Who are you people?
What’s your basic plan?
When did you move?
How long will you be in France?
Why do you want to move to France?
Could it be that you’re just having a mid-life crisis?
Where do you live?
Why Paris in particular?
But isn’t San Francisco fantastic? Who’d want to leave there?
How well do you speak French?
What do you do for money?
What about taxes?
Do you know how hard this is going to be?
How do you get permission to live in France?
What if you can’t get a visa?
What if it doesn’t work out while you’re there?
What about all your stuff?
Who are you people?
Joe Kissell and Morgen Jahnke have been married for about six years, and lived most of that time in San Francisco. Morgen is originally from Saskatchewan; Joe grew up in Pennsylvania. We’re writers by trade, but we have wide-ranging interests, especially when it comes to food, travel, language, and (for Joe, at least) technology.
What’s your basic plan?
In a nutshell, we’ve moved to Paris with our cat, our computers, and as little other luggage as we could manage. While here, we’ll continue writing, and also do as much traveling as time and funds permit, both within France and elsewhere in Europe.
When did you move?
We left San Francisco on July 1, 2007, and arrived in Paris on July 2.
How long will you be in France?
We’re saying three years. But really: we’re not certain right now. If, after three years, we decide that we love everything about France and can’t see any good reason to move back, maybe we’ll stay longer. Conversely, if after a year we realize that we’re miserable, perhaps we’ll come back sooner. We may also choose, at whatever point, to move to a different part of France, or to yet another country. Without knowing how we’ll feel or what situations we’ll encounter, though, our best guess is that we’ll be here for at least three years and likely longer.
By the way, we really have no idea where we’ll live if and when we return to North America. Although we love San Francisco, we’d most likely choose to live in a different (that is, less expensive) part of the country—or perhaps even in Canada.
Why do you want to live in France?
There are many ways to answer this, all equally true and all equally inadequate. The simplest and most honest answer is that we like France. A lot. We think that, on the whole, we’ll like it more than we liked San Francisco—even taking into account the inevitable difficulties we’ll encounter.
Another true answer, funny though it may sound: we’re here because of the bread. Even in San Francisco, it was hard to find truly great baguettes; what most bakeries there call baguettes are a pale, Americanized imitation. Ditto for your pastries and, frankly, lots of other foods. We never have trouble finding great bread in France. Of course, it’s not just the food; it’s the whole attitude toward one’s quality of life. French culture values a lot of things that we do, and we want to know what it’s like to immerse ourselves in that way of life.
Other answers: we thrive on novelty, and France is full of interesting things to satisfy that need. We think that, culturally, France suits our personalities well. We want to learn much more about the French language and French history; you can be sure that our experiences will provide tremendous fodder for our writing.
Could it be that you’re just having a mid-life crisis?
That depends on how long we live, I guess! I think we’ve both reached the age at which we realize life is too short to spend it being bored or stuck in a rut, and we’re choosing to do something about that.
Where do you live?
We’re currently renting a small apartment in the 11th arrondissement of Paris (see Finding an apartment in Paris). It’s a short-term rental; once we’ve gotten settled we’ll begin exploring various neighborhoods and looking for a more permanent place to live.
Why Paris in particular?
We’ve traveled to a number of regions of France, and they all have much to recommend them. For example, we read all of Peter Mayle’s books about Provence and found it every bit as delightful as he described. But however idyllic a farmhouse in the country may sound, we’re city people at heart. And as cities go, Paris holds a particular appeal. It has an amazing history, a seemingly endless supply of interesting things to see and do, and all those romantic associations from literature and film. Also, Paris is a major transportation hub, so when we want to visit other spots within France and elsewhere in Europe, they’ll be easy to reach.
But isn’t San Francisco fantastic? Who’d want to leave there?
San Francisco is pretty great. As American cities go, it’s about as cosmopolitan and interesting as you can get; it’s also nicely compact and has a great climate. We enjoyed living there for the most part, but after more than six years, there was very little left of the city that we hadn’t experienced, and we were itching for something new and very different.
How well do you speak French?
Not nearly well enough. We each studied a bit of French in school, and learned a bit more on our two trips to France in the past several years. We can order food, ask for directions, and make some sense of the headlines, but not carry on a meaningful conversation of any complexity. We’ll be working to improve our French considerably while we’re here, and we may enroll in language classes of some kind; there’s only so much you can learn from books, recordings, and computer software.
What do you do for money?
The same things we did before. Joe writes and edits books and articles about computers, and both of us develop online content for a number of Web sites, including Interesting Thing of the Day, SenseList, The Geeky Gourmet, Spectatrix, and I Am Joe’s Blog (with others in development). Although the Web-based writing doesn’t bring in a huge amount of money, it brings in some—and we expect it to grow considerably this year. We can do this writing, and collect the paychecks, from anywhere in the world where we have access to a computer and an Internet connection. We aren’t taking away any French jobs; on the contrary, we’re contributing money from the U.S. to the French economy.
What about taxes?
We’ll have to pay them. As U.S. citizens, we’re required to pay U.S. taxes on our income anywhere in the world. And, as long-term residents of France, we’re required to pay taxes to the French government too. The United States gives its citizens a credit for taxes paid to foreign governments, up to a point, so although our overall taxes will presumably be somewhat higher, it’s not as though they’ll double.
Do you know how hard this is going to be?
We have an inkling, yes. We’ve read a great deal, in books and online, about people who have moved to France from the U.S. and the various headaches they’ve experienced. We anticipate a long succession of bureaucratic complications. We expect delays and frustrations of all sorts. We realize that, while here, we’ll find any number of things baffling and inscrutable. We’ll get tripped up by the language, the money, and the culture. We’ll miss our comfortable life in San Francisco. We know all this, and we’re here anyway!
In 1962, President Kennedy described his plan to send people to the Moon as follows: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and our skills…we do not know what benefits await us…[but] space is there and we are going to climb it.” We think that living in France will be hard—though not has hard as going to the Moon!—and we want to do it for some of those same reasons. We think it will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and our skills. Also, compared to the Moon, the bread is way better.
How did you get permission to live in France?
To visit France for more than 90 days, you need a visa (unless you’re a citizen of an EU country). We had to assemble a huge amount of paperwork, including an application form, proof of appropriate health insurance, a rental agreement, a letter stating our intentions, financial guarantees, and so on (all translated into French, of course!), photos, and an application fee, and submit it all at the French consulate in San Francisco. We also got fingerprinted. They sent our dossiers back to France for processing, and after almost seven weeks we were finally granted visas, which enabled us to enter France with the intention of staying long-term. However, the visas only got us into the country; as soon as we got here, we had to make appointments at our local Préfecture de Police to apply for cartes de séjour, or long-term residence cards (an even more complex process than getting visas); these cards, once granted (which can take months) must be renewed every year.
What if it doesn’t work out while you’re there?
If something happens that makes life unbearable, such as losing our income or encountering serious health problems, we’ll just return to North America and continue our lives as best we can. But we think our circumstances would have to be pretty extreme to make us conclude that living in France simply wasn’t working out. Merely experiencing day-to-day frustrations probably wouldn’t make us think that, because we can experience those anywhere.
What about all your stuff?
Of the many obstacles to moving overseas, one of the most aggravating was how to deal with all our accumulated clutter. That included not only physical objects, such as clothes, furniture, and papers, but also the clutter of too many projects, meetings, and time commitments. In short, too many distractions and things to worry about. Part of our goal in moving here was to make our lives simpler in every possible way.
It would have been impractical and expensive to move all our belongings to France, so we sold or gave away most of our stuff and rented a tiny storage unit for those few things we thought we’d need again some day. We rented a furnished apartment and brought with us only what we could take on the plane—and even at that, it sometimes feels like we brought too much. In general, we think that having fewer possessions (or, more accurately, having the optimal selection of possessions) results in less psychological stress, less wasted time, and a greater ability to focus on what’s important to us.