Seeking Tranquillity in France

In the month before our departure from the United States to take up new jobs in Ireland in 2009, my wife and I sold our cars. We had been living in Arizona, the last territory to become a state in the contiguous 48 states, where all the roads were laid out in a grid, distances between point A and point B always seemed vast, and surviving without a car is inconceivable. Now we were moving to a...

One sometimes hears comments like “swimming is a sport you can pursue no matter your age.” Or it might be golf, bowling, or even pétanque. For me it’s cycling: pedalling here and there for more than 60 years.I remember my first bicycle, the one with training wheels that I rode slowly over the uneven turf of our back yard in Massachusetts. It was red, and the training wheels didn’t help me achieve...

Whether moving as a citizen of the United States or from any other country to reside in France, one of the first steps is to establish a French bank account. It’s very likely that in certain contexts—such as in obtaining a property lease—having a French bank account is a non-negotiable requirement. Some might anticipate this and open an account with a French international bank (such as BNP...

Growing up I loved to read. There were always books to explore at home, many of them had been bought for my father when he was a child. Some of them I read over and over. I especially liked the books by Thornton W. Burgess which told of the lives of many colourful animals who lived near “The Smiling Pool” and were forever teased and tested by Old Mother West Wind. Old “Grandfather Frog,” sitting...

I’ve always enjoyed learning languages. As children my siblings and I were expected to learn French, at least up to a point. It was fun, and memorable—my sister and I recently spoke of those times and about the children’s books we read in French and how much we enjoyed them. Later, I found French classes in school a boring and repetitive chore, but eventually in high school the grammar drills...

“There are three things which are real: God, human folly and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.”—John F. KennedyI don’t recall precisely when I read these lines for the first time, but since that day, long ago, the words have never left me. From time to time I’ve wondered about the context in which Jack Kennedy spoke them, and was...

Vivre dans un climat tempéré tend à éliminer les excuses pour quitter l’appartement et faire de l’exercice en raison du temps médiocre. Depuis que j’ai déménagé à Nice, j’essaie de profiter du climat agréable pour faire plus de marche aérobique—mes « marches rapides, » comme je les appelle parfois en sortant de chez moi. Le meilleur itinéraire que j’ai trouvé pour cela est de monter la Colline du...

Living in a temperate climate tends to erase excuses to get out and exercise because of bad weather. Since moving to Nice I’ve tried to take advantage of the pleasant climate to do more aerobic walking—my “power walks,” as I sometimes say when heading out the door. The best route I’ve found for that is to ascend the Colline du Château (Castle Hill) from Nice Port, then descend from the opposite...

It’s one of those lasting stereotypes of life in France—coping with French bureaucracy. French residents and citizens complain about it, and it’s a commonplace among writers in the why-not-move-to-France cottage industry.But the Administration française actually provides an online tool to make one of the routine nuisances of managing bureaucratic tasks easier: changing one’s address, whether...

A few decades ago while working in Massachusetts, I had an employee who was an Italian citizen, but a permanent resident of the United States. In fact, he was born in Italy to Italian parents who already lived in the U.S., and he had lived almost his entire life in America. It was his personal choice to not become an American citizen. He therefore had to make periodic visits to the immigration...