Several months before our move, we started thinking about how we’d make and receive phone calls with people back in North America. Our presumption was that we’d have both a landline and cell phones, but that using either one to make calls to North America on a regular basis would be prohibitively expensive. (It turns out that we were partially mistaken; I’ll say more about that later.) Similarly, we didn’t want to force the people who’d call us frequently from the United States and Canada to pay outrageous phone charges. So we decided early on that we’d use some sort of VoIP (voice-over-IP) service, with U.S. phone numbers and whatever hardware seemed to make phoning as convenient as possible.

We’d been happy Vonage customers for some time, and at first I thought we’d simply take our Vonage routers, and our San Francisco phone numbers, with us to France. Technologically, that would have worked perfectly well, but we decided against it for several practical reasons. First, we wanted to travel with as little hardware as possible. We couldn’t see packing two Vonage routers, their associated power supplies, the (cordless) phones we had connected to them, and the phones’ power supplies—all of which would have also required electrical adapters in France, too—since we were already counting every single pound and cubic inch of stuff to fit into the airline’s luggage guidelines. Vonage offers a Wi-Fi handset (the UTStarcom F1000BRB/WRB) that would have been plenty compact, but at the time its price was higher than we were prepared to pay, and the reviews we read suggested that we might be less than satisfied with its call quality and features.

Speaking of price, although Vonage is relatively inexpensive compared to conventional phone companies, we were trying to cut costs wherever possible. I had a personal account (at $24.99 per month) and a small business account (at $49.99 per month), and knowing how much cheaper Skype was, for example, we found that $75 per month hard to swallow. Read the rest of this article »

At our second-to-last visit to the French consulate in San Francisco, the agent told us that if our visa applications were accepted we’d need to present not only our passports, but one-way plane tickets to France before we’d be issued our visas. We didn’t think this would be a problem until we started looking at actual air fare costs for the date we’d chosen for our departure (June 30).

While we knew that June and July are very busy months for tourism to France, and therefore airfare costs are significantly higher at that time, we hadn’t looked closely at airfares since we last traveled to France in 2003. When we entered our travel date on various travel and airline sites, we were shocked to see how expensive the flights were. Of course, if we had made reservations six months in advance we might have seen very different prices, but even so, the prices seemed high considering our flight date was still three months away.

Since we knew that these already high-priced fares would only continue to go up in price, we realized that we couldn’t wait until we got our visas before purchasing tickets. This was a risk since we didn’t know for certain if we’d get the visas, and we’d have to eat this cost if it turned out we were rejected or delayed beyond our travel date. After agonizing about it, we decided to go ahead and buy our tickets before knowing whether we’d get the visas, because if we did get the visas, and then tried to buy tickets, we’d be way out of our budget.

As we began the ticket-buying process, we hit a major snag; we found that most travel/airline Web sites don’t allow you to search for one-way flights, but the ones that did kept returning higher-priced fares for a one-way trip than for a round-trip! This seemed highly illogical to us, but we couldn’t see a way around it if we stuck to online purchases. So we set out to find a travel agent who could answer our questions about how to discover cheaper one-way fares. What we found was that most brick-and-mortar agencies couldn’t help us; most of them specialized in cruises, student travel, or package vacations, and weren’t set up to simply search for the best airfare for a single flight.

After many false starts, we found a company in the Yellow Pages that provided airfare quotes through their Web site. Although the company is based in San Francisco, it turned out that I could make all the arrangements via email (a plus for an introvert like me) from start to finish. This company, Airbound, operates online, but it is different from other travel sites in that an actual person contacts you about your fare request. Since we had a lot of variables to sort out (one-way ticket, pet-friendly airline, very specific travel date) this personal contact made it much easier for me to get answers to specific questions so that we could find the perfect airfare for our needs.

I was very impressed with the agent who responded to my request; she was extremely helpful and prompt in replying to my questions. She eventually found us a good deal on a Northwest flight; the only catch was that we had to leave a day later than we had planned, but this turned out not to be a problem in the end. As I mention in another post (Flying the furry skies: Transporting our cat to France) the fact that the flight was with Northwest made it much easier for us to transport our cat. About seven weeks later, when we finally got word we’d been granted visas, we were very glad that we had our tickets already in hand. It was one less detail to sort out in the short amount of time remaining to us before we left for France.

We knew from the start of our planning that we would take our cat Zora with us to France, we just weren’t sure how to make that happen. Many people were surprised when we told them she was coming with us, but it seemed the obvious choice to us. No matter how difficult it might be to bring her along, she was part of the family and we couldn’t leave her behind.

There were a few major considerations involved in this decision; first of all, we had to factor her presence into our apartment hunting process (see Finding an apartment in Paris), and secondly, we had to find a way to physically transport her to France. Never having taken her with us on other travels, we weren’t familiar with the options available to us. I had heard about cross-country pet transportation from friends, but didn’t know much about overseas relocation. We were assuming that using a pet transportation company would simplify the process for us, as they would have all the information about entry requirements and the know-how to get Zora to France safely. We also didn’t know what state we’d be in by the day of our departure, and thought it would take a load off our minds to leave Zora’s care to professionals.

Our opinion about this course of action changed dramatically when we found out how much these companies charge to provide this service. From the Web sites we looked at, it seemed rates began at about $1000, and only went up from there. This was completely outside our price range, and we knew we’d have to come up with a different solution. Using one of these companies might have made sense for us if: a) our moving costs were being paid by an employer; b) we were moving multiple animals; or c) we were moving to a country that requires a period of quarantine (France doesn’t have this requirement for cats from the U.S.). Since none of these were true for us, we opted for Plan B.

Plan B was to find a pet-friendly airline that would allow us to bring Zora with us on our flight. In the course of my research, I found that there are many airlines that allow small pets in the cabin or cargo hold, but there was an additional complication. As I detail in the post Dealing with airfare sticker shock, it was going to be hard to find a reasonable fare to France for me and Joe, and being limited to pet-friendly airlines might have meant much higher ticket costs. Read the rest of this article »

If you want to take your pet to France—and we did—you have two entirely separate sets of problems. One is simply that of transportation; Morgen covered that in Flying the furry skies: Finding transportation for our cat. It can be a pain, but it’s ultimately not that much harder than buying a plane ticket for a person or sending a large package overseas. The other problem, though, is satisfying the relevant authorities that your pet is healthy, safe, and otherwise fit to enter the country. That’s what I want to talk about here.

Different countries have different regulations about importing animals. In some places (in fact, even within the U.S., Hawaii is such a place), all newly arriving animals must be quarantined for some period of time to make sure they don’t have rabies or various other highly problematic diseases. Had we been traveling to England, our cat would have had to be quarantined, and we would have had to jump through several other hoops as well. But France has comparatively relaxed rules about pet importation—at least if the pet in question is a dog, cat, or ferret and it’s coming from the U.S. or Canada. (Different regulations apply to all other animals and animals coming from other countries.) No quarantine is necessary, but you do have to meet other requirements:

• The animal must have a microchip. These are tiny RFID chips injected under the animal’s skin that enable it to be identified with a unique code when a scanner is passed over the chip. So if your pet goes missing and is found by someone, the microchip uniquely identifies it and connects it with you, the owner. (And, perhaps more importantly, the chip implies the animal isn’t feral, otherwise it might simply be destroyed if it ends up in the wrong place.) Our cat, Zora, had a chip implanted by the SPCA before we adopted her, and it adhered to the standard required by the French authorities. (If it had been another kind of chip, we would have had to supply our own scanner so that they could verify it! Apparently, tattoos are acceptable substitutes for microchips in some cases.)
• The animal must have a proper rabies shot. Zora has always been an exclusively indoor cat, and for that reason, on our vet’s advice, we had skipped giving her a rabies vaccination, because there is a small chance (1 in 10,000, depending on the type of vaccine) that cancer could develop at the vaccination site. However, risk of cancer or not, the French government requires a rabies shot. Moreover, it must be one that uses the killed (or “inactivated”) rabies virus, not the newer variety that uses a “modified live” virus (MLV) which, seemingly, carries a lower risk of cancer. If this is an initial rabies vaccine (as it was for us), the shot must have been given at least 21 days before the animal arrives in France.
• You must have a French health certificate. There’s a form you can download from the French Embassy’s Web site and take to your vet. It’s in French, but the form itself (not the supporting material) has English translations. It asks for the owner’s contact information, detailed identification of the pet, vaccination records, and a few other things that didn’t apply to us. Read the rest of this article »

One of the requirements for getting a long-stay visa (which lets you apply for a carte de séjour once you get here) is to provide proof that you have health insurance coverage for the first year after your arrival in France. In the past we have purchased travel health insurance for longer trips out of the country, but this visa process required an insurance plan on a completely different scale. We weren’t quite sure where to start looking, so I turned to the ever-faithful Google to see what I could find out.

Just typing in “expat health insurance france” got me to a lot of Web sites of companies that seemed to be able to provide what I needed, but none of them gave clear information about what type of plan exactly suited our situation. Wading through insurance terms and language at the best of times is difficult for me, but to try to make sense of this information without knowing the ins and outs of the French system was highly daunting. Plus, most of these companies asked you to fill out an extensive questionnaire, which included a lot of personal information, before they would give out even basic information about plans and prices. It all just seemed unnecessarily complicated, and I kept looking for a Web site that would give me some general guidance without my having to initiate anything at the start.

I found what I was looking for when I came across the Web site for Exclusive Health Care, a company that operates in France but has ties to insurance underwriters in the UK. I liked it immediately because the site seemed more personal and more open about what is required for expats moving to France. I was especially interested in the information they provided about their Gateway Plan which seemed to suit our situation perfectly. It provides what they call “catastrophe” insurance, basic coverage for emergency situations plus a few other services. The term of the coverage is for one year, but it is intended to be a stopgap for new residents waiting to enroll in the French health care system (you can only apply for this after three months of residency). Once new residents obtain insurance through the state system (known as Securité Sociale), the remaining balance on the plan is rolled over into what is called a “Mutuelle,” an add-on type of insurance which reimburses you for the percentage of health fees not covered by the Securité Sociale.

The Gateway Plan seemed like the best option for us, and as we had limited time to secure proof of insurance before our visa appointment at the French consulate, we hoped that it would not take too long to process our application. One thing that made the process go faster was that we already had an address in France (which they requested on the application form), having decided to find an apartment before we submitted our visa applications (see Finding an apartment in Paris). Despite a little bit of miscommunication at the start, and with a few worried emails and phone calls on our part, Exclusive did come through for us in time, and the documents they provided were exactly what the Consulate agents needed. We were also pleased that although we had to pay half of the yearly premium up front in order to receive our insurance policy documents, we didn’t have to pay the balance until we arrived in France and our insurance coverage officially took effect.

As we continue our stay here in France, I’m certain we’ll have more questions and confusion about our health insurance status, but with the Gateway Plan we’ve found the right solution for the time being.

Even though the consulate told us that we did not, strictly speaking, have to have a lease on our apartment before we applied for a visa, we thought it would be prudent to keep our eyes out for a place we liked. And we decided that if the right deal came along, we’d just go for it. Although we stood a certain risk (i.e., losing our deposit if we didn’t get our visas), we thought it would also make us look that much more serious about the process and thus increase our chances of success. And besides, we’d have to figure out housing sooner or later and we wanted to be able to cross it off our list as soon as we could.

We did some Google searches and found a bunch of sites that advertise Parisian apartments for rent—mostly with ads in English and thus, presumably, catering to foreigners like ourselves. Here are a few of the sites we checked regularly (just Google “Paris apartments” and you’ll find a zillion more):

• Paris Attitude
• Paristay
• New York Habitat
• Paris Net
• craigslist Paris housing

With the exception of craigslist, these sorts of sites tend to offer furnished apartments, for terms ranging from a day to multiple years, that are considered vacation rentals as far as French housing laws are concerned. This is hugely important. On the one hand, when renting out an apartment on a “short-term” basis like this (even if the lease is a year long or more), the landlords have much greater security. It’s really hard to get rid of a long-term tenant you don’t want anymore, even if they’ve committed what in the U.S. would be a grave offense. Not so with vacation rentals, in which virtually all the rights remain with the landlord. On the other hand, this fact also works in the favor of people trying to rent an apartment from overseas, especially if (like us) they’re self-employed. To exaggerate just slightly, the only thing you need to do to rent one of these apartments is pick an apartment you like and show them the money. However, to rent an apartment long-term, as a resident, you have to provide detailed financial records, personal references, and more—you have to prove to the owner that you’re worthy. You also have to compete with dozens of other people trying to do the same thing. If your French isn’t great or if you don’t appear to have a stable, conventional, permanent job, your chances become that much worse. But if you succeed, the reward is lower rent and the protection of the tenant-biased housing laws. Read the rest of this article »

When we started thinking about this blog, we had the idea that we’d document every step we took to get to France in real time. We thought other people trying to do something similar would find it useful to see a chronological record of all our steps (and missteps). Although that didn’t happen, there’s a series of events we wanted to go back and describe in some detail, even though they happened a while ago: our four visits to the French consulate in San Francisco. Before I get to the first one, though (the other three will be future posts), I wanted to give a bit of background.

We’d read that folks from the U.S. who want to live in France for more than three months need a long-stay visa, and that one applies for such a visa at the nearest French consulate. (The one nearest to us, the Consulate General of France in San Francisco, was only about 15 minutes away by public transit.) We’d also seen the actual visa application form, which you can download from the consulate’s Web site, and the list of the other documentation you need to bring.

The problem was, despite having done considerable research, some elements of the application process just baffled us. For example: the visa application form asks for your address in France. Fine, we’d be renting an apartment, but how were we supposed to do that before knowing if, or when, our visas would be granted? It’s tough to look for an apartment when you have no idea when your move-in date might be. In fact, we’d already made some inquiries, and one person had told us that she couldn’t rent us an apartment at all unless we already had a visa—a real chicken-and-egg problem. The same went for health insurance: you need to have proof of health insurance that meets certain criteria and will cover you for the entire duration of your stay in France, but how can you buy health insurance without knowing for sure if or when you’ll be allowed into the country? We were also supposed to bring a letter stating that we wouldn’t have any “paid activity” in France, but we’re freelance writers who will certainly continue getting money for writing while we’re there—does that count as “paid activity”? And finally, we were unsure whether our applications would be considered separately or as a couple; there were some requirements we couldn’t both have met individually, but would if considered as a family unit. Read the rest of this article »

Truffles for Breakfast is the ongoing story of two people, Morgen Jahnke and Joe Kissell, whose dream it was to leave behind their familiar San Francisco surroundings and live simpler but (we hope) more interesting lives in France.

I described our decision to move to France in an article on Interesting Thing of the Day: La Chose Intéressante du Jour. That contains most of the details of what we’re doing and why. It’s been interesting to read the comments and email messages that article has generated. Lots of people have either welcomed us to Europe or congratulated us on our decision. Several have said that they, too, have dreamed of doing something like this—of these, some still consider it a viable possibility while others don’t. And a few have expressed puzzlement, resentment, or even antipathy: “How could you possibly think France is better than the United States?”… “People with real lives don’t have the luxury to do such a thing” … “France is no friend of ours, so neither are you.” I said a few words about the more extreme examples of such comments in Striking a Nerve.

One refrain I hear over and over again is: “I could never do that. It’s impossible.” I think that’s funny, in a way, because it’s a common French habit to proclaim that something is impossible when what you mean is that you don’t want to be bothered—or that you simply need convincing. We’ve worked our way through a lot of problems that seemed, at first, to be unsolvable. What we’ve found is that there’s a huge difference between “impossible” and “very very hard.” I’m sure that some things truly are impossible, but in our experience so far, we’ve found that persistence and determination make all the difference. To be sure, we’ve experienced some stressful days, tears, pain, and frustration—with more, undoubtedly, to come—but also a lot of joy and laughter. On the whole, I think we’re both very happy with our decision, and delighted to be living in France. I’m here to tell you that it absolutely is possible to do what we did if you make it your priority and refuse to give up when faced with apparent roadblocks. Read the rest of this article »