Finding a community
Many posts to the FaceBook group “Expats move to France,” are about how hard it is to make connections and become part of the community, and to be honest, I don’t know how people are able to move to France without knowing anyone in the town/village they selected. My mother-in-law did that in the 60’s and I moved to the US in the 80’s, but she lived here part-time for years before she moved here, and I moved to the US for grad school. Moves are so complicated at the best of times, international ones more so! Yes, we did buy our house via Zoom and docusign, but there was so much paperwork, and there has been so much more paperwork since (think a 17 page health form from me before we could sign our required mortgage agreement). Luckily my husband is patient and polite on endlessly looped phone calls, and he speaks French-French (although not with the local accent).
But also we have friends who tell us how to do these things, tell us what is “normal,” and commiserate about bureaucracy and the need to ask exactly the right question to get the information you want. And our bank manager is a dream and a source of essential information and advice. My husband’s family has banked at Crédit Agricole forever, as has he, and they were happy to set up an account for me (although only under my “married name” despite my not taking his name), and deal with my minimal French. Many expats have identified Crédit Agricole as an excellent choice for people getting established, including non-French speakers, but already having a relationship with the bank made it so much easier for us before we were actually residents and then when we bought the house.
On a day-to-day basis, if you lack local relationships finding the best and most trustworthy plumber, electrician, roofer, mechanic is just luck. As is finding one who will actually show up when you want. Most contractors have more work than time, and in southern France at least, time is still one’s own to be spent as one will. Work is only part of the day. In a small village, 90% of these connections are based on who you know. If you don’t know the contractor, it is good if you know a member of the family, or if your friends or relatives do. Or a neighbor. A trusted neighbor is worth their weight in gold – a friend of a friend is my friend, too. But then comes the negotiations.
Beyond finding people to do work for you, you need help with the work you do yourself. Who do you ask to hold the other end of the shutter as you put it up, or help you move an armoire? For those things you need neighbors, and we have been blessed with insider-help since we decided to move here. On a practical and psychological level that has made the move possible.
Familial community
As you may have gathered from other posts, my mother-in-law is French and my husband was born in France, but raised with his siblings in the US. My in-laws bought a house just down the road from our new house in the 1960s (where my MIL now lives full-time), so the children spent summers here and I have been coming for three decades, although the longest I have actually lived here is four months. Walter’s five siblings and their families and his five cousins and their families are all regular visitors throughout the year, and my siblings and families have visited multiple summers since I started coming here. In a practical sense, our family network is as extended as that of families who have lived in the village for generations. We can call on those who live in France or the UK and they will come, and they play an essential role in also helping my MIL stay in her home with her beloved view of Cordes.
In addition, there is a strong network of women who help to care for my MIL and have built their own community (complete with their own WhatsApp group) and included us beyond just the details of care. Two of them were essential for the success of “Camp America” (see below) but their advice on so many things is essential, as is their network of mostly alternative friends.
It is impossible to go a day and not see other people for at least a coffee. As I have noted elsewhere, this requires a complete change of behavior for me, the workaholic who does not stop writing “just to be social.” Now I am learning to stop, make a note to remind myself where I was, then close the laptop and go make coffee. And just maybe I will manage to make something sweet to go with it…
