Seeking Tranquillity in France

It’s probably a common strategy: Take early retirement and start receiving U.S. Social Security benefits before age 67, move to Europe, and supplement your income with some self-employed side-hustle (for example, writing on Substack or getting monetised on youtube ). It makes sense, but there’s a little something called the “45-hour rule” that could undermine your plans if you’re not careful and i...

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 coun...

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 Paribas...

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 o...

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 ende...

“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. Kennedy I 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 surpr...

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 si...

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 movi...

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 off...

When I first began to work with computing technology—I needed a database to manage a combination of bibliographical and encoded musical information—I became acquainted with two consultants at my employer’s computing centre, one of whom was a musician. It was in this context that I first heard the assertion that “musicians make good programmers,” and indeed I came to understand over the years that...

If you’re a relative newcomer to France, have a basic knowledge of French and want to gain fluency in informal daily conversation, there are many possibilities that do not involve a computer or mobile phone screen. Some of these opportunities are sponsored by associations . Although I already had a good foundational knowledge of French when moving to Nice, Côte d’Azur at the end of 2021, our first...

There is a large and growing cottage industry catering to people moving internationally, particularly from the U.S. to France. These range from individuals and couples who have moved in the past couple years and are now offering how-to advice on social media, to corporate relocation firms that can handle or assist with many of the logistics and administrative paperwork involved. Some of these serv...

A question I hear frequently these days is, "Why did you choose Nice for retirement?” I hear it from residents of Nice most frequently (who probably can already guess some of the answers), but from others as well—including some Substack readers. There are many reasons why we chose to move from Dublin, Ireland to Nice, France when retiring at the end of 2021. It was partly from familiarity—we had m...

In several posts I’ve referred to my family’s departure from the U.S., which was motivated by an eminently practical concern: healthcare. Family health and well-being had not only become unaffordable, it had also become inaccessible due to the the industrial policy of not insuring individuals with “pre-existing conditions.” Subsequently the Affordable Care Act addressed the latter issue, largely b...

We arrived in Dublin, Ireland in September of 2009 to begin new jobs at Ireland’s largest university, which at the time identified itself as “distinctly Irish.” We had never travelled in Ireland prior to the trip my wife and I made to Dublin for the job interviews, although the maternal side of my family was also, well, distinctly Irish. In fact, I’d never given much thought to my Irish ancestry—i...

Living in France I still regularly hear stories about Americans’ experiences with healthcare—often focusing on the extraordinary cost of prescription drugs. The most recent tale involved a prescription for a three-month supply of Eliquis (Apixaban) for a person using a Medicare Advantage plan. The insurer had provided a “Copay card” pre-loaded with $750 to be used when purchasing drugs. The Eliqui...

Growing up I found the notion of speaking languages other than English intriguing. The experiences of learning French in childhood, learning German in early adulthood, then coming back to French later in life has been a fascinating cultural experience. Get full access to Seeking Tranquillity in France at leavingamerica.substack.com/subscribe

Jack Howard (1875-1971) was a noted outdoorsman who made countless expeditions in the woods of northern Maine and New Brunswick to fish, hunt, canoe, and to photograph his experiences. He ultimately came to feel that there was more sport in “hunting with a camera” than a rifle, and became ever more concerned about conservation. From 1915 onward he spoke regularly to groups ranging from sportsmen’s...

Chances are, no matter where you live, you expect there to be after-Christmas retail sales—an opportunity for merchants to sell over-stocked merchandise and to reduce inventory for an annual tax-related inventory. It’s often a great opportunity for consumers. And you might expect other kinds of sales throughout the course of the year as the seasons come and go and demand for certain goods rises, t...

On Christmas Day this year, 2024, we will mark our third Christmas as residents of Nice, France, a city that lies within the political region of Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur and, in historical terms, the geographical region of Provence. It will be our sixth Christmas celebration here, since my family visited twice while living in Dublin to pass the end-of-year holidays. However, this will be the fi...

After working my way to Germany on a Norwegian freighter in 1975 I made an arbitrary tour through West Germany, travelling mostly by hitchhiking. This is what I remember of it. Get full access to Seeking Tranquillity in France at leavingamerica.substack.com/subscribe

In 1975 I fulfilled an adolescent dream of working my way to Europe on board a commercial ship. It was undeniably an adventure, but it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea ... Get full access to Seeking Tranquillity in France at leavingamerica.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know that in 1939 there were two Thanksgiving Days? That year there were five Thursdays in November, making the last one fall on November 30. This caused merchants to worry about diminished holiday sales because of the proximity to Christmas, and President Franklin Roosevelt, concerned about the continuing economic struggles of the Depression, responded by declaring an extra Thanksgiving D...