Don’t Move to France ... until you’ve done your homework.

Dear John and Harriet

I came across your site whilst researching my own family’s move to France and wanted to say “well done”. If everybody who dreams of a renovated farm with a pool and a few hectares in the Dordogne read your site first the world would probably be a happier place! So, well done and I sincerely hope that it makes some people think twice.

I love France and the French (I have a French wife) and I will be moving (back) to France with my children, with my eyes open and plenty of money! I feel obliged to echo the comments entitled “Missing the point” as I believe this is fundamental to a happy and successful transition to any foreign country. I too have lived in a number of different countries and have found that as an immigrant (I don’t like ex-pat because it’s more of the same) you either decide to be a Brit living in whichever country you are in or you decide to become a local. The latter is much harder work (language/customs etc) but ulitmately much more rewarding. There are few things that irritate me more than to hear a Brit in France/Spain/Italy complaining about the people and the way the country works. This ranks only slightly higher than a fellow Brit swearing and then saying “excuse my French” or in my wife’s case someone being rude about the French in her presence and then saying “but you’re not really French are you?”! If you don’t like it, leave, but for goodness sake but stop whinging! The old Australian joke that goes “You know when then flight from London’s landed because the plane keeps on whinging after the engines are switched off” is so true – we never stop!

Whilst your site undoubtedly, and hopefully, performs a valuable service to those of us who are more romantically and less pragmatically inclined, it also paints, in my view, an unfair picture and one that emphasises the reasons why many people’s dreams turn into nightmares. To take one small example – “French television is dire”. No it’s not, or the French wouldn’t watch it. We have French terrestrial TV at our home in England and I would agree that some of it is not to my taste (in which case I turn it off!) but my wife loves it. It’s not dire, it just is what it is and it satisfies the requirements of those towards who it is aimed.

I too am worried about you moving to France given what you say, and so far you have been wise to have not done so. You have set out extremely clearly the reasons why you wouldn’t achieve your objectives by moving to France. It’s a ‘mind set’ thing. If you can’t see yourself as an integral part of their culture rather than an observer and a critic then it’s not going to work.

I am aware that you may be reading this thinking ‘what a condescending, patronising pile of rubbish’ or something similar, but once you’ve done it (dived in head first into a new culture and survived it) you will never look back and the world will become a bigger place. I am proud of the fact that I was sent to France by my company in 1989 (with appropriate xenophobic attitudes attached), upgraded my French from schoolboy to fluent and married a local. We are now a bi-cultural family (if there is such a thing) and very much looking forward to exploring the French side of our heritage in more detail.

Thank you for offering me the opportunity to have my rant and maybe one day I will invest the huge amount of time that you obviously have in putting together a site called “How to realise your dreams in France”.

Rupert Fairclough

PS The comments about food are just unbeliveable!

Now read my response to Rupert