Learning to drive in France

Since we are going through it ourselves (as parents, who are quite involved in the process!)  I thought it might be useful to explain what happens when your teenager wants to learn to drive in France. It’s interesting because it is quite a different process to the one in most other countries – I’ll let you decide which is the better…

Patience

The first thing you need is patience, because the whole process takes around 18 months from start to finish. A student needs to be at least 16 years old before they can start to learn to drive in France.

Furnishing your French home and gites on the cheap!

As D-Day for our house move gets ever closer, one of the challenges facing us is that we are moving from three houses (our own house plus two gites) to a single house, and we have a large number of things we have accumulated over the years and will no longer need.

For example, we have four dining tables (and about 20 dining chairs); three barbecues; eight sofas, six picnic tables etc. and not surprisingly our new house will look like a furniture shop if we take it all with us…

So we have been delving into the wonderful world of selling things second-hand in France, with at least a reasonable degree of success. It turns out that quite a few people furnish their houses and gites with perfectly reasonable furnishings by buying second-hand furniture and goods, and at a fraction of the cost of buying now.

Quotes about France

It’s nearly Christmas so time for something light-hearted – a selection of famous French quotes – and some less famous quotes. Enjoy, and let me know any well known or amusing ones that have been missed…

“France has more need of me than I have need of France”

Napoleon

England or France for university?

The big dilemma in our lives at the moment is helping older daughter decide where to go to university, and so far we've not been much use.

The first decision is whether England or France is the 'best' option and there doesn't seem to be an easy answer...each have their own merits, and expats with university level children all have a different story to tell. Whatever the reasons, a great deal of expat children return to the UK to go to university.

I've tried to list the advantages of each below, as I understand them. Since these are based as much on gossip and hearsay as factual information, all useful input and guidance is very welcome, especially where what I've been told is completely wrong!

French central heating systems

February is always the least exciting month in our year. If it's going to be cold, or wet, or both, at some point in the year it is usually in February. As if to prove the point, this week has been too cold for cycling, which means I've been stomping around the house looking grumpy, while Mrs B has been gazing miserably at the garden from the window and wishing digging and weeding were possible. Well, each to our own.

The main excitement we have in February - and it's the same every year - is the lengthy debate we have with our central heating engineers. Mostly this 'debate' consists of them telling me I have a super modern efficient heating system, and me getting irate and saying that 'it's a shame we can't control the temperature then, if it's such a great system'.

Pompe a chaleur - reduce your heating bills, at what cost?

Given that summer is here at last...I thought I'd take a look at the best ways of heating your house in France. Better late than never, and it might just help reduce the cost of fuel / oil next year - which I'd guess won't be any less than it is now. There are now several more environmentally friendly alternatives for heating a property, which may also be cheaper, though until now I've been unconvinced. In this post I talk about pompes a chaleur - heat pumps.

Pompe a chaleur

The pompe a chaleur (heat pump) is a system that extracts the energy in the air or soil and uses it to heat your home. The version of the pompe a chaleur - from now on referred to as a PAC - that uses the energy ever present in the soil is commonly called a geothermal system (discussed separately below). The PAC system can be linked to your existing central heating system to provide the hot water to heat your home, or can be used to heat air which is passed around your home.

Expat work in France

I thought it might be useful to explain how expats in France make ends meet. Just possibly this will give you an idea of how you could earn money as an expat and enable you to make the big leap yourself.

I am not concerned here with expats who work in France as an employee of an international company and just happen to be based in France for a couple of years, but with those of us who have to scrape together our own income just using our wits. I have also ignored criminal activities although I believe they can be quite lucrative.

Family life in France

What is the difference between family life in France and family life elsewhere, I sometimes get asked. Well in truth, much less than you would think.

Eating habits and mealtimes are more formal in France, and it is much more common for families to eat together. But, it is also common for a television to be on in the corner, so the notion of quality time and family bonding is not quite as convincing as you might think.

Food is generally seen as more important, and alcohol as less important, than it in the UK. To explain a bit - there is more focus on the quality of food and drink in France, and less on the quantity.

Two proper sit-down meals a day is a bare minimum - grabbing a quick sandwich is an alien concept, certainly outside the big cities. But that doesn't leave the French with a terrible obesity problem - quite the opposite. Perhaps two good, balanced, meals and a glass of Bordeaux is less fattening than two burgers, a bag of crisps, a mars bar and three pints of lager. I can't be sure because I'm not an expert in foody things but it seems possible.