A One Year France-iversary

Excuse me?

Wow, wow, wowww we’re a whole year in. I can’t believe it. And we’re both still in one piece. And happy. Someone asked me last month how long we’d lived here and I said, in French, “oh, a few months, we moved last November”, to which he replied, “So almost a year”, probably to confirm we weren’t misunderstanding each other. I was kind of stunned, and said yes, actually, he was correct. Almost a year.

And now it is a year.

We’re fresh off a day trip to Grenoble, a buzzy, small city in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region where we live.

Three different angles of the city from the top, with Mont Blanc in the background of the last one.

We took the train, city center to city center, one of the best things about living in France (or Europe in general) being this highly accessible mobility.

In honor of our Franciversary, we put lists below of the things we love, the things that drive us a little nuts, and the one thing I find to be just stupid.

THINGS WE LOVE

• Walking, biking, and public transportation. We intentionally chose to live in a city, and a neighborhood in the urban core so we could walk and bike with ease. It’s easy, safe, and enjoyable. Lyon in particular has done a really good job with biking infrastructure. Continent-wide, the Euro Vélo has designed a network of paths you can take all over the continent! We can’t wait to do a couple of weekend trips.

• The food and wine. Duh. This is why I have an entire section of posts dedicated to what we’re eating and drinking.

• Way less stress. The ambient stress level here is way lower than what we came from. Maybe it’s due to more walking, taking transit, and simply being outside or maybe it’s a cultural difference. Either way, the difference is very noticeable and I love it.

• LOTS of cultural, sports, and arts opportunities. The government organizes, or supports the organization of, a lot of entertainment for people. This can be through fairs, events, or sporting groups, and there’s a lot of effort that goes into making these opportunities accessible to many people. Speaking of sports, I’ve joined a French field hockey team and Justin is playing basketball with a group of other North American transplants.

• Green spaces and nature. It’s hard to compare green spaces to the vast National Parks and state parks in the US, but for such a small country, France packs a huge punch when it comes to the outdoors. You can have just about any microclimate and geographical formation of your choosing within the country.

• The French are really nice and very polite. I’ve said this for a long time, but the stereotype of rude French people as a generalization is wrong. My experience has been that the proportion of rude Americans is way higher than rude French people. And I’ve spent considerable time in nearly every part of France at this point. Don’t mistake the realness for rudeness.

DRIVES AT LEAST ONE OF US NUTS

• Cyclists. A community of which I am apart, but with whose behavior I do not agree. I do love biking here WAY more than in Nashville and it is exponentially safer. But, so many bikers here are either militant in their “biker can do whatever they want” behavior or simply lacking in good judgement. They do not signal to other bikers to turn or pass, they do not stop at signs and intersections as they should, they weave in and out of traffic, they pass both on the inside and outside of cars and form blobs rather than lines at stop lights (when they decide to stop), maybe 50% wear helmets, and I’ve seen several almost take out pedestrians who had the right of way. There have been some issues/accidents recently, and I would love to see biking groups launch a large educational campaign because this relatively new form of transit in France needs some structure. And e-bikes need speed limits. Ok, rant over.

• French bureaucracy. We still don’t have our insurance cards yet. Classic.

• Not even sure what this is. In order to play sports or join most gyms you have to visit a doctor and get them to approve you for the activity, like high school sports physicals. I find this absurd. Fortunately, our climbing gym hasn’t asked and my field hockey team has let it slide for a couple months, but I will have to break soon. You also have to have this form to run races…lol.

• The pizza. Is not real pizza. It’s basically charcuterie, arugula and unmelted cheese on crust. We have found a couple places we like, but really someone please just get me a NY slice.

WTF

• French driving laws. We’re talking speeding tickets for 1kph over the speed limit, 4 different road signs that mean the same thing, intersections with no road signs at all…it’s called La Code de la Route and it has got to be the most illogical, antiquated thing I’ve ever seen. I have to take my driver’s test here since TN doesn’t have a transfer agreement, so I’ve been studying and the more I do, the more I hate this fucking thing. (I’ve been driving here on my US license for a year without issue and can until February. Test is in January, in French. Wish me luck.)

Because and despite of these things, we love it here. Here’s a throwback to the girls snoozing on their flight last year, November 17, 2023, getting way better sleep than I did as I was trying to figure out why in the world we thought this was a good idea. But a year later, I can say it was.