yeah. One trip we took to Amboise, we actually went to the mini château. Are you familiar with that? It’s similar to La France Miniature, which is a park outside of Paris that has basically miniature models of all of the big monuments of France. And so you can see, like, they have Lourdes, they have the Eiffel Tower, they have Notre Dame, they have a lot of the cathedrals, some of the chateaus, and they’re built so they’re maybe like a meter, you know, I don’t think they’re much taller than, any of them are much taller than me, but there’s like a hundred different constructions of…
[00:11:49] Annie: Miniatures.
[00:11:50] Allison: Yeah, miniature. Yeah, miniature models of all of the most important sites in France, and so out in the Loire Valley, they have a very similar park where they have all of the chateaus of the Loire, and I want to say there’s like 140 models in the park, and then they show you, you know, where they are and how far they are… and so we sort of used that.
I think we visited that when he was about five or six.
[00:12:16] Annie: Uh huh.
[00:12:17] Allison: And we sort of used it as a guide like, oh, these ones look like they’ll be the most fun to visit. So it helped us to plan subsequent trips. Hahaha!
[00:12:27] Annie: That’s great. So yeah, I’ll have to look that up. I haven’t been for sure, so that would be interesting to look up. Fantastic.
Tips for Visiting Popular Tourist Spots
[00:12:33] Annie: And you told me about going to Giverny and places like that.
[00:12:36] Allison: Yeah. So, Giverny is one of my favorite places to take people. But I think the most important thing to know about Giverny is that everybody loves to go there, and it’s not a secret anymore, so you kind of have to go on a weekday during the off season.And you might not have the best weather, but if you try to go on a Saturday in June, or worse, I think for the, I can’t remember if it was like for the Nuit des Musées, or maybe it was for the Ascension weekend, at the end of May.
I remember reading, maybe a year or two ago, that they had enormous crowds, and they were like, thousands of people in line and the, all the traffic around Giverny was blocked off and it was almost as bad as like the Mont Saint Michel. So some of these big places you have to avoid for the most beautiful weekends.
But I mean, going on a weekday morning, early to mid spring before tourist season really picks up is just as beautiful.
[00:13:30] Annie: And even in June, if you can go during the week, it’s those long weekends that are deadly. And we have several in May, several in June. Next year we have one in April, we have two or three in May, one in June. So those are like, oh, everybody’s out. And a lot of them think about going to Giverny. So if you can avoid those and you can go on a, you know, a weekday, it’s not near as bad.
[00:13:56] Allison: We went last year for our team, we had a team, like, sort of, bonding day, because we all work fully remote, but everybody came to Paris last year, and we took the train to Giverny. And we visited the garden in the morning, we did the Impressionist Museum in the afternoon, and we had lunch at the museum in the middle of the day.
And I think it was a Wednesday, so it was in June, but it was a Wednesday. And we got there early enough and we had tickets in advance that it wasn’t bad and we got out before the crowds really started to pick up.
I mean, it’s definitely something now that you would have to plan in advance and make sure that you’re not going on, like, a weekend in the afternoon.
[00:14:37] Annie: Yeah. And if you go by train, did you take a taxi to the actual garden?
[00:14:43] Allison: No, so there’s, there’s a little tourist train and there’s a bus, so the bus goes direct there and back. We took the little, the little tourist train, which I think it was 10 Euros a person.
So it wasn’t that bad.That was for the round trip, and then they have, you know, the posted times where it will take you back to the train station, and they coordinate it with whatever time the trains are arriving and departing.
Discovering Auvers-sur-Oise
[00:15:07] Allison: That’s cool. That’s cool. I want to also ask you about Auvers sur Oise because we’ve talked about it a little bit on the podcast, but not too much. So this is where Van Gogh ended, well this is where he finished his life. It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?
Yeah. So this is what I would recommend if Giverny seems a little bit too far and a little bit too crowded for you. Auvers sur Oise is smaller, it’s less well known, I think. It’s not as much of an attraction for people. But we recently went there this spring. My brother visited with his girlfriend and we took them, because they were continuing their trip by going down to Arles and so I knew she was interested in art and Van Gogh. It’s not a place we’ve been to as much as Giverny but it’s really great. It’s a little tiny town, not too far from Paris. At the time Van Gogh moved there it was his brother Theo who was living there with his wife and children, who worked in Paris or, something, so he wanted to be close to his brother.They were very close. And he, he painted a lot there. So there’s, the little, it’s a really tiny, probably seven square meter room where he lived. It’s not the room that you are familiar with from the painting where it’s like, you know,
the bed and the table in the yellow orange room, it’s not that room. I think that one is in Arles. But it’s a really tiny, seven square meter room that doesn’t have much in it anymore. And they just, you know, talk to you a little bit about his life. And then of course, there’s displays of some of his paintings and you can walk up, there’s the church that he painted, the famous gothic church that he painted from the back with the flying buttresses, all around the back.
He painted that, he painted, there’s a wheatfield painting that he did there, and that wheatfield is actually where he died, he was shot, and there’s a little bit of controversy about whether it was self inflicted or whether, you know, it was kind of an accidental shooting that…
[00:17:13] Annie: Yeah, I mean, yeah, he was the only person present at the time, let’s put it that way. Whether it was an accident or voluntary, you can discuss that. And very sadly, he didn’t die immediately. He was able to drag himself back to his place and died later. At any rate, a tragic life from beginning to end, that man.
Extremely, extremely talented, but oof.
[00:17:41] Allison: Yeah. And he’s buried there too. So, right nearby the church, there’s also the little cemetery where he is buried next to his brother Theo, so…
[00:17:52] Annie: And how did you make your way there? Did you take the train?
[00:17:55] Allison: We drove, but it is accessible by train.
[00:17:58] Annie: And once you’re in the village, it’s not very big, like you can walk everywhere.
[00:18:02] Allison: Yeah, it’s really, it’s a really tiny town. It’s a really tiny town. I did see two, we didn’t stop, but there were some places that had, you know, cheese and wine tastings and things like that. We didn’t go to any of the local shops or anything, but there were some there.
And then of course, there was a little tourist office with a shop full of Van Gogh things, so…
[00:18:22] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, this is the sort of place where, I mean, if you go in the middle of the winter on a Monday morning, it might be a bit dreary, but there are times during the year where it’s going to be a little busier. You could look up their website and see if they have any events going on.
It’s always worth going to special events to these little villages because they usually put on a nice show.
Helping People Move to France
[00:18:46] Annie: But of course, if you’re going to go to events, it means that you live in France, which leads us to what you do, which is help people move to France, which is something very, very specific. Like people ask me, I mean, as recently as yesterday, I had somebody who was asking me about, for tips on how to move to France.
And I just, I said, you know, talk to Allisson Lunes because it’s not what I do. And so I want you to explain why it’s so specific and why it’s important to do it right.
[00:19:17] Allison: Sure, so, France, the most important thing to know about France is that it is a country of paperwork, and all the paperwork has to be done correctly, in the right order, in order to get the result that you want. And sometimes even when you do have all the paperwork in the right order for the result that you want, it is still going to take an inordinate amount of time, and perhaps some tears, and definitely some frustration in order to get it all done.
The Visa Process
[00:19:42] Allison: There’s a lot of different steps, and sometimes people underestimate it, but let’s start with talking about the visa process.
We are actually, I know this episode won’t come out for some time, but we’re actually recording this on the day that we have released the fifth edition of our book, Foolproof French Visas. So, this book is a book we’ve now been writing for several years. I wrote the first couple of editions myself, and now I have the women who work with me who help with editing and revising each new edition.
Because there’s a lot of information or there’s a lot of details that you need to know about the visa process and picking the right visa. And then things change every year, you know, sometimes things were on paper and then they go online or you used to need this document and now you need that document.
And so there’s all kinds of, you know, updates and changes every year, which makes it really difficult, too, to rely on information that you just get from the internet or somebody who did it before. So, the most important thing about picking the right visa type is considering what type of life in France you want to have, and do you want to stay long term and eventually get a residency permit or become naturalized?
[00:20:57] Annie: Right.
[00:20:58] Allison: Now, the most important criteria of picking the right visa is what type of work do you want to do? Like, if you want to work at all, it doesn’t matter if you are working for somebody in France, outside of France, on the moon, whatever, if you are doing, if you are trading services for income, you are working, and accountants like to call this the rule of butts.
It is where your butt is sitting most of the time while you are doing said work that determines where you’re a tax resident.
So, having a visa to spend most of your time in France, and having your butt in France while you are working means that you are working in France and you need, one, the visa to go with that, and two, the type of activity registration, let’s call it, whether you’re a salaried employee with a foreign work contract, with a French work contract, with a company, being self employed independently, you need the structure in place to enable you to pay your social charges and income taxes in France first on whatever income you earn.
And so, based on that alone, that kind of orients you towards the visa type that might be appropriate for your situation.
[00:22:14] Annie: Right. Right. Yes, and I kind of tend to tell people, look, if you are retired, if you want to retire in France and you have regular retirement income that you can show, it’s probably not going to be too hard. But if you have a pile of money sitting in a bank account and no regular income, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, would it?
Like they want to see regular income.
[00:22:42] Allison: Well, it depends on the size of the pile of money. It doesn’t really matter. And it depends on what type of account you have it in. The requirements for getting a visitor visa as a retired person are not that difficult. If you either have a pension, or if you do have a pile of money in excess of about 20,000 Euros, you can get a visitor visa.
The visitor visa requires that you engage yourself to not work in France. That means you are not selling your paintings as a hobby, you’re not doing some freelance projects when they come up, even if it’s for employers or clients or whatever outside of France, you’re not working remotely for a company outside of France.
Your job when you’re on a visitor visa is to eat cheese, and baguettes and try the French wine, and do all of these wonderful touristy things that you talk about in your podcast all the time. Spend your money! Spend that pile of money on being a tourist in France!
[00:23:44] Annie: Right. Right. And pick the right date to go to these beautiful villages that might be dead the rest of the year.
[00:23:52] Allison: Exactly, exactly. And the tricky thing about being on the visitor visa is then if you ever were want to get a job, or work remotely, or be self employed or whatever, then you have to switch your visa status to something that enables you to do that. Which can take a very long time.
[00:24:08] Annie: Mm.
[00:24:08] Allison: Now, the other thing to consider is that, especially if you’re American, Americans have the most advantageous tax treaty with France, and the result of that is that if you’re American and your income is primarily from, you know, social security, pensions, interest, 401k, rental income from a property you own in the US, all of that is going to be continued to be taxed in the US. You’ll have to declare it in France, but you won’t pay tax on it in France. And so on the one hand, this can be very advantageous because it means that you’ll probably pay less tax. However, because you’re not paying tax on it in France, it kind of means that you don’t have the most wonderful argument if you then want to become naturalized as a French citizen.
So, you know, one of the better ways to get on a path to being approved for citizenship is, or even a 10 year resident card is, do you have some money that you’re paying tax on in France?
And that’s not the only thing that they’re looking at, but it helps significantly. And it can be really hard to make the transition.
A visitor visa you can renew indefinitely, you can renew it every year for one year, but if you’re looking for, you know, long term stability, getting a 10 year card, getting naturalized as a French citizen at some point, because that’s something that interests you, then it’s not always the best option, especially if you’re of an age where you don’t have a retirement pension or,you’re not, you’re retired.
[00:25:41] Annie: If you are going to work at all, if you’re of the age where you might work, might want to work, might want to start a business, whatever it is, then pick the right track, don’t fool yourself.
[00:25:52] Allison: Yeah, start as you mean to continue. Start as you mean to continue. If you’re 35 and you want to work again, coming to France on a visitor visa and waiting it out for 5 years is not going to get you a 10 year resident card. You know, so, you have to figure out what you’re going to do to earn money in France and get the right visa for that.
Make Your Life Easier: Learn French
[00:26:14] Annie: Right. Yeah, there’s a lot of situation, isn’t there? Like, it really depends. That’s why it’s important to, I think, I mean, honestly, I’m one who believes in at least getting your book, you are really going to try and do this by yourself. But if not, having you, you speak French, that’s the other thing, you know, there are plenty of people who speak no French, who think that they can tackle French administration. And I think that’s a mistake.
[00:26:44] Allison: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there’s certainly, I certainly admire the can do it attitude that so many Americans have, and I moved here by myself. But part of the reason that I started writing and that I started my business in the first place is, you know, I originally came with a study abroad program, and when I was in the program, I was paying US tuition of, like, $40,000 a year, but they were doing everything for me, like, they found the housing, when I had a mold problem in the apartment they got for me, you know, they fixed it. I didn’t have to do any of the, you know, adulting stuff in France.
Being a Student in France
[00:27:19] Allison: Now, when I came back on my own, I enrolled in a French master’s program, I paid 452 euros for one year of tuition, and that included one year of medical insurance as a student.
[00:27:29] Annie: That is, so people, you have to fathom this. Okay. Think about it. 40 grand in the US, 400 Euros in France. We’re not, so don’t expect the same level of services.
[00:27:43] Allison: Right.
[00:27:43] Annie: Okay.
[00:27:44] Allison: Right, exactly.
My whole thing when I started out, when I started doing, you know, let me help people with French admin work, was, you can save 99 percent of your tuition by enrolling directly in a French university, but then you have to speak French, you have to go through the French application process, you have to set up your own electricity contract, register yourself on the French healthcare system.
And so those were the things I started writing about back in the beginning on a blog, at a time when there really weren’t blogs about moving to France, and there weren’t Facebook groups. There weren’t, even the French administration did not have online resources and websites about how to apply for a visa.
So that’s how I, that’s how I got started. But the thing is, you know, when people are doing it themselves, a lot of times they know piecemeal things to do. Like, okay, I need to apply for a visa. And then they apply for the visa and they get a little slip that says, okay, when you arrive in France, validate your visa.
So then they validate their visa. Then they’re like, great, I live in France. And then, a year later, they go to renew their visa, and they’re not on the French healthcare system, they haven’t set up their bank account, they haven’t filed their taxes, they didn’t talk to an accountant, they didn’t get residency documents for their children.
There’s, you know, a whole checklist of things that you have to do such that establishing yourself in France during the first year is really like a full time job. Even if we’re helping you. Even if we’re helping you.
[00:29:08] Annie: Okay. This is what’s next. You help people like give them a checklist and this is what’s next, but they still have to do it themselves.
[00:29:15] Allison: Some of the things they have to do themselves when we’re working with people, you know, when they’re our package clients, there are a lot of things that we do for them, but we can’t do everything for them. Like, we can’t take your pet to the vet for you to get them registered with ICAD. Especially, like, if I’m in Paris and my colleague Kim is in Montpellier and somebody’s in Nancy, I would love to take your dog to the vet and get them all registered, but, you know, we can’t. So here are the instructions for what you have to do, and what you have to ask the vet for.
[00:29:43] Annie: And that’s where the rubber meets the road about speaking French.
Like. Okay. Vets are, go through a lot of schooling, but they’re good at surgery. They’re not necessarily good at, you know, English.
[00:29:56] Allison: Yeah. Well, and even, you know, the doctors that you look up, like, the human doctors that you look up online on Doctolib, if you can find one who says they speak English on their profile, how is that actually going to play out when you get into the office…
[00:30:09] Annie: You never know.
[00:30:10] Allison: You never know.
[00:30:11] Annie: Luck of the draw.
I have this wonderful guy I just saw this morning. We have a gardener. He wants to, he insists on speaking English with us, which is very odd because his English is not great. But here we are, two French people and he wants to speak English.
And I do, but, if he listed his compétence as a gardener who speaks English, I would say, well, you’d have to be pretty patient with his English.
[00:30:34] Allison: But, to be fair, like, if you live in France and you want a gardener who speaks English, it’s kind of your job to be patient with the gardener’s English.
Language Barriers and Practice
[00:30:42] Annie: That’s true. That’s true. That’s true. That wasn’t a requirement for me, it just so happens. He overheard me speaking English with my husband. He’s like, oh I want to speak English too!
[00:30:51] Allison: I know. And that’s, when you travel to France and you’ve been working so hard on your French or when you move here and you’ve been working so hard and, you know, you’re all gung ho about talking to people in French all the time and you go into a cafe, you go into a restaurant, you order and you order in French and you’re like, it’s perfect.
And then they talk back to you in English. A lot of the times, that’s the reason. It’s not necessarily, you know, I mean, sometimes it’s, I didn’t understand a word you were saying in French, it’s easier if I speak English, but sometimes it’s just, you know, the enthusiasm and they want to practice.
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Navigating French Healthcare
[00:31:28] Annie: One thing you mentioned that hasn’t come up yet is this whole business of getting into the French healthcare system. I know people who have been in France five minutes and they’ve already applied. And I know people who have been in France for a long, long time and haven’t done it.
Driver’s License Exchange
[00:31:41] Annie: Same with the driver’s license.
You know, there are people who do it immediately, and there are people who just I know someone who has been driving in France for 20 years and she’s sitting on her American license.
[00:31:54] Allison: She better hope and pray to all of the deities she believes in that she is not in an accident.
[00:31:59] Annie: She has never been in an accident.
[00:32:01] Allison: Yeah.
[00:32:01] Annie: And her car is insured through her husband. But still…
[00:32:05] Allison: Yeah, well…
[00:32:06] Annie: Don’t do that. Don’t just don’t do that.
[00:32:08] Allison: Don’t do that. Well, so the thing is, you have one year to exchange your license if your license comes from an exchangeable state. One year starts either from the date you validate your visa with OFI, or it starts from the issue date of your carte de séjour. So depending on what visa you arrive with, sometimes it’s a long stay visa for 12 months that you validate online, and we advise doing that once you have long term housing in a place where you can get mail.
And then for some people who come with like a talent passport, for example, they’re going to request a carte de séjour from the Prefecture on arrival, so that it’s the issue date on that card that starts your one year countdown, basically.
After that one year, you have to have a French license, unless you have an EU license.
So, if you have a license from another EU country, fine. You only have to exchange if you get points on your license. If you have a US license that you didn’t exchange, you can no longer drive. You now have to take the French written test and driving test.
Now, if your exchange is in progress because you started it, normally they’ll give you a document and you can continue to drive until you get the French license.
If you have a license that could not be exchanged, you have to stop driving and take the written driving test and the practical driving test. If you do not do that, you are driving without a license, your insurance might continue to cover you because they’re not going to go through necessarily and check, you know, that requirement.
If you get pulled over by police, they’re not necessarily going to know, you know, oh, you’ve been in France for over 12 months, you know, your New York state license is no longer valid. But if you get in an accident…
[00:33:50] Annie: Yeah, that’s when they check things.
[00:33:52] Allison: That’s when they check things. That’s when the insurance company decides if they want to pay or not.Especially if you are at fault, they are not going to cover you.
Mm hmm.If, God forbid, somebody were to get seriously injured or die, that’s like, you might be going to jail territory because you were driving in France without a license.
And even if, you know, nobody was hurt, driving without a license is something that can prevent you from getting French nationality because it’s a crime.
[00:34:19] Annie: Yeah.
[00:34:20] Allison: And there was recently, what was it? It was one of the, I think it was one of the Bataclan security guards, who had run in to get people out during the attack in 2015. And he actually, I would have to look up the details to be sure, but he just got his naturalization, because that’s the type of thing that can get you naturalized, is saving people during a terrorist attack. But the reason that it took so long was because he had been, he had an infraction of driving without a license.Which, yeah, can stop you forever.
[00:34:55] Annie: And
Healthcare Enrollment Challenges
[00:34:55] Annie: What about the healthcare stuff? How hard or easy is it to enroll?
[00:35:00] Allison: The healthcare situation is really deceptive, because it looks like just this really nice, easy little form that just asks for your name, and your address, and your phone number, and what date you arrived in France, and then you sign at the bottom. And it takes like maybe three and a half minutes to fill out.
And it looks like a nice, friendly little form, right?
It is not a nice, friendly little form. And you do not want to be deceived by its simplicity.
[00:35:27] Annie: They make it pink to fool you.
[00:35:29] Allison: Yes. Yes.So, here’s the thing. If you’re working in France, you can start the process of getting onto the healthcare system as soon as you start your job or whatever.
[00:35:41] Annie: Right, because you have a social security number. You have to apply for a social security number.
[00:35:45] Allison: Right, you do have, so you would have to still supply, you would still have to apply for the French social security number, but you provide a copy of your work contract and that can start basically immediately.
[00:35:54] Annie: Immediately. Yeah, that’s what happened with my husband.
[00:35:56] Allison: Yeah.
[00:35:57] Annie: When we arrived in France, I hadn’t had French health insurance in decades because I was living in the US. So my social security number wasn’t even correct anymore, it was missing two digits at the end. And I was like, oh, crap, I didn’t know that. But then, so they gave me the two digits, but in the meantime, since he had a work contract, he was actually covering me as well as him. Because he had everything and I didn’t. So there you go. So even if you’re French, but you’ve been away from France a long time, it changes things.
[00:36:28] Allison: Yeah. You have to wait 90 days when you come back if you’re not working.And similarly if you’re setting up a business, like if you’re self employed and you’re going to set up a micro-entreprise, then that process will kick off, getting you registered in the French healthcare system.
But, if you’re not working or self employed or something, then you need to submit, it’s called an une demande d’ouverture des droits à l’assurance maladie. And it is this deceptively simple form that is going to make you miserable over the course of the following several months.So, the first thing you want to know is that you need to attach a lot of documents to it.
And a lot of the people who have problems send off an incomplete set of documents. So, a couple of things they have been looking for recently, they want to see, utility consumption in the place you have been living since you arrived in France. So they want to know that it is not just you have an address, they want to see a bill with electricity, or water, or gas that is being consumed at the place that you say you are living. To prove that there is an actual human person living at that address.
[00:37:36] Annie: And it has to be in your name as well.
[00:37:38] Allison: And it has to be in your name.
[00:37:40] Annie: Not your friend’s name, not even your husband’s name. It has to be in your name.
[00:37:44] Allison: Yes, and if people, and if you’re staying with somebody, then they have to provide their bills, and they have to provide a copy of their ID, and an attestation saying that, you know, you’re staying with them.
And side note, it is very illegal to provide an attestation saying that somebody is living with you if they are not actually living with you.
That’s all I’ll say about that, for now.
[00:38:06] Annie: Be legit. Be on the up and up.
[00:38:08] Allison: And that’s really important for every French administration thing that you’re going to have. If you’re trying to, you know, do things in a not legitimate way, you’re going to end up having some major problems.
[00:38:19] Annie: Mm hmm.
Name Consistency Issues
[00:38:20] Allison: So the most, the thing that I also want to focus on too is birth certificate.
When you provide your birth certificate to the health insurance administration, the first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to try to establish a birth certificate for you in the French system, and that is going to help them to issue your social security number.
[00:38:40] Annie: So, you want there to be a paper trail as clear as possible from the name that you were given at birth, that is on your birth certificate, all the way through the name you currently hold.
[00:38:52] Allison: Any changes, I don’t care if, like, you know, you changed a Y to an I. We have a client who was born Mary with a Y, she changed the spelling of her name at some point to Mari with an I, with no legal paperwork to back it up, which she could do in the US state she was living in at the time, and she had no end of problems with CEPAM because they did not believe she was the same person.
Mm hmm.You really, and this is one of the very first thing I ask clients when they work with us now, from even before they move to France, is does your name on your birth certificate match your name on your passport? And if not, let’s talk about the paper trail, because we need to fix that paper trail now, so that six months down the line when you’re applying for French health care, you’re not going to, you know, have a year and a half long fight with CEPAM.
[00:39:41] Annie: Yeah. So my sister was born like I was, and they, our parents gave us double names. So, you know, I was Annie Claude. My whole life, every, my parents, my French relatives always called me Annie Claude. And when I got to the US, people were calling me Annie Cloud, and it just bugged me, and I said, no, I’m Annie.
That’s it. Annie. Just Annie. But I didn’t change my name. I just stopped using the second one. My sister hated the second name, but she had, she was Marie Andrée, Marie-Andrée. So that means that’s both of her names. You cannot separate those two names. Just to get a comma instead of a dash, she had to go through the same process she would have if she had wanted to call herself something completely different.
[00:40:30] Allison: WOW, Yeah.
[00:40:32] Annie: So it was free, but it took months to do this, and now she’s very happy, because forever after, she is now Marie, instead of Marie-André. But in France, they pay attention to these things. If it’s a comma, if it’s a minor change, they will not let it go through. Trust me, you know, they won’t.
[00:40:51] Allison: We also had a client, about four or five years ago who, his name was William, except that on his birth certificate it was Willem, spelled the German way with ’em’ at the end.
And we had to go and get his birth certificate amended in the state of Pennsylvania, maybe, so that he could get registered on the French healthcare system.
This is especially for women too, if you get married in the US, it’s very common to drop your middle name, make your birth name into your middle name, and add your married name to the end.
[00:41:20] Annie: They want to see a paper trail. We have a client who just got onto the French healthcare system after she moved here in 2022, and she just got her attestation, and they won’t tell you that’s the problem, either. The way that her situation unfolded was, you know, they would ask for more documents.
[00:41:39] Allison: So they would ask for, send us another copy of your passport, it’s illegible. Or, and then send us another copy of your birth certificate, it’s illegible. And she’s like, why are they not asking for all of these at the same time? And each of these requests takes, you know, two months, or three months, between when they mail you a letter, when you receive it, when you respond, and when they mail something back asking for something else.
So,it took probably three or four passport requests, and she went into CEPAM, she had them make an appointment for her, she brought them her passport, she was like, okay, you say this is eligible, you make the photocopy.
And finally, we figured out, I figured out, that it’s not the legibility of the copy, it’s the fact that her name was, she was Jane Anne Smith when she got, when she was born, she married, you know, John Doe, and then she became Jane Smith Doe, and she dropped the Anne.
And so, in her situation, the easiest thing to do was for her to go to the embassy, and because the middle name was Ann and it was only three letters, we could fit it in and just have her get a new passport with the middle name on it. And so then she had a complete paper trail. But to the health insurance people, those were completely different people.
You know, you have to really anticipate, and this is something that you really have to start on the three month date after you arrive. So by three months, you want to be in a long term lease in a place where you can get mail, where you can have your name on the bills, set up all the bills in your name, validate your visa, and then apply for the healthcare because it might take eight months until it’s time to renew your visa.
And if you’re not on the French healthcare system by that time, then you have to pay again for another year of the private insurance that you used.
[00:43:28] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. No, there’s a lot of complications like that. And so I really encourage people to at least get your book, perhaps hire you to do this handholding for them, because if you’re serious about this, do it right.
[00:43:42] Allison: Yeah, and the thing is, there’s no overarching, you know, official list of things that you have to do to get settled in. Like, nobody’s going to tell you, okay, you’ve been in France for a year now, you have to file your taxes for the first time. You just have to know that you need to do that.
[00:43:58] Annie: They’ll never come knocking on your door.
[00:44:00] Allison: They won’t until they do. They won’t until they do. And then, because all of these countries share information amongst themselves, so, you know, if they realize, oh, this person has actually been working remotely and earning, you know, her Emily in Paris, Chicago, marketing executive salary, and not paying French social charges on it, guess what?
Everybody’s looking for money right now, all of the French administrations, they all need to collect to increase their budgets.
You’re getting a big tax bill and that is not the thing that you want to deal with.
Banking in France
[00:44:31] Annie: Right.And the last friction point is usually getting a bank account. Is that getting any easier?
[00:44:37] Allison: It is. So I know there are stories anecdotally of people who have had problems and I certainly don’t want to diminish, you know, people have gotten kicked out by their banks, they’ve had problems getting mortgages, et cetera. I haven’t found it among our clients to be a huge issue, and, you know, part of it is just filling out the paperwork, banks have know your customer requirements, so they’re required to know who you are, you need to make sure that you don’t have anything that appears like impropriety,
Just give them, fill out your W9, give them your social security number, they’re a bank, they don’t really care, but at the end of the day, any of these administrations, if they can’t check off the box that they want to check off, you are not getting service.
They don’t care about having you as a customer more than they care about following the rules.
We’ve been working with AXA quite a bit. They’re really great. They have an English speaking agency. I think they’re actually not too far from you. They know what paperwork people need and they’re very…
[00:45:36] Annie: They’re on to it.
[00:45:37] Allison: They’re on to it and they’re very helpful.
But, you know, we also have regulations in France of, if you get a refusal from a bank that doesn’t want to open an account for you, you have the right to a bank account, and so you can get help from the Bank of France.
[00:45:51] Annie: Yeah, La Banque de France will help you, yeah.
[00:45:53] Allison: Yeah, it usually doesn’t come to that, and you know what?
That just also means that banks can’t really avoid having American clients, because there’s 111,000 Americans living in France, so.
Tax and Legal Considerations
[00:46:04] Annie: Yeah. Is that all? 111,000? I would have thought it was more.
[00:46:08] Allison: That’s the most recent figure that I saw, that comes from an estimate that AARO has put together, AARO is the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, I’m a board member as of this year, and they do a lot of work on banking and tax issues. So if you are having banking and tax issues, AARO can help for sure. But you know, I think a lot of it comes down to, people not wanting to, even things like, if you’ve never declared, if you’ve never declared your taxes in France, and you’re earning income from abroad, and you want to transfer $400,000 to France to buy a house, guess what, your notaire is going to want to know where that money comes from, and that it’s not money laundering. And if you’re unwilling to provide that paperwork, or if you’re unwilling to, or if they ask for copies of your tax declarations and you’ve never made them because you didn’t know, that’s when you’re going to have the problems.
Or, you know, God forbid you never set up any of this stuff, and you’ve never declared your taxes in France, and you’ve been earning money from a remote job while you’re on a visitor visa, and haven’t paid taxes on it, and all of that stuff, and then you die while you’re a French tax resident, that’s also going to create a whole mess.
So there’s lots of good reasons to, you know, be aware of all of the things you have to do. And I’m putting together a checklist for people to complete during the first year of, you know, that asks you questions. Did you file your first taxes? Did you get a lease that allows you to set up electricity in your name? Did you open a bank account? Did you send in your application for the French healthcare system? Et cetera, et cetera.
So I’m hoping that by the time this episode is released it will be ready, so that people can get sort of a custom assessment of this is what I did, this is what I haven’t done yet, and the things that I still need to work on.
[00:48:01] Annie: Right, and there’s, how many people on your team? There’s four of you, right? It’s not just you.
So there’s two of us, there’s two people along with me who are full time.
Mm hmm.
[00:48:10] Allison: And then we have two women who are contractors who work on projects. So we have one in the UK who does some of our tech stuff and occasional strategy, likedeveloping the tools we’re going to be using. And then we have someone in Brittany who helps with some of the business clients, you know, working on the business plans.
[00:48:30] Annie: So you don’t call yourself a relocation company per se.
[00:48:34] Allison: I’ve been using that more and more, the term that I don’t like is hand holder. Okay.
[00:48:40] Annie: The one I used, sorry, apologize.
[00:48:43] Allison: I don’t,I don’t mind relocation agency, I feel that captures fairly well what we do, although we don’t typically work on housing. We have partners that we work with who, who will help with housing search, or rental search or whatever. The reason that I don’t like the term hand holder is, you know, I think about the situations in which you want to hold somebody’s hand.
It’s because they’re scared, because you’re in love, because somebody’s in pain, you know, I find it to be a not appropriate term for the type of support that I think we give people. I tend to think of myself more as like the tour guide with, you know, holding up the purple umbrella for people to follow me through, like, okay, this is what you want to do next, and this is what you need to know about this thing.
[00:49:27] Annie: Right, right.
Yeah, because just figuring out sometimes what needs to be done next and how do I get to go about that would take an individual days of worrying about it, and also figuring it out. Whereas for you, you’ve done this a few hundred times, you can probably go straight to the answer, much easier than… And I’m sure there’s different circumstances that come up at times, but mostly…
[00:49:54] Allison: Yeah, a lot of times I know what the question is before somebody finishes saying it.
Or they start to ask one thing, but the question that they’re asking is not really the question that they’re asking.
Because I can tell, like, okay, but you haven’t thought of X, Y, Z, so, you know, there’s some people who just kind of want to do things their way and they don’t want everybody knowing what they’re trying to do, but…
[00:50:17] Annie: Which I understand, you know, this guy I talked to yesterday who wants to move, I was doing it on Zoom, he wouldn’t even show his face. I’m sure he gave me a bogus name too, which doesn’t matter to me, like I don’t care, but there are people who are very worried about, you know, being straightforward. But being straightforward might help you in the end, you know, it might, like, what are they going to do to you?
Nobody wants to steal your identity. They just want to help you, and if they don’t, they need to know some things. Yes.
But it’s, it is true, it’s kind of personal, identifiable information. I understand why people want to be careful with this. And so it’s good to hire people that you trust to take good care of yourbusiness.
[00:50:58] Allison: And I mean, we do, I mean we have to know, we have everybody’s personal information, you know, we try to be really careful with GDPR and making sure that information is protected.
[00:51:09] Annie: But, you know, all of the administrations want everything from your birth certificate to your marriage certificate, to your bank statement to whatever, and yeah, they do, they already know everything about you or they can get the information from people other than me, so… Right, right.
Final Thoughts and Advice
[00:51:23] Annie: So, I think we’ve been talking too long, but I will put links to your book and to your services on the show notes for this episode. I will continue to send people your way because I think that’s just a very good way to do this. It’s not the only way to do this, but it’s a very good way to do this.
And I know that this podcast gets listened to by a lot of people who would love to move to France or, you know, sometimes I wonder if they’re just dreaming about it, or if they’re really going to do it.
But then I meet them and sometimes they tell me, Oh, I just did it. And I’m like, wow. So, you know, I listened to you for three years and then I did it, and it’s great.
It’s great!
[00:52:02] Allison: Yeah. Well, sometimes I get inquiries from people who are like, or, you know, I host a free Q&A every month, and sometimes we’ll get people who are like, my youngest child graduates from high school in 2032, and I’m planning my move. And then sometimes I get people with like my visa appointment was yesterday, and I didn’t have this document, and I need your help, like, now.
[00:52:24] Annie: You can see both. Yeah, you can totally see both. There are people who plan this way in advance, which is great, you know, why not? Have a life plan for heaven’s sakes. That’s really good.
Thank you so much, Allisson, for all this and good luck to anybody who wants to do this. And, but it takes more than luck.
I think it takes work and you can do it.
[00:52:44] Allison: You can do it, you can do it, people do it, and we can help!
[00:52:49] Annie: Very good. Thank you, Allisson.
[00:52:52] Allison: Thank you, thank you so much for having me, take care.
[00:52:54] Annie: Au revoir.
Thank you Patrons
[00:53:02] Annie: 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, please be like them, follow the link in the show notes.
And patrons get many more exclusive rewards, not just the episode free, you can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
And a special shout out this week to our Join Us in France champions, there are several this week because I haven’t done the thank yous for several weeks: Kitty Tataryn, Lou Armstrong, Julie, no last name, Mary Piltch, Blake Hall, Claire from Canada, Marilyn Miller, Jean Powanda, or is it Jeannie Powanda, I’m not sure, Gerald Brown,
Jan Kalagayan Rebecca Farley, Elisa and Diane Fallon, Karen Ezell, Lori Hannan, Kay Newlan, Elizabeth F, Christian and Ann Berzin, Brian Sumner, Karla Gorham, Joy Meade, and Diane Whitman.
Oh, I hope I didn’t destroy too many of your names. Apologies, I’m trying my best here. Most of you joined at the Groupie du Podcast yearly, which is what I recommend because that way you get two months free and it assures me that I have your support for a whole year, which is wonderful for someone who has, like everybody else, bills to pay.
And to all of my current patrons, it is wonderful to have you on board in the community of travel enthusiasts and francophiles, who keep this podcast going.
Support Elyse
[00:54:53] Annie: And to support Elyse go to patreon.com/ElysArt.
Zoom meetings
[00:55:00] Annie: This week, I shared links for patrons who can join me on one of our monthly Zoom meetings. These will be on November 23rd and 24th and I’ll share all about my visit to New York, my transatlantic cruise and the latest developments at my apartment in Spain. So join me on Zoom, it’s always fun to chat face to face and you get to ask me any question you have as well.
Thank you for your one time donation Judith Sikora and Jessica Kavanagh. You can do that by clicking on any green button on Join Us in France that says ‘Tip Your Guide’.
Jessica wrote: ‘Thank you so much Annie for your podcast. They really helped us plan and get excited for our trip to France in July. A family of four, we went to Paris, Biarritz on the TGV, hired a car and went to Sarlat, Amboise, Dinant, and the Mont Saint Michel, then Paris. Merci. Listen, Jessica, if you’d like to do an itinerary report with me about this trip, email me annie@joinusinfrance.com. I welcome anyone who wants to talk about their trip, whether they make a donation or not, whether they are a patron or not. I always want to talk about people who had a great time in France.
I have a lot of new reviews of my VoiceMap tours this week, but I’ll save them for another episode because this one is going to go long.
If you want to read the reviews, you can go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR, which stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
And to purchase these tours at a discount directly from me, go to joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Who shouldn’t move to France?
[00:56:37] Annie: Now, let me share some of my thoughts about the one thing that should make a person not consider a move to France, in my opinion, and about my husband’s citizenship interview.
Listen, for me, it’s really simple. If you have no intention of learning any French, don’t. Just don’t. You know, I’m not saying it should be perfect French, I’m talking about folks who have no intention of even trying, and there are many, I even know some.
There was an article making the rounds in the last couple of weeks, about a couple, an American couple, who moved to France and had such a terrible time that they decided to move back to the US, explaining that France is horrible.
If you don’t speak French, at least a little bit, and if your attitude is that English should be mandatory anywhere you go, then move to an English speaking country, you know? Yeah, honestly, if I had moved to America and I had decided I didn’t need to make any effort to speak English, what would you think?
Would you think that was a good idea? No. Well, it’s the same for France. Again, it doesn’t need to be perfect French, but you need to be able to have a simple conversation in French. I know there are British people who move to what they called the Dordonshire, the Dordogne, which they call the Dordogne, Dordogne, Dordogne, Dordogne.
You know, they stay between themselves, they never talk to a French person. You might say, Oh, they seem to manage. Sure, many do. But, what happens if they need medical care? It’s one thing to find a doctor happy to speak English if you come down with a flu while visiting Paris, but if you move here, you may need a whole array of medical services, especially as you get older.
But even for young people, what happens if there’s an emergency situation? What happens if there’s a problem with your kids in school? What if you have a car accident? You need to be able to have a simple conversation in French and make yourself understood and understand other people. And that to me is the sine qua non condition. You have to do this.
Citizenship Interview
[00:58:38] Annie: All right. Let’s talk about the citizenship interview. My husband had his this week, long time coming because we’ve been married 30 years and he’s been wanting to do this for a long time, but there were always things getting in the way. When you’re applying for French citizenship based on the fact that you’re married to a French citizen, it is a requirement that your spouse goes with you.
The interview took place at the Prefecture, and I was surprised how much emphasis was placed on number one, the ability to speak French and number two, involvement in French life.
Of course, the whole thing was conducted in French, which is not a problem because my husband speaks excellent French anyway, and he has the DELF to prove it.
And as a matter of fact, he didn’t make a single mistake in French during the 30 minute interview. But this lady wanted to know if he belongs to any local associations, does he associate with French people, or does he surround himself with English speakers?
Could he explain the concepts of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité? What do these things mean, and what do they not mean? The whole gist of the interview was to find out if he has made efforts to integrate into France, or if he is just here for the food and the weather and easy access to your other European countries or what have you.
They will also do an investigation to see if what he asserted about his involvement into French life is true. They might talk to our neighbors again, they did when we first moved to France, for his carte de séjour, which is the temporary card you can get. They’ll look to see if he’s got a clean police record, of course.
We’ll have a second interview with a gendarme, and this gendarme, this time, might even drop in unannounced. She asked about his employment situation, whether we’ve ever separated. She looked at our tax returns, of course, asked about our daughter and noted that she’s also well integrated into local life.
She looked at all the official records very carefully, starting long before we arrived in her office, asked some questions about things she wasn’t sure about. I mean, this is pretty extensive. It is not impossible to do by any means, but, you know, they don’t make it easy.
And it won’t be finished for another six months to a year, and we both speak French. So there you have it. So of course you can move to France without ever applying to become a citizen.But if your intention is to become a citizen, then the language part is even more important.
And if you’re never going to become a citizen, you’ll have to reapply for a carte de séjour often, and that’s no fun either, right? So, you know, you have to think these things through. I don’t think she would have denied him just for not speaking impeccable French, but I get the impression that not trying and not having at least a comfortable B2 level of French is not okay. And keeping to yourself and not joining local associations is not going to help either.
So if you’re not willing to do the hard work of integrating into France, perhaps find a country where the language is not a barrier to you.
Notre Dame de Paris
[01:01:44] Annie: All right, let’s talk briefly about Notre Dame de Paris. I don’t have any earth shattering news yet, but I want to explain how this is going to work. There’s going to be a free reservation system, via an app. So you’ll have to download an app and that app is supposed to be available starting at the end of November.
It’s not there yet, but we still have a couple of weeks. There will be 30 minute slots available from the day before your visit to avoid scheduling bottlenecks. So this is not something you’re going to be able to reserve, you know, six months in advance or even a week in advance. You’ll have to pick a time the day before your visit.
For those wishing to pray or attend mass, there’s going to be a specific queue. I’m not sure how it’s going to be organized, honestly, and it may not be possible depending on attendance. So, you know, it would be better for you to have a time slot to enter. The advantage of installing the app and requesting a slot the day before is that you’ll have information about what you’re looking at.
It’ll be in French, in English, and Spanish to start with. And I hope they add, you know, other languages going forward.
Support the podcast
[01:02:57] Annie: Because Black Friday and Christmas are coming up, if you’d like to support the podcast without spending a penny extra, you can discover some of my favorite travel products. Head over to joinusinfrance.com/Amazon. Every purchase made through this link helps me keep bringing you more great content no matter what you choose to buy on Amazon. So you don’t have to buy the stuff I recommend. You can buy anything. It will not cost you anything extra and I am grateful for your support. You just have to remember to start your shopping from JoinUsInFrance.com/Amazon, and it’ll redirect you to your Amazon store.
My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Cristian Cotovan who produced the transcripts.
Next week on the Podcast
[01:03:40] Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode about Amiens in the North of France with Elyse. I was there recently.
It’s a beautiful place, I think you should plan a stop there. Lots of history there. Beautiful, beautiful place.
And remember, patrons get an ad-free version of this episode and many more things as well, depending on their level of support. 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
[01:04:14] 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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Episode PageCategory: Moving to France