So France, Maybe?

It has been eight months since my last entry and in that time we have traveled a great deal including various horse camping/riding extended weekends, a visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, a trekking trip to England and the Channel Islands, and a diving/snorkeling trip to Raja Ampat Indonesia. Fun times.

 We also watched in horror as a third of our country voted for a narcissistic convicted sex offender and con man who has since inflicted his fascist and authoritarian rule over the country, all the while a Republican controlled congress looks on with approval and seventy seven million Americans cheer him on. And still another third just looks on passively while the rest of us try to resist and insist our elected officials uphold the constitution, which they swore to do before taking office. Alarming times.

Had the shit not hit the fan I would be posting now about our move back to Oregon this year, but that course of action seems doubtful with the current state of our country.

In an earlier entry I had mentioned that I still wanted to live in France even though we had moved to Sacramento. Prior to the election I had created a list of potential countries where we could move (each had a permanent residency visa for which we qualified, had adequate infrastructure and held compatible ideologies) should the worse come to happen. It was split into English and non English speaking countries. All of the English speaking countries had tropical climates and our recent trip to Indonesia showed that this is not the type of weather for us to live long term. Of the non English speaking countries France was at the top of the list.

And now moving to a country that more closely aligns with our morals, ethics, and ideals looks very attractive indeed. So France, maybe?

Followers of this blog know that we considered moving to Portugal and spent five years researching and visiting the country to see if it could work for us. We fell in love with Porto in the north, but could not find a combination of boarding stables and riding trails for our horses that suited us, and thus ended our plans to move there. France is different: boarding stables have a legal minimum requirement of pasture space per horse and there are many with an online presence; riding trails are plentiful with online lists (for example, https://www.wikiloc.com/trails/horseback-riding/france); and there are a lot of affordable equestrian suitable properties (some with stables and fenced pastures) should we decide to go back to keeping horses with us.

In addition to the encouraging horse keeping details France is appealing to us for numerous other reasons. Even the far right political parties firmly support public healthcare and reproductive rights for women. They have affordable health care which is ranked as the best in the world. They have one of the best public transit systems in the world. They have progressive policies to protect people and the environment. It is for the most part less expensive than living in the US. And France is large enough and geographically positioned such that it has a diverse set of climates from which to chose to live. France has a tax treaty with the US that is very advantageous to US citizens living there, and they offer a visa with permanent residency that can be used by retirees with even modest passive incomes.

How does the French Long Stay Visa work? You apply from your home country no more than three months prior to your move and need to have a US passport, a birth certificate*, proof of suitable health insurance coverage (there is a list of requirements), proof of accommodation in France, proof of passive income (the minimum wage in France, which is currently about $1,800 USD), a signed letter that you will not work in France, and a handful of other documents. On the west coast of the US this will go through VFS Global in San Francisco, which is also where the in person interview will be scheduled. The visa is good for one year and can be renewed from France each subsequent year. After five years you can apply for a ten year visa or even citizenship.

* In France a birth certificate is continually updated with changes in your life, and even though in the US it is a static document, you will be required to provide a new copy from your state of birth (with an official apostille) each time an application requires it.

So what are some of the downsides to living in France? The smoking rate is substantially higher than in the US. The French bureaucracy is said to be bad, but it is probably no worse than dealing with many US agencies or corporations (especially health insurance), but everything is in French! In most rural areas people are not as progressive as in the cities (but still more progressive on most issues than most places in the US). You must learn French if you are to integrate with society and the local culture and deal with the bureaucracy -- I consider this more of a benefit but it will make living in France much more difficult than in an English speaking country, and so I have listed it as a con.

For places to live we need somewhere with a lot of existing horse infrastructure (boarding stables, vets, farriers, trails, etc.). Elayne prefers places where it is sunny most of the time but not too hot in the summer and I would like to avoid extreme cold and snow in the winter. I think the stretch of France following the Spanish border running from Bordeaux on the Atlantic to Montpelier on the Mediterranean would work out well for both of us. This is the area north of the Pyrenees. There are a number of cities in this region (including Toulouse) and many villages that could be ideal places to live.

I have been to France twice but only in Paris (back in the early 1990s when I worked for a French company) and Elayne has never been. And so we need to make a scouting trip sometime relatively soon to make sure France -- specifically southwest France -- would work for us and the horses.

I see two options for moving: the get the hell out of Dodge approach and the longer term progressive achievements approach.

Getting the hell out and scampering to France now is highly appealing in that we'd begin adapting to the new culture right away, start enjoying the benefits of living in a progressive society sooner rather than later, and it would actually happen (rather than be just a plan for something to happen). The problems with this idea are that we do not speak any French, we would need to rush to make the scouting trip, rush to sell (or store or ship) our belongings, rush to sell our house, rush to find a place to live, and rush to get the horses transported and boarded.

Taking the longer term approach means we could start taking French lessons now and be close to A1 level before the scouting trip and possibly beginning A2 before moving. It would give us extra time to research details for horse keeping (and transporting) and making connections with like minded expats and professionals already there. And it gives us time to have a leisurely trip through southwest France where we won't feel rushed or pressured to find the perfect place right away and could meet up with expats (this worked out well for us in Portugal). It gives us plenty of time to decide what to ship and what to sell. We could be ready to move as early as May 2026. The biggest disadvantage is that it means kicking the can down the road yet again.

So is this it, are we moving to France? We don't know yet, but I sure hope so.