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Living in France sounds exciting, exotic, something special to write home about. It's easy to romanticise a European lifestyle. But settling down for three or four months in another country, attempting to embed oneself into day to day life, is a completely different matter. Especially when you have the responsibility of keeping up a small house there, paying the relevant taxes and bills, trying very hard to maintain or at least not unravel reputation by unintentionally misinterpreting language, social cues, or just not understanding 'the way things are done around here". If you need to feel competent at all times, spending a prolonged period of time in another country will humble you immediately. Living in a different country and culture is a very different act to just dropping into a new, exotic place, taking the hop on-hop off bus past spectacular national monuments, and eating in lovely, quaint local cafes and restaurants. The act of "living" in a place is the Monday to Sunday of doing (read "surviving") the day to day life, where the successful completion of mundane, everyday tasks becomes a victory. Unfortunately, no one else is impressed that you figured out how the local refuse tip works. Iconic. Or that you successfully paid a bill on the french government web site. Revolutionary. Or that you have conquered making restaurant reservations over the phone in french. Give that man a slap on the back! Or that you successfully negotiated the emergency section of the local hospital. Outstanding! Understanding a joke in real time. Still pending. These are your peak moments now. Career milestones could never compete - you're just another foreigner who didn't stuff up a simple activity of daily living! You develop a split personality. There is the confident, reasonably intelligent, articulate you in Australia. And then there is French-you. French-you is polite. Constantly a little confused. Slightly panicked. French-you agrees to things Australian-you would absolutely never agree to, like waiting two months for a local bank credit card, or quietly accepting the orthodontist receptionist in Angoulême telling you that there is no available appointments for you between now and mid-July! Really?! Not one? Between now and mid-July? My response? Just a smile and "merci", and then a vitriolic, outraged download when I get back to the car. "This would never happen back home!!". [edit: well, maybe it would ...] You start sending out false messages, just casual, tiny, weird ones. Someone explains something and you nod "yes, of course, completely understood". You did not understand a single word. But you are committed now. You're in too deep. Let's just hope you don't get found out, that there are no follow-up questions or conversation that "finds you out". Back home you are spontaneous. Here you need preparation. Planning. A script. A backup script. Emotional support at the ready. Romanticism aside, the hard part of living the ordinary stuff in a foreign country is ... trying to work out installing and connecting an eSIM on your phone ... the plumber coming around and discovering that the installation of the new toilet is more complex than originally thought and will now take a couple of months to sort out ... breaking down on the highway in the Turo hire car and wondering what the f@#$ to do now ... having an elderly french gentleman accost you in the supermarket and start babbling at you in rapid-fire rural French something about my shopping trolley (I had actually inadvertently started walking away with his rather than my own) ... going out to anything - a shop, cafe, restaurant, anything, and in order to prevent disappointment, having to assume that there will be a "fermature exceptionelle" (an unannounced closure) ... trying to remember whether "essence" is petrol or diesel at the fuel station ... getting roused at by the owner of a close-by café because she thought we were pushing in on the queue (would never do that!) ... walking into some of the village shops that you have frequented often over the years, and being greeted as if you have never been seen before ... negotiating seemingly unreasonably complex parking meters and just hoping that you don't return to a car with a ticket ... having a conversation with the local barber that doesn't go quite as planned ... the constant on-going battle with the heating system and trying to understand how it works ... And all these examples? These occurred in the last 48 hours in real life, day to day life, here in Verteuil-sur-Charente, France. Challenging. Tough. Adrenaline flowing. Character building. But... as I mentioned earlier, you become very grateful for, and deeply invested in minor victories. Just in the last two days, we've had the madame who is renovating the old stone house next door give us 4 eggs from her chickens, and showed us through her house (always so interesting to see what is behind the shutters in these villages). Today, the wheelie bins that I believed I had arranged through the village mairie really did arrive. As promised. No delay. The mechanic arrived (twice) to fix our car and get it back onto the road. Two restaurant tables reserved over the phone for Friday and Saturday nights - straight forward, no repetition required. I picked up three cycad ferns from Lidl for our rear courtyard, and saw that they were three times the cost at another nursery in the local town. Win! Visited an old antique shop in the neighbouring town and the madame propriétaire mentioned that I had previously visited her shop and said she recognised me from last year! Negotiated a deal with an elderly monsieur to do some yard work next month for a reasonable price. Unheard of! A plumber arrived as promised (!!) and a plan is in place to install an additional toilet in our cave. Receiving nice compliments from my local french teacher. The pleasure of the local rural environment and scenary, and the history that hits you in the face as soon as you walk out the door. As someone I know has said, "The dream is the ordinary life you build once the fantasy wears off". This time in France is special, an opportunity that we remain so grateful for.
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Step out the door in this part of France and you are retracing the footsteps of people across the millennia. People have been walking, living, toiling and playing for centuries and centuries.
In WWII, Angoulême was located in the occupied zone under German authority. The border with the free zone passed about 20 kilometres east of Angoulême, splitting the Charente department in two. The train station in Angoulême was a target during Allied air bombing raids as the rail route between Bordeaux on the coast and Paris run through Angoulême. 
  Le Couvent des Cordeliers (Franciscan monastery) in Verteuil where the remains of the local nobility were tossed into the river during the French revolution. Venture 20-30 minutes further afield and there is evidence of places and structures created in neolithic times. Dolmens and tumulus are sprinkled across the Charentaise countryside where people lived, held rituals and were buried.
Roman civilization had a huge impact on the local area as the Roman empire spread into and across Gaul. Roman settlements can be found in the local Charente area as they travelled along the roman roads from Rome to Lyon and across to Saintes, just a little to the west of here.
 The Gallo-Roman Theatre of Bouchauds, near Rouillac in Charente.
Scattered across the landscape are numerous 10th, 11th and 12th century churches. These are typically beautiful, simple stone structures, stripped of any finery during the French revolution. Steeped in history, they offer calm, cool, contemplative environments. A few may even have the remnants of beautiful and colourful wall frescos, perhaps with the plaster slowly falling away, and mould reaching up from the damp stone floors.
 Château de Verteuil. See other blogs from Verteuil at http://www.houseinverteuil.com/house-in-verteuil-blog The high plateau end of Angoulême is one of our favourite places to wander around ... the ancient, irregular and slippery stone and cobbled streets of the old town criss-cross and offer absolutely no obvious reference points, so we two Australians have an almost 100% hit rate of getting ourselves lost on each visit. The narrow streets and alleys of the Angoulême plateau are sometimes dank, empty and a little grubby, but other times they are thriving with students and other pedestrians as the stroll around the muralled walls of the ancient lanes. The precinct offers a feast of various cuisines from around the world, served from dozens of little restaurants in this "petit coin d'Angoulême". There's our favourite creperie, Crêpes par Faim, where you can sit in the laneway, out on the back terrace or down in the vaulted basement. Or perhaps Jardin de Kashmir or Siam Gourmet if you prefer Asian cuisine, or Restaurant Le St André if you want something a little fancy ... or the newer Le Lion Rouge for an Italian meal in a fantastic architectural delight. Or walk down to Les Halles, Angoulême's indoor marketplace, for something fresh and "au comptoir". The choice is rich. In the summer of 2019 we came upon a new little book store during on one of our meanderings. Browsing through the new book shop we are drawn to the collection of books on the local Charente region. We have a number of books with beautiful photographs of the local area and its landmarks in our house. We noticed a new coffee table book (un beau-livre) on the Charente region. The book is titled "Charente", by Stéphane Charbeau and was published just the previous month (May, 2019).  As usual, we first target the pages outlining the area around our little village to see if any of the local landmarks made an entry. Perhaps the beautiful church at Lichères sitting in fields of sunflowers? Or the iconic view of the château in Verteuil with its Rapunzelesque towers taken from the village bridge? Or one of the numerous neolithic dolmen stones strewn around the local countryside marking burial sites and other lost-in-time functions. The new book offered all this. And then, leafing through it, to our surprise on page 94 was a pretty outstanding photo of two fellows standing outside the abbey in Nanteuil, a village very close to ours. With backs to the camera, they were obviously studying wooden door of the 800's abbey and the local annouces on it. A closer examination revealed that it was us!!! (probably taken in the summer of 2018 or 2017). (autographs freely provided).
 Every French village, town and hamlet has a road-side sign that announces its name as you drive into it (and then again, as you leave it - the exception being that there is a red diagonal line through the name of the location). Over the last month or so we have been noticing many, many of these village signs have been turned upside down. A freak of nature? A nation-wide prank? Vandalism? Dysphasic sign writers? Everywhere we have been recently, we are seeing these upside down signs! Whether it be in our local Charente area, or in Deux-Sevres, Vienne, the Dordogne, or even down south where we were recently in Aude, Hérault of Gard. Well, after some investigation, it seems that this phenomena is really a quirky protest of young french farmers! According to John Lichfield of The Local (7 December 2023, [email protected]), this is part of an agricultural "rebellion of the signs" which started in the Gard in the south of France and is now spreading across the country. It is a campaign design by the French young farmers association, Jeunes Agriculteurs, around a long menu list of grievances. These consist of: 1. Farmers paying increased licence fees of 47 million euros in 2024 for pumping water from the ground and for pumping pesticides etc into it (the government has now cut this requirement); 2. A proposed EU treaty with South America that would bring cheap Brazilian and Argentinian beef into France; 3. The rising price of agricultural diesel fuel and delays in the payment of EU subsidies 4. No clear national strategy for balancing the needs of farming with an ecologically friendly future. There is a demand for greater output, but the number of farms have dramatically reduced over the last two decades (from about 750,000 to 450,000), and more than half of France's current farmers will be retiring by the end of next decade. And current farms are struggling to make any profit without the current access to government/EU subsidies.
And so, this peaceful, attention-grabbing campaign has commenced to promote the grievances of young farmers - "Nous marchons sur la tête." (We are walking on our heads). You know that feeling when you are half way to Paris on the TGV fast train in order to fly back to Australia early the next morning when you suddenly realise that your passport is snuggly tucked away in the drawer in your house in a little village in the middle of rural France?! Hmmm……  -Everything was totally under control with the preparations for closing up house smoothly completed. Hire car washed, house cleaned, linens changed, fridge emptied, heating system repaired, rubbished and recyclables bagged and placed in the street, suitcases carefully packed, fav airport hotel booked due to the early departure the next morning. Even time for a final stroll around the streets of old Angoulême and a café crême and croissant before dropping off the hire car and crossing the road to the station. We were both a little smugly self-satisfied that there was no last minute dash - as has occurred on occasions in the past.
The TGV was on time and we ensconced ourselves on board. First station - Poitiers. About one and a half hours after boarding at Angoulême, the city of Tours marked the half way mark to Paris. Less than 5 minutes before stopping at Tours, for some reason I sensed something was wrong, plus the need to check for my passport. Immediately I realised that my passport was still safely in the house in Verteuil…… oops. Don said I suddenly turned very pale, which is probably fairly accurate as I couldn’t believe how I could have neglected to think about ensuring I had my key to travelling home .... I had no idea how this was going to turn out. The train stopped and I jumped off the train with my suitcase, but without a firm plan on how I was going to get back to Angoulême, and then Verteuil, and then back to the CDG airport in Paris by early the next morning. It was three pm and already it was flashing across my mind that there weren’t many options. Wrestling with my heavy suitcase out of the Tours station, I looked for an Avis car rental office across the road, with a view to potentially driving back to Verteuil and then retracing my steps and then onto Paris and the airport. I entered, and was firmly told “no cars monsieur, impossible”. Next option, quickly back to the station to check out the train schedule back to Angoulême and it was fortunate that one was arriving in about 15 minutes. Grabbed a ticket and by 3.20, not believing my luck that a TGV was heading in the right direction, was on a train back to Angoulême, a couple of hundred kilometres away but still with no concrete plan about what to do when I got back there. Using the wifi I managed to find out that the only train back to Paris that day was at 5.36pm and I still had to work out how to get the passport in Verteuil, which is about 35 km from Angoulême. We have friends in a neighbouring village to us and I was able to contact Maria on messenger - she agreed to drop everything, and along with Björn, drive to Verteuil to collect my passport and then drive down to Angoulême to deliver my passport to me. What a relief to have such good friends who were willing to help me get out of a pretty awful predicament! So I arrived back in Angoulême, Maria and Björn did the passport drop, and I procured a ticket and seat on the day’s last TGV to Paris - all in about a thirty minute turnaround. So fortunate that the train schedules were working in my favour today, and so grateful for amazing friends such as Maria and Björn. Don has firmly said that from now on, he will be taking on passport duty. At least he’ll have the pleasure of my company on the flight tomorrow morning! The city of Angoulême is a mid-sized regional city in the French department of Charente, situated on the Charente River, just east of Bordeaux and about 3 hours south of Paris by TGV. We are familiar with Angoulême as it is the closest regional city to our little house in Verteuil - it is the step-off point after a long flight from Australia to Charles de Gaulle and the subsequent TGV train south to Angoulême. We typically collect our rental car from here during our stays. While not typically on the tourist path, it is a typical "working" French town, with an old town perched high up on a plateau overlooking a meander of the river Charente and surrounded by the remains of stone ramparts. The city is apparently nicknamed the "balcony of the southwest" and has a population a little less than 42,000 but it is the centre of an urban area of 110,000 people extending into the surrounding areas.  Panorama of Angoulême from Saint-Martin (South). Angoulême has a long history, extending to neolithic times. More recently, it was linked into the network of roman roads by the end of the Roman Empire. In the 800's the Vikings travelled up the Charente river and attacked the town. In the 1200s the Jewish community was attached by crusaders. In 1360, during the Hundred Years War, the town passed into the hands of the English. The English were expelled in 1373 by the troops of Charles V. In WWII, Angoulême was located in the occupied zone under German authority. The border with the free zone passed about 20 kilometres east of Angoulême, splitting the Charente department in two.
Angouleme is also well known for its collection of colourful wall frescos, or murales, painted onto building walls across the city and some of its inner suburban areas. In July, we followed a self-guided walk that explores these murales. You can follow the "hard-copy map from the Tourism Office, or download the app "Murs bd Angoulême". One of our favourite past times in Angoulême is to wander the old town and its seemingly haphazard, rickety old paved streets. We always seem to get lost. There are plenty of lovely shops and restaurants - including our favourite creperie. Walking along the old ramparts around the old town also allows for lovely views out over the Charentais department.  A young Australian guy moved to Europe and eventually to Paris where he has now lived for five years. Two or three years ago he started up a podcast which I happened to stumble across, and have been following since. He married a Swedish girl, and for their honeymoon, they both hopped on his red scooter and "scootered" around France in the shape of a heart at the top speed of 50km/hr. Oliver and Lina spent a week in Verteuil, and subsequently received a mention in his book that he has just published, "Paris on Air - a memoir", by Oliver Gee.
"I really, really enjoyed this book! Oliver Gee’s first book is a refreshing, romping read of his first five years living in Paris. It’s a love story – falling in love with this city, his new podcast, the lovely Lina, and of course, the Alp Slayer (affectionately known as the Red Beast). This is the perfect book for every wannabe Parisian, one of the best of its genre that I’ve read. By the time I turned the final page, I felt that I had been educated (I now know what the dot in the letter “i” is called), I learnt a couple of French words I truly hope never to use (for example, défenestrer), empathised with Oliver on some truly awful French lessons he experienced during his early times in Paris, and relived some of his lovely and zany podcast episodes from the last couple of years. Oliver brings Paris and France to life through his words and experiences – I didn’t want the pages to end. Five stars for a truly delightful, well written book that I am sure I will pick up again and again over the years".  Saying "Bonjour" more than once a day to the same person is not particularly polite!
Something new I learnt a little while back is that once you greet someone with "bonjour", you shouldn't repeat this greeting again to the same person during the day. It can be considered to be rude. If you say "bonjour" again, it gives the impression that you haven't yet seen them that day, or that you don’t remember saying it before, or worse, took no notice when you greeted them earlier. It's like saying "nice to meet you" to someone in the morning, and then you run into them again during the day and say again "nice to meet you". So if you say "bonjour" again, the person may look at you in a funny way and say something like: “on s’est déjà salués” (we already greeted each other). Instead of saying bonjour several times, the second greeting can be something along the lines of "re-bonjour!" or something nice like: "ça va depuis tout à l’heure"? (all good since earlier?). Or just "ça va"? I go for the latter as it avoids the difficult french "r" sound in "re-bonjour"!! or just a simple acknowledgement, smile and wave..... Going to a grocery store is always a buzz in another country, and France is no different. Lots of different products, choice, and variations on a theme when compared to products available at home in Australia. Whether it be E.Leclerc, Intermarché, Géant Casino, Carrefour, Super-U, Auchan or Lidl, it is always an enjoyable and stimulating experience. Grocery shopping is one of our enjoyable outings in France- is that sad? A mini cultural experience. There are quite a few differences to the chains found in Australia. So what are some of them? What are the traps for new learners? How to avoid embarrassment? What to be aware of? Here are some tips that, from experience, might be useful .....
And then there is this great spread called “Speculoos”, a cinnamon-y taste, which is a spread form of a biscuit they have over here, one often served with coffee. It is great on hot toasted slices of bread! However, you won’t find any vegemite on the shelves here. 3. Fresh milk seems to be a rarity in France. Lovers of "long life" milk are well catered for, but if you want fresh milk, come early before it runs out. In a huge store, there may only be a very small cabinet devoted to fresh containers of milk. 4. There are different arrangements for buying fresh fruit and vegetables at different stores. Sometimes there is an arrangement where you have to have your fruit and veges weighed first and priced to take it to the check-out. Other times, you need to put the co-inciding number of the product (that is displayed) into the self serve scales and put the ticket on the plastic bag before going to the check out. It can be embarrassing to get to the check out and you don’t have the price of the fruit on the bag! Creates a hold up in the queue if you have to run back to the fruit and vege section to get your purchase weighed and priced. This only happens once! The hint here is to just watch the other customers. 5. Over here, fresh chickens and other poultry tend to have a yellowish tinge to their skin… What the?! 6. France is fond of cheques. For whatever reason, cheques remain a very popular mode of paying for goods. While unheard of in Australia, in France we often pay by cheque in grocery stores. Every second or third person at the cassier at our local grocery store seems to pay by cheque. Logistically, all it requires is a signature, the cash register does the rest. 7. Be prepared to take your time. There are often queues for the check out, and even when there isn’t, it is not unusual for the check-out operator to have a casual, friendly conversation with every person in the queue before you. We have found this unhurried approach to service a challenge to get habituated to, but eventually it becomes quite pleasant, quirky custom. 8. Rug up when you go grocery shopping. Our experience is that the grocery stores here can be freezing!
10. Plastic bags are out in France. A great, progressive move. Remember to take a shopping bag/s with you when you go to grocery shop. Places like Le Clerc, Super U and Intermarché do not supply them. If you do not have any with you, you can buy them at the check out counter. Some bags are actually quite nice, often have a design related to the local area, and make inexpensive, light-weight gifts for those at home. 11. Opening hours. Always a little confusing as they vary according to the retailer and to the time of the year (and then there is always the “fermature exceptionelle” when places seem to close just for the heck of it).
12. Always announce your turn at the check out with a friendly “bonjour” (or “bonsoir” if after about 18.00), and on leaving, a “merci, bonne journée (or bonne soirée), au revoir” is the norm. 13. Bring a 50c or 1 euro coin to access the shopping trolley!
I saw the gendarmerie car waiting, ready to pounce, and as I drove on they started to follow me and then turn their lights on. “This is going to be interesting”, I thought. I pulled over and they stopped beside me and asked me to follow them, “suivez-nous”. I followed them to the car park of M. Bricolage and the two police men came over. They asked if I knew why they had stopped me. I responded that I thought so, “Je pense que oui”. They asked for my driver’s license, insurance papers and some “green” papers of which I had no idea what they were. Even before I handed over my Australian driver’s license they knew I was not of these parts from my harsh French accent and simplistic and straight-forward responses to their queries. “Is this your car”? “It is a hire car”. This is where I did a lot of scrummaging through the glove box, and thrust whatever papers I could find in there at them. “Where do you live”? “Here, or in Australia?? “Here”. “Verteuil, but just for three weeks”. “What are you doing here”? “I am on holidays”. They walked away and had a chat together. The younger one returned, gave me my licence back, and said I could go – “Allez-y!”. I think I was too hard for them. Anyway, they had the desired effect – I will be coming to a complete stop at “stop” signs in the future – good proportionate enforcement on their part.
Last week we had our first interaction with the French police. My daughter, Bronte, had her mobile phone stolen while we were in the old town of Strasbourg, in eastern France. Fifteen seconds inattention on our part while swapping phones to take some photos, and it was gone. To cut a long story short, when we realized it wasn’t going to turn up, we approached one of the multiple teams of police who were ever-present, patrolling the area, always in groups of four, with automatic weapons, always foreign and unsettling for us. They suggested making a report at the police station and gave us directions how to get there by tram. Off we went and eventually found the Hôtel de Police.
At the Hôtel de Police, visitors had to wait outside in the winter cold and were brought into the foyer one-by-one to have their pockets emptied, bags checked and then patted down. Then we had to tell our story at the front desk, before being asked to sit in the waiting area. Eventually, we were taken into an interview room where we spoke to a young police woman, from Paris, new to Strasbourg. She was very polite, rattled off a series of questions, and everything was keyed into her computer. There seemed to be a lot of typing going on for the minimal amount of input we were giving. At the end of the 25 minute session, we were given a copy of a multi-page statement/report, each page signed by Bronte. It will be interesting to see what we have to go through with the insurance company once we return to Australia and how they deal with police reports in non-English languages. Overall, I couldn’t complain about the interactions with the French police on these occasions – serious but polite and courteous, reasonable, helpful. |
AuthorJim lives in Brisbane, Australia, worked at The University of Queensland until 2025, and enjoys visiting, reading and learning about France. 
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