Proof of Concept: The First Month
There were so many reasons we chose France as the destination for our first “living abroad” experience. Those who were at our wedding in 2018 will be reminded that we walked down the aisle to my brother-in-law’s beautiful classical guitar version of the Amelie film’s soundtrack… so it’s really not that surprising.
Planning a major move like this can start to mess with your head just a little bit, however. We’ve visited Paris together many times, and other parts of France as well, but as the time stretched on between our most recent visit and our departure date—a flurry of (expensive) to-dos that really drove home how much of an upheaval this was to our life—it was easy to worry just a teeny bit that some of the things that drew us to this place may not actually be as real as we dreamed. It’s important to be realistic, of course.
We’ve been relieved to discover in just our first few weeks here that much of what we daydreamed about is, indeed, actually still true.
Some of our favorite parts so far
The baguettes (and butter)
This is no exaggeration: the reason that France is famous for its bread, we are pleased to report, is alive and well. Much of this must have to do with the way politics and law protect this cultural pillar; the result is that baguettes can be purchased fresh and warm throughout most of the day, and they are consistently rich in flavor and perfect in texture. People-watching on the street supports the internet’s claim that 98% of French people eat bread every day. We do!
Fun Fact: from “Bread Equality” out of the French Revolution to the Le Décret Pain in 1993, France has regulated and protected access to bread for the people for centuries. Traditional baguettes, for example, are defined by law, and there is social and cultural pressure to cap the price extremely low. There are also legal limitations if you call yourself a boulangerie, and especially an artisan, including that everything must be baked on the premises.
The wine culture
We vividly recalled the rows of bottles at the Auchan grocery store near our apartment in Place de Clichy, when we spent the full month of December in Paris during our long trip, with price tags dipping below 3 euros (including tax!), that were still not only drinkable but actually enjoyable. Being in our 30’s, our wine taste has evolved some, but we are consistently enjoying some sub-6 euro bottles that put the $15 bottles at Trader Joe’s to shame. Our sparkling wine habit has exploded, naturally, when most of our dinners feel worth celebrating themselves, and a decent cremant is so cheap! Similarly, when we’ve gone to restaurants, it’s not been hard to find a solid list of bottles on the menu for 20 to 35 euros.
Honestly, the sheer number of wine glasses provided in our Airbnb that only sleeps 4 is the real tell of what this culture values. This weekend is the big grape harvest festival in Montmartre, which means the Sacré-Cœur is surrounded by rows of tents from France’s best vineyards, with hundreds of people strolling around with branded plastic glasses of wine; we bought a bottle we liked for only 12 euros.
Eating and drinking out
We love to eat out. Cutting our spending at restaurants, both dining in and delivery, has always been our biggest challenge when it’s time to pinch pennies, and it just feels wrong! Yes, there were many times we were tapping the Door Dash app because we were feeling “lazy” (read: exhausted, overwhelmed, and burned out), but what is ultimately true for us is we deeply enjoy the artistic creation food can be. Who doesn’t love to nourish their body with something made by a human who is passionate about sharing delicious food?
France famously has a strong restaurant culture, and we’ve been soaking it in with relish. Even the pop-up antique market outside of town was steeped with delicious smells from countless restaurant and winery stalls, where patrons were enjoying steak, oysters, and crisp glasses of wine at plastic tables. When the weather is warm and dry like it has been, outdoor seating is abundant, and the tables are filled no matter the day of the week. In Tacoma, the options for dining out would exponentially diminish as the clock ticked past 8pm, but here, the locals are enjoying a meal schedule that matches our own; the restaurants may not even re-open for dinner at all until 7pm!
Especially considering our remote work schedules require us to have some overlap with Washington State’s timezone (a full 9 hours behind us), we are thrilled that the world of Parisian dinner service is only just finding full swing when we clock off for the evening.
Fun Fact: almost a third of the French workforce receives meal vouchers (titres-restaurant) from their employer, providing 25 euros a day to be spent at restaurants within the neighborhood of their workplace. The average lunch break is between 45 minutes to two hours, with many small shops closing for a similar window, which naturally incentivizes people to spend money at their local restaurants. Many restaurants will offer a lunch menu priced at or below 25 euros, which is more than enough for a delightful, authentic meal.
Some other notes, anecdotes, and things we’ve learned in our first few weeks
We’ve been shocked to be introduced to the reign of the tiger mosquito; an invasive species that has apparently taken over the region in the last few years. These monsters are tiny, active all hours of the day, and rampant even this late in the year. We are ITCHY!
Related to the above: the gorgeous, Haussmann-style windows that allow so much light in on both sides of our apartment (thanks to the classic courtyard) are also without screens. These old buildings with no AC or fans or humidity control require the ability to open a window (or four) to stay even relatively habitable, but this is also letting the dreaded mosquitos in. We have ordered temporary mosquito net screens on Amazon.
As expected, online ordering and delivery run on a different timeline here. What wasn’t expected was our first few orders being “rejected” because we identified our mailing address incorrectly. While our apartment unit is labeled absolutely nowhere, it does technically have an assigned number, which we only figured out by matching the last name provided to us by our host with the mailboxes in the lobby. However, if you address an Amazon delivery to simply the apartment number, they will arrive at your building and deem the package “undeliverable” because the name on the order doesn’t match the handwritten name on the corresponding mailbox. If we make our orders with the apartment number AND the host’s last name where the apartment number goes in the address field, we have…still mixed success. If the parcel is too large to fit in our (unlockable) mailbox, the delivery individual seems to insist on delivering the parcel to the front of our (entirely unmarked) front door; this requires assistance, which we are unable to provide if we are not home, and only partially able to provide even if we are.
The produce, even from the generic supermarket, is so good. I didn’t realize how uninspired I was by the general lack of flavor in our vegetables at home, but cooking simple meals so far has been so rewarding!
There are many categories of food and other goods that offer way fewer choices at the generic grocery store—snack foods being the biggest one—but others that are available on a level I hadn’t imagined. The variety of pestos on the shelves is blowing our minds. I was dying for my favorite pesto rosso, but there’s also arugula pesto, zucchini pesto, and calabrian pesto…
The Carrefour grocery store near us has a kiosk where you can scan a bottle of wine from the shelves and the screen will present with details about the vineyard and tasting notes. Incredible.
We cracked up when the service workers were on strike within our first two weeks of being here. The student protests aren’t impacting us at all, they’ve stayed contained to their demonstration areas so far, which aligns with our experience when we overlapped with the des gilets jaunes movement in 2018. France, as we understand it, knows how to protest! (It seems at this point that locals generally tend to support protesters, and mistrust the media portrayal. The violence is being largely misrepresented, a vast majority of the protests are peaceful.)
We are currently obsessed with chocolate mousse!
The noteworthy experience we’d hoped would come a little later in our life here was our first real use of the healthcare system.
A requirement for our visa was to provide proof of private health insurance, since we don’t immediately arrive with rights to the EU health system automatically. We paid $1,200 for coverage for both of us for the full year. We submit our receipts of health expenses for reimbursement, so we get to first see and experience the entire out-of-pocket cost of services.
Earlier this week, after being irritated by neck soreness that isn’t exactly new to me, I made a grievous error in the way I chose to sit up in bed after self-massaging my neck, and experienced the most intense muscle spasm I’ve ever had all down my neck and shoulders. By midday, I couldn’t move without the pain spiking to pretty anxiety-inducing levels, so I was bound to the couch where Andrew had set me up with an elaborate stack of pillows. Ibuprofen and the expired muscle relaxer I’d packed from home couldn’t touch the pain. I’m grateful for the attentive problem-solver I married; by the early evening, when the pain wasn’t improving, Andrew had found some phone numbers.
What we’ve learned is that house calls by legitimate medical doctors are a lot more normal here than where we’re from. There are of course clinics, urgent cares, and emergency rooms, and in a true emergency, we’d call an ambulance. I wasn’t in an emergency state by any stretch of the word, but getting down 2 flights of narrow stairs and into a taxi felt alarming and risky when we didn’t truly know what was going on with, you know, a part of my body that has to do with the top of my spinal cord.
The person on the phone affirmed that, yes, this was probably an appropriate situation for SOS Medecins, but we’d have to wait a little longer than their typical 1-2 hours so that we could get an English-speaking doctor… The “extra wait” was only a little more than 3 hours after we made the phone call, and then Andrew was buzzing a friendly doctor up to our apartment.
For 90 euros ($100), I was examined and given 3 different pills to get me through the night. When Andrew filled the prescriptions at the pharmacy the next morning, including the 3 different medications plus a (very chic) neck brace, the cost was less than $25.
I’m pleased to report that I am back to normal only a few days later. We get to submit our receipts to our private insurance for reimbursement, but even if we didn’t have coverage at all, $125 in total for urgent care (a house call!) and 3 prescription medications is pretty mind-blowing.
Where we’re at as we approach the one-month mark
We’re both getting into our old-but-new remote work routines, which brings a sense of relief with the resuming of regular income on the horizon. We’ve also checked off a few big-ticket tasks from the list—getting an international bank account, getting French phone numbers and a new phone/internet plan (a whopping $40 per month for internet, and $10 each for talk/text/data), and getting approved by a guarantor for apartment rental applications. We’re just about ready to start touring and applying for our “real” apartment, and learning what it takes in the supposedly cutthroat Parisian market. With (hopefully) a more permanent address to provide, we’ll validate our visas within 90 days of arriving here, and then we will officially be deemed Residents.
Naturally, there’s still a lot of awkwardness, with how temporary our current living situation is on top of getting familiar with the ways of a foreign country, but we always knew that settling would take time. We’re looking forward to finding a space to call more our own, and discovering what hidden gems and quirks our more permanent neighborhood will offer us. In the meantime, we’ll just keep savoring our daily bread.
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