Nicola Piroth at work and at play

Nicola Piroth is a play therapist with a private practice in Grenoble. She talks to Grenoble Life about creative approaches to psychotherapy, her international background and setting up a cabinet in France.

Grenoble Life: Tell us a little about your methodology.

Nicola Piroth: I practise as a play therapist, which means that I use a creative approach to psychotherapy. Play therapy recognises that children naturally use play as a creative form of self-expression and communication in order to grow and develop, as well as to address traumatic and painful issues from a safe distance. Children that are faced with distressing life events may not feel comfortable talking about their emotions, but through play therapy they can communicate and explore their feelings, learn skills and tools to heal their emotional pain.

In my cabinet, I mostly see children and adolescents in individual, regular play therapy sessions.  However, I also use another approach called filial therapy with some families. Using this alternative method I train parents to conduct individual play sessions – similar to play therapy but with their own children. This way of working can be so helpful when communication hasn’t been possible between parents and their children – for any number of reasons, but often simply because we don’t get any training to be parents even though it is quite possibly one of the hardest tasks we are faced with as adults. Children communicate through play – it is their innate language. By teaching parents the language of play, and how to use play therapeutically, the communication gap between parent and child can be closed.

Perhaps it is surprising, but I also use play therapy, and more specifically sandplay therapy, with adults. Using small trays of sand, clients sculpt the sand and position miniature objects and figurines to create scenes, worlds or designs that are expressions of their inner world. Sandplay therapy gives the client direct access to their internal self, allowing them to understand issues in a deeper way. As adults we often get stuck in certain situations or circular ways of thinking, and it is helpful to use a creative non-verbal tool to explore our inner workings, alongside more traditional dialogue.

GL: Does this methodology differ to established methods in France?

Nicola: As far as I know, traditionally, psychotherapy here has mostly been a verbal, intellectual process, perhaps based on a more medical model of psychiatry concerned with cause and effect. This relies mostly on talking things through. In play therapy we additionally use non-verbal, creative approaches that give space to the intuitive Self – the part of us that knows what it needs to heal, even if it can’t explain it. Experiencing our Self at this level allows us to integrate what we feel and what we know intellectually in order to move on.

Another aspect of the predominant model of psychotherapy in France is that it is still largely ‘adult’ led, with the doctor, psychiatrist or therapist seen as knowing more than the patient who is a passive recipient of the treatment.  In my own work, I believe it is essential to follow the client’s lead, to trust that – given a safe and accepting environment (as in child-centred play therapy) – children have within them the desire and strength to find their own way to heal and to grow.

This non-directive approach facilitates the development of self-responsibility, self-control, and appropriate self-esteem. It is my responsibility as the therapist to provide that safe and containing space in which the child can explore who they are, how they feel and ‘play out’ different solutions.  This also has larger implications regarding how I work with parents. I believe therapy must be a collaborative effort. For the child to have the safe space in my office is one thing, but regular meetings between the parents and I give parents the support they need in order to be able to accompany their child on the journey towards growth and change.

GL: Who comes to you and what are some of the reasons why?

Nicola: I see clients between one and 100 years of age … Traditionally play therapy was developed to work with the specific needs of 2–12 year olds, but I practise a more general creative psychotherapy that I feel applies to all of us…

Why do people seek psychotherapy for themselves or for their children? It’s a very big question that has as many answers as there are people in therapy… adults come to work on existential issues, difficult life experiences (such as divorce, a loss, or adapting to a new country), or to further their personal development. Children and adolescents are referred for equally diverse reasons, for example, their parents have noticed low self-esteem, depression, or the development of challenging behaviours at home or at school. Perhaps the family or child has recently undergone a traumatic experience – ranging from maltreatment to moving homes, the birth of a sibling, long-term illness and hospitalisation, adoption, bullying … to name but a few.

Yet other children have difficulties ‘fitting in’ (whatever that means!), struggle at school, or have been diagnosed with developmental difficulties that require a little extra help to develop their sometimes hidden potential.  Play therapy is useful for a whole range of emotionally-based problems of behaviour and adjustment.

GL: Are these reasons different in any way to those you have encountered working in other countries?

Nicola: Regarding my work with children, I would say that generally the reasons are the same here – parents come because they are worried about their children –  and though the way I work using play is unknown in France, it attracts a lot of people looking for a more child-centred approach. International families often come to the cabinet when they feel misunderstood or judged by more traditional French therapists who might be unfamiliar with different child rearing and cultural practises (for example long-term breastfeeding or co-sleeping), or the challenges facing  multi-cultural families.

I certainly do not pretend to understand the cultural background of all of the families I work with, but through my own personal experience, I am aware of some of the daily struggles one faces just trying to adapt to something as potentially stressful as a new school system …

GL: Where do you come from and where did you train as a therapist?

Nicola: That’s not such an easy question for me to answer… I was born in Germany to German parents, and have since lived in six different countries across four continents. I originally trained as a psychologist specialising in child development in the UK, but after a short career in a major child and adolescent psychiatry unit in London conducting psychological research I decided to train as a play therapist.

I think I realised that I am much better suited at playing Peter Pan with four year olds than at establishing a diagnosis or quantifying human experience in order to plug the results into a computer for analysis.  Don’t get me wrong, I respect and value psychometric testing when it’s necessary and well-carried out by a sensitive psychologist – but those are not my skills and no longer the approach I practise. My training as a psychologist remains extremely useful to me and it definitely informs my work, but I have tried to move away from ‘putting problems in boxes’ to working and thinking problems ‘out of the box’.

GL: What languages do you work in and why?

Nicola: I work using the languages I am fluent in – that is English, German and French.

GL: Why did you come to Grenoble?                   

Nicola: Our move from the USA to Grenoble was not an easy one for me – I loved living in California, but at that time it was necessary for our family to return to Europe. Luckily we were able to settle in Grenoble since it’s so central in this fantastic mix that is Europe.

GL: What difficulties, if any, did you have in setting up your cabinet in Grenoble?

Nicola: Perhaps the biggest hurdle for me was that play therapy didn’t exist here – at all. There wasn’t even a French translation for it, so I made up my own, la Thérapie par le Jeu. I am affiliated and registered with several international play therapy associations – but none of my foreign qualifications were recognised in France. Coupled with an attitude I frequently encounter here of “no one’s every done that before, so surely there is no point changing things by trying something new now….” I took a risk setting up my practise without any professional network.  And now, of course, that the cabinet is up and running, the French reaction is extremely positive and open minded with reactions such as “why don’t you train people here”!

GL: What advice would you give people setting up their own businesses/private practices in France?

Nicola: I’m not sure about giving advice, other than don’t be put off by all the scary looking forms and impressive civil servants. It does sometimes feel like everyone is trying to dissuade you from even trying, either by piling useless and endless paperwork at you or by sounding generally negative and complicated about relatively straightforward business. But if you have enough time to stand in queues and patiently rephrase your question for the third time, often that very same administration (like the URSSAF) can actually be a goldmine of information. France really is ready for some innovative business ideas, if you can just navigate and bully your way through the system.

A taste of Celtic Connection events

Maighread Gallagher, Secretary of the Celtic Connection in Grenoble, talks about the origins of the association, the events it organises, and celebrating St Patrick’s Day in style.

Grenoble Life: What is the Celtic Connection?

Maighread Gallagher: The Celtic Connection is an association loi 1901 which promotes Irish and Celtic culture in Grenoble and beyond.

GL: What sorts of activities do you organise?

Maighread: We organise cultural events and informal meetings, these include: film screenings, an annual picnic, something for Hallowe’en, something for Christmas, and of course we celebrate St Patrick’s Day in style! 

GL: What kind of services to do you offer?

Maighread: We don’t formally offer any services, but we are happy to help new arrivals with the administrative hurdles they will encounter in Grenoble, or even just to meet up because during those first months it can be lonely in a new city and country. Sometimes it’s nice just to be able to talk to someone who understands where you’re coming from. We can also put people in touch with an Anglophone doctor or dentist if they need it, and we have a few contacts at the embassy in Paris.   

GL: When was the Celtic Connection created and by whom?

Maighread: The Celtic Connection was set up in 1992 by a group of Irish people recently arrived in Grenoble. Most of them are still here almost 20 years on.

GL: What is your role in Celtic Connection and why did you come to Grenoble?

Maighread: I am the current secretary of the association, although this high-powered job was not my main reason to come to Grenoble! I originally came on Erasmus in 1994, to study biochemistry. Grenoble has an interesting effect on people, it’s hard to leave. So, despite having left several times, I am now here to stay.

GL: What events do you have coming up?

Maighread: The calendar is pretty full over the next few weekends. We will mark Bloomsday (June 16), which is a celebration of James Joyce and his epic work Ulysses, with readings and music. This is organised with the help of the Bookworm Café, and will be held there on Saturday June 19th. Our annual picnic is coming up on June 20th, and this year our sister association in Lyon will be joining us for that. We are hoping to make it a regular joint event. We are also in full swing for the organisation of our film event, which will be in mid-November this year – watch this space.

GL: Where are some of the best places to find Celtic culture and people in Grenoble?

Maighread: In the early days of the association, this would have been easy to answer – just check out the Irish pubs (The Shannon, O’Callaghan’s, Druid’s), we used to go there every Friday. Those are probably still good addresses for meeting Irish people, especially if there’s a match on. Other addresses are similar to where you’ll find many Anglophones – through the international schools, at Pilates, through The Library at Babel. And if you’re dying for a bit of brown bread or Cadbury’s chocolate, go to the Irish shop (Comptoir Irlandais). If you want to meet up with us on a regular basis, and participate in our activities, join our association, it’s easy – just come along to the picnic on June 20th, or to another event and we’ll put you on the list.

GL: Tell us about your members: who are they generally and why have they come to Grenoble?

Maighread: A lot of our members are Irish expatriates, although over the last couple of years the Scottish contingent has grown considerably. Some are second-generation emigrants, and of course we accept all nationalities! What unites us all is an interest in Irish or Celtic culture and sharing our experiences. Many of our members came to Grenoble to work for the microelectronics industry; there are also a lot of scientists among us. A lot of us came initially intending to stay only for a while, but as I said earlier, Grenoble can be a very hard place to leave once you’ve acquired the taste for the sun, the mountains and the quality of life!

Hoping to relocate to France?

Sylvie Leroux is account manager at ETC Logos, a company specialising in relocating foreign employees to the Grenoble area. Here are some of her top tips for successful relocation.

That’s it, your management has made the decision!  

THEY need YOU in Grenoble, to exchange your skills with the French team … 

You might have a sense of mixed feelings and certainly a whole load of questions left unanswered by your company (at home or in France). 

Well, here are a few basic tips … 

First, you need to decide wether you want to be helped or not. You can get a relocation agent, someone who knows the town, the area; a local company being better than an international group. They will advise you on the right place to live according to your criteria and they know the right people, which might be just as important as having the right documents. They have good contacts with real estate agents, bank managers or French administration staff and with a phone call,  they can settle any problem which would be trivial at home but can become huge when abroad. 

“We, at ETC Logos, have been working in Grenoble for more than 15 years and we’ve got a very good network,” says Isabelle Callard, Relocation Manager. ‘”When I came back from the USA in 1986, I started with the concept of relocation, people didn’t really know what it meant, today, it’s easier as we are well recognised in this field.” 

Second, be patient! Immigration process: 3–4 months; house search: 2–4 weeks; getting a plumber to come and fix a leak: from 2 hours to up to five days! 

The concept of time and priorities is different all over the world and France tends to be very slow on some issues. 

Again, the person who deals with your relocation will follow up these issues and make things easier for you. You can get down to work and they’ll think about calling the plumber one more time! 

A third piece of advice I would give is that you need to be prepared to face a different culture. 

Although we’re living in a global village, the concept of culture is engrained deeply in each one of us, often without us being aware of it. 

France is in Europe, France is a developed country, France is part of the G20, but France and French people have their own social and working habits which you’ll need to get used to. Grenoble even has its own culture, being a very cosmopolitan, expensive and provincial town. 

The relocation agent can understand those differences and try to work with you on them by providing cross-cultural seminars. 

But beware, a number of people call themselves consultants in relocation or relocation agencies … so make sure you or your company selects one that has a comprehensive range of services, starting from the immigration process before the move to getting someone who will accompany you during your stay and assist you when the assignment is over. 

These people will be the ones you put all your trust in: they will get you to sign official documents in French – of which you may not speak a word – for your house, your immigration file, your bank account. 

Now you can still decide to do it all by yourself, but remember that it might be the recipe for a disastrous relocation.

Photo: BimiB

Felicity Lodge is a Grenoble-based financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group, offering independent financial planning advice for expatriates in the Alps region. Here is her guide to life insurance in France.  

Benjamin Franklin said, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes“.  

There is not a great deal you can do about either. Taxes have to be paid, although you can make sure that you are not paying more than you need to, and no matter how hard scientists try, death will come sooner or later. 

How long are you going to live for?  

Few people can confidently answer this question and the aim of financial planning is to have the means of providing for yourself and your family whatever happens. Very few people can say that they die at just the right time and the main situations we try to cover are that you die too early, which can leave your family with financial difficulties, or you die too late and run the risk of having to live on a reduced income. 

Both of these situations can be covered using different forms of life insurance. There are many forms of life insurance which can be confusing. The two most commonly used in France are assurance vie (life insurance bond) which is a long-term savings policy, and assurance décès (term life insurance) which provides payment in the case of death. By saving money now in an assurance vie, you can build up a lump sum for expected or unexpected expenses in the future, or to fund your retirement. By taking out assurance décès, you will pay a small monthly sum to the insurance company, who will then pay out a lump sum on the death of the insured. 

Assurance vie 

Many of you will have heard of assurance vie, however, most expats will not realise how widely used and tax-efficient these policies are in France.  It is a form of savings where you put money into the policy, then within the policy a number of different investments are available depending on the particular assurance vie you chose.  Many French people save for their retirement using an assurance vie rather than a personal pension because of its superior flexibility. Since you can take the proceeds at any age and maximum tax efficiency is after only eight years, an assurance vie can also be used to save for any future expenses such as university expenses, weddings, or even for the holiday of a lifetime. 

I have discussed the details of assurance vie in a little more detail in my article Arranging your finances in France – an overview but please feel free to contact me if you want any further information. 

Assurance décès 

Assurance décès (temporaire), which pays a lump sum upon the death of the insured, is a very valuable but much underused insurance. It is invaluable for people with young children, but for a number of reasons most families are under-insured and many families are at risk of financial hardship should the worst happen. For some people the death of a spouse is not something they like to think about, others do not like to pay for something they consider unlikely and sometimes people assume that they will be provided for by the state or by family. What you have to remember is that the monthly payment you make is usually relatively small compared to the benefit you receive should you have to claim and provides a huge peace of mind. 

This type of insurance will already be held by most of you with mortgages to cover all or part of the outstanding loan. You may also have a small amount provided by your employer, but you should bear in mind that this will cease when you stop working for that employer. Even if you already have these insurances, it is not usually enough to maintain your standard of living. 

To work out how much cover you need, you have to work out how much money you need to cover your living expenses (including holidays, future expenses such as education and any extras), and how much income you would have available (I can help you for no charge if you send me an email).  If you do this, remember the extra childcare costs. Many people forget to insure a non-working spouse because she does not have an income. In fact, if you were to have to pay someone to look after your children, clean your house and do your washing, particularly if you work long hours, there are significant costs involved!  Being an expat you would also have to consider whether you would want to return to your own country, which would incur further costs. 

Sometimes it is necessary to compromise between how much insurance you need and how much you can afford. Again, I can help you to find the best balance. 

Overview 

Assurance vie and assurance décès are essential financial planning tools, making sure your family is financially secure whatever happens. 

Assurance vie is a way of saving money for the future. It is very flexible and tax efficient and with the right policy you will have a lifelong structure to manage your investments, enabling you to tailor your portfolio as your circumstances evolve. 

Assurance décès is the one thing you pay for but hope you will never receive any benefit. Thankfully it is rare that you have to claim, but in the event that you do the benefit to your family is immense.

Felicity Lodge, based in Grenoble, is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group. For a free, no-obligation consultation please contact felicity.lodge (at) spectrum-ifa.com.

URSSAF - another elegant French acronym

Patrick Owen shares his experience starting an English teaching business, becoming an Auto-entrepreneur and dealing with France’s particular administrative complexity and love of acronyms.  

So as I come to the end of my ACCRE, I’ve contacted the URSSAF who told me to contact the APCE.  I also contacted the RSI and the CIPAV but had no response.  Therefore I sent an email to the CNAVPL.  I must, also, remember to send my annual report to the DRTEPF.  If all of this sounds like double Dutch, welcome to my world, since I started my own business.  I knew the French administration loved acronyms having lived in France for eight years, dealing with the CAF, EDF, GDF, etc.  However, when I set up my own company I entered a whole new ball game. 

After working in various language schools I decided to work for myself.  Everyone warned me against it; “It’s really complicated,” and, “The charges are really high,” were just two of the comments I heard.  It is amazing that France has so many small businesses, when you hear all the negative reactions.  In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what type of business to create with various projects in mind.  However, I soon discovered that in France, once you have trained to do one thing changing direction is not easy. Changing careers involves financial and time investments that I did not have.  I therefore decided to set up a language teaching business, since this was what I knew best. 

Now, it might be useful to explain why I had decided to set up my own business.  Many language schools will employ teachers on freelance contracts, as I had discovered during my first year in France.  The problem is that to work for a business school or university, where the better pay rates are, you need a principal employer.  In addition, for a reason that I can only speculate at, few employers are willing to sign the paper agreeing to be your principal employer.  There are two solutions: one is to use a société de portage, the other is to be your own employer.  The société de portage acts as your employer, in the sense that they take care of all the administrative paperwork, of course for this service they take a fee.  My feeling was that the fee charged didn’t really justify the work involved,  I therefore decided to set up for myself. 

I attended an event held by my local Chamber of Commerce, which didn’t turn out to be much help.  I was unable to get answers to my questions and, as I was not setting up a commercial activity, they were not the right people to ask.  In the end, it was internet forums that proved to be the most help.  I typed my questions into Google and sifted through the responses.  It was here that I learnt I would have to see the URSSAF.  They seem to be the organisation that catches the companies who are not commercial or tradesmen.  I also discovered that provided I didn’t earn too much and didn’t employ anyone else, the process was fairly simple. 

I printed a form on the internet and headed for the URSSAF.  I had been told I didn’t need an appointment.  This worried me slightly, as I had experienced the queues at the Social Security and the Prefecture.  I was pleasantly surprised to be received within ten minutes of my arrival by a pleasant and helpful adviser.  She rapidly entered my details and answered my questions, in less than an hour I was in business, literally.  She offered me a free appointment with an accountant and, best of all, showed me I was eligible for a dispensation of social taxes for one year.  I left the URSSAF with a whole different image of the French administration. 

The dispensation for one year is important and a big helping hand.  Normally a company’s charges are fixed for the first and second years.  Then the third year’s charges are calculated on the real income of the second year.  The problem is that, although, the first year’s charges are relatively light, in the second they double and this kills a lot of small businesses.  Now, certain categories of business creators, the unemployed for example, can ask for a first year free of charges.  I qualified because, although I resigned, I had been looking after my kids one day a week and received income support.  This taught me that you have to read everything because there is often an advantageous exception which you may not always be told about. 

While surfing the internet, I also discovered that if I wanted to teach in companies I would need to make a déclaration d’activité with the DRTEFP (Direction Régionale du Travail, de l’Emploi et de la Formation Professionnelle).  In France, companies are obliged to pay a tax towards the training of their employees.  This tax is often collected by organisations which manage the training funds.  These organisations will only accept training courses run by companies who have made the declaration.  Many people wrongly refer to it as an agreement, however the DRTEFP are very strict in their literature that it is not an agreement from the state, merely a declaration.  

I discovered that with the right documentation, a curriculum vitae, a casier judiciaire vierge (a document you can order online showing you have never committed a crime), and your first training contract the procedure was straightforward.  It is the contract which can be a little complicated, if you haven’t got a declaration number how can you sign a contract?  I got around this problem by noting that my declaration was being processed, and offering my first client a clause whereby if I didn’t get the number the contract was null and void. 

I treated starting my business rather as a challenge and as time went on it became a puzzle, for which I was never sure I had all the pieces.  To be honest I enjoyed pitting myself against the French administration and proving those who said it would be hard to do wrong.  It must be said that I chose the simplest possible structure and being a teacher, who teaches in companies, I have very few overheads. 

It is worth mentioning in conclusion that a law was passed in 2008 making it even easier for freelance teachers.  The status of Auto-entrepreneur is designed for people who may have multiple employers as well as working for themselves.  The process of setting up is very simple and can even be done online.  The real boost however comes in terms of charges and tax.  The Auto-entrepreneur can choose to declare his turnover each month or trimester.  The social charges and tax are calculated based on what he declares and paid immediately.  This avoids the nasty bills arriving one year after a good year.  It also means that if you have a month with no income you pay nothing.  This regime is much more sensible for someone like me. 

Unfortunately, and here is the downside of my experience, getting information about this new status has been hard.  I have read the law and the Auto-entrepreneur’s handbook.  As a sole trader I can ask to benefit from the same regime, and I have done so which brings us back to the beginning of the article.  The acronyms are all the people I have contacted to ask for help changing my status.  

On the whole my experience has been positive; the principal problem has been people.  Everything one needs to know is on the internet.  When dealing with employees of the various administrations it is a case of pot luck.  The first person I saw was excellent, others have been less so.  I once made the mistake of phoning on the day of a strike, my call was answered after prolonged ringing by a harassed and unhelpful lady.  I blame myself for this one, though, after three years in France I should have known you don’t phone the public service on strike days, I was lucky someone answered.  My advice is to be determined, do your research and treat the experience as fun, and you will be fine. 

Patrick Owen
www.englishcoach38.com
letter-from-france.blogspot.com

The crèche: in safe hands

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple blogs on his experience with French childcare in Grenoble and the difficulties getting that all-important place at a crèche.

Handing over your baby to complete strangers is not first on our list of desirable experiences but it is an everyday reality for working parents. France has a relatively high proportion of working mothers and an enviably fertile population, but a surprisingly short basic maternity leave. These are just some of the contributing factors that necessitate widely available and affordable childcare, which in turn do their bit to help get the balance right between being a parent and having a career.

The scolaire system

Getting a place at a municipal crèche, however, is notoriously difficult in Grenoble (and probably elsewhere in France). The largest intake of babies is in September when toddlers doff their mortar boards and graduate to Ecole Maternelle (nursery school), freeing up space for the newbies. Thus, unless you are confident of conceiving in accordance with the demands of l’année scolaire, you may find yourself out of luck when your congé de maternité or parental comes to an end. (For your info, nine months of pregnancy added to around three months of post-natal maternity leave - give or take – would make this September a good time to conceive in order for your baby to get into the crèche in September 2011 – you know what to do!).

Such crèches are subsidised by the Mairie, but parents still pay the bill depending on their means: making them affordable to all. The charges are subject deductions from the CAF before you see them, so that there is none of the time-consuming reimbursement admin which affects visits to many doctors. For my wife and I, it amounts to about two euro an hour. What’s more, thereafter, you can declare this expense against your annual income tax obligations (impôts) which sees this figure drop by a further 50%. In short, the piggy bank can be left intact for the time being.

In my experience the crèches are clean, well-equipped and staffed, with fresh meals prepared on the premises and bubbly personnel. At the end of each day I am given a detailed report on my daughter’s food intake, sleep time and number of nappies (couches) filled with unnerving precision. I am always reassured she is in safe hands, free to explore a terrain filled with ludic objects to peruse, which makes a change from her reordering my CD collection or trying to rewire a wall socket chez moi. 

The nanny state

The alternative is a crèche familiale: effectively smaller groups of children cared for at somebody’s home. This is billed as a municipal service and thus subsidised but is closer in spirit to having a private nanny. In our case, we were desperate for the lively atmosphere of the crèche for our daughter, with the different carers and larger number of children. Whereas many people appreciate the crèche familiale, we didn’t feel comfortable leaving our daughter with only one person: a person who wields such an enormous influence in a child’s life yet does so largely away from the scrutiny from her peers.

Although I’m sure the majority of women who work at crèches familiales are professional, I have heard of instances in which they were not. And if you refuse the woman the Mairie offers you, they immediately blacklist you and you have no chance of getting subsidised municipal childcare. It seemed that if we accepted this process, it was a big step into the unknown. Private nannies were also scarce at the time, and among those we met who weren’t fully booked there were some who didn’t seem to even particularly like children. These individuals were also unwilling to accept temporary terms with us while we waited for a place at the crèche to become available, as they wanted a longer commitment.

In my local quartier, the municipal crèche is situated ideally at two minutes walk from our flat, and would have stood as a mocking reminder of what we had missed if we hadn’t got a place there. Finally we resolved to make an arrangement whereby our daughter attended the halte garderie, which is effectively the same as the crèche but only for up to two days maximum. Normally this is organised on an ad hoc basis or, as in our case, with temporary rolling contracts. Luckily we were able to make other arrangements for the remaining hours that we needed but it allowed us to ingratiate ourselves a little with the staff there and secure our position on the waiting list until a place made itself available. This happened in three months.

Baby betrayal

At first our daughter was crestfallen upon being left at the crèche, acting as if having befallen an enormous betrayal. Traitor! she seemed to cry upon being passed to the crèche staff. There is an integration system by which you can leave your child at the crèche for a couple of hours at a time, gradually building up to full days, but babies are an unpredictable bunch. One day you feel a guilty tingle of satisfaction when your baby cries on being handed over to a carer: yes, my baby still loves me best! The next day your child will cry when you come to pick her up. Traitor! you seethe in silence. In the parental logic, the latter is just the baby ‘releasing tension’ at the end of the day.

The inevitable inconvenience to all this contact with other children is what has seemed like an endless loop of spectacular illnesses. The first time you see a baby projectile-vomit (à la L’exorciste), it is terrifying, but it is impressive what one can become inured to. The winter just past has been a hard one: with the somewhat false alarm of swine flu providing unwelcome distraction from the lurid retinue of tummy bugs and gastros doing the rounds. At the crèche, there is no escape from the steep curve towards stronger immune systems, but this has to happen at some point.

The three days a week my daughter spends at the crèche currently provide most of her contact with French, despite the efforts of certain staff members to speak English to me. As my wife and I speak English at home we hope this will be an effective path towards her obtaining bilingualism; but it is interesting to see the different phonemes she manages in her babillage. Among the distinctly Anglophone syllables we have started to identify some impressively rolled Rs. Once she yelled what was clearly a resounding Merde!, but I’m sure she didn’t learn that down at the crèche.

If you want my advice, persistence is key. Where there is will there is a way.

LEROY & SCARPA: neutral-toned, softly-chic faux-fur throws and pillows

Nearly one year on from their first meeting, Grenoble Life catches up with Kris Leroy, the American founder of Grenoble-based soft furnishings design company LEROY & SCARPA, France, previously Chic Throws.  

Grenoble Life: Why the name change? 

Kris Leroy: As Axelle and I are now associates, both managing the company and aiming to launch a luxury brand, we definitely needed to change the name for a fresh start. Chic Throws was also impossible to pronounce in French! I had originally had a direct e-commerce strategy for the business in place but realized that it was best to focus on my designs, our originality and leave the B2C to others more specialized. 

As most designers, it is important to keep your name in the frontlines and not hide behind a meaningless company name. We have invested in our new name/logo which I think reflects a more luxurious brand. 

GL: Who is Axelle? 

Kris: Axelle Scarpa and I used to work together at Ericsson Hewlett-Packard Telecommunications (EHPT) over 10 years ago. We have remained friends ever since and over lunch I’d told her my dream associate would be someone like her, an expert in supply chain management and purchasing. She was just finishing her tenth year at HP and was ready for a serious change in environment as well as an entrepreneurial challenge and quality of life improvement. She said, why don’t I come to work with you and I’d thought she’d had a bit too much wine at lunch …

Since April we’ve combined forces, and mutually thank each other for ‘our new life’. It’s great as we prioritize family time (i.e. working four days a week) however often meet online after hours to achieve our goals. We have moved our offices to a business park where our communications agency was located. It’s only 100m away from our last office but we have much better natural light (so I don’t have to go out on the roof to see the true fabric colors) and air conditioning! 

Kris Leroy and Axelle Scarpa

GL: What is there to do now that you’ve joined forces? 

Kris: We need to basically start all the business filings again in SARL format with the Chamber of Commerce and choose partners with whom we want to launch our new brand. (accountant, notaire, fabric suppliers, communications agency, etc.) You are only as good as your partners.

I am working on the new Winter 2010 collection for the first professional fair in Annecy in June. This will be the test for the B2B market where originality should prime over the traditional ‘mountain décor’ suppliers to ski areas in France, Switzerland and Italy. We are really targeting the chic boutiques in the ski areas in Megève, Chamonix, Courchevel, etc. and hope to ‘wow’ them with our new collection, for their international clients. I have spared no expense on the fabrics that come from top and unknown designers in France, Italy and the UK for the Courchevel Chic collection. 

Since the crise clients are craving color and that is what we will bring them as well as neutral-toned, softly-chic faux-fur throws and pillows (see top image).

GL: So you are ready to hit the market now? 

Kris: Now that Axelle is on board, I finally can focus on my added value which is sales and marketing. This past year has been spent getting our supply chain in place and prospecting both the B2B and B2C markets. I literally haven’t had a chance to really hit the pavement running with our collections. All sales have truly been through word of mouth. 

We just need to finish the website, the catalogue and the samples for each collection, photograph all and then I’m set to meet clients and take orders … Now that production is confirmed and we have about a two week lead time on production (better than our competitors who are importing from abroad), we can really stand out. 

Also, we need to perfect photography which is difficult to capture a large throw on a thumbnail-size photo and is quite a challenge for our internet resellers. We are currently testing photographers and have a great photo shoot in place that should all come together in May.

Leroy & Scarpa

GL: In terms of design are you comfortable in this new market? 

Kris: Axelle and I just came back from London where we attended the Kelly Hoppen school of design. This program really helped me fine-tune what I was designing to be in harmony with Kelly Hoppen’s style which caters to the same clientele. I have finally overcome my fear of neutral linens and can expertly decipher the difference in taupe and sand tones.

We have also joined forces with our communications agency and www.ateliermartinberger.com to create www.cocotte-design.com, which is a blog for girls who like to talk about girls in design. We are having loads of fun with this project that just launched last weekend and are meeting a lot of interesting people in design. 

GL: What has inspired the new collection? 

Kris: I have found three new fabric designers that are really in tune with my style and blend well with what we have already. I have also found a sculpture-designer that can make the buttons that I’ve been trying to find worldwide as a final touch to the collection. We will also be designing our own buttons as finishing touches with our new logo. 

As we are actively targeting the ski areas, we are using a lot of faux-fur in bright colors and neutral tones. We only use French and Belgian top-quality fabric and the result is an ultra-soft, emotional / sensual product. It’s not just a throw! 

We are also launching some furniture at the fair in June: plush, patchwork chairs and cube tables. 

We have been lucky as the press has sought us out and especially the new magazine ‘Cosy Mountain’ which is the first ski-area magazine for contemporary design. Once our packaging is complete with the new logo, we should have a four-page spread in their fall issue. 

GL: And then what? 

Kris: Once summer arrives, I need to start designing the Spring Collection for 2011 which will include outdoor fabrics (pillows, lounge covers, poufs, plush chairs). We also have lighter throws planned for cool evenings and brightly colored pillows to match. 

I am also working with a graffiti artist to design some eclectic throws for artsy and adolescent clients. I am inspired by Banksy’s wall art in the UK and hope to transfer others artists’ designs onto throws, headboards, etc. 

We are working on our first chic-boutique deal in London and then who know where outside of France … For the moment we will focus on our home-base and slowly branch out to Switzerland, Italy and other foreign markets. 

We do want to maintain a ‘boutique-brand’ and not sell to large department stores. The idea is to remain exclusive and maintain a smaller, very happy clientele.

Trudi Penkler

Trudi Penkler is a psychologist, psychotherapist and ‘Intercultural Consultant’ with her own practice, Active Adaptation Counselling, in Grenoble. In the first of a two-part interview, she talks to Grenoble Life about helping foreigners adapt to life in a new culture, going professional in France, and being a Ghostbuster!

Grenoble Life: What is an Intercultural Consultant?

Trudi Penkler: Our professions, education and social interactions are becoming more and more ‘globalised’. We can be based ‘at home’ but work with teams and organisations all over the world. We can also find ourselves living, learning and working in different cultural environments from the ones we’ve spent most of our lives in, sometimes for a short while, sometimes longer. This can mean trying to ‘belong’ in more than one place, or having children who do.

Intercultural consulting aims to provide information, awareness and skills, to help people be more effective in their work, pursue their research or studies comfortably and manage the demands of their daily lives with competence, in unfamiliar cultural contexts.

Active Adaptation Counselling was founded to serve this objective in 1998.  My work is about finding and emphasizing what works well in intercultural or multicultural situations, not what doesn’t. It’s about focusing on commonalities and strengths rather than differences and weaknesses. It’s about building bridges across the ravines that we imagine separate us from each other in terms of communication, understanding and interacting constructively. The experience of relocating across unfamiliar cultures myself provided the opportunity of looking closely into how to deal with diversity and developing expertise in this field, while continuing to practise as the psychologist and psychotherapist I was to begin with. 

Perhaps the best description of what I do was given to me by a young man of twelve who had come to see me, struggling to accept and settle into a new school system that at first seemed most alien to him and who was finally feeling more at ease … “You know what you are?” he said “you’re a ghostbuster.” I decided to keep the title!

GL: Tell us a little about your background

Trudi: Born in South Africa of parents and grandparents who were also born there, I never imagined living anywhere else. During the worst of the Apartheid years however, conditions became increasingly unbearable. It was inconceivable then, that Nelson Mandela would ever become the first president democratically elected by all the people of that country. ‘Broadening our horizons’ and trying to make our lives ‘elsewhere’ as parents of a young family, was a choice we felt constrained to make. Discovering a new culture and language were high on the ‘pro’ list when choosing to come to France. These were indeed to become great advantages, but naively we could not have imagined how hard won they would be!

Before coming to Grenoble, I had studied to work in both nursing and teaching biology, but a natural ability to deal well with crisis situations and to identify and redirect negative thinking and behaviour patterns towards more constructive ones, motivated more specific qualification in psychology, guidance and counselling. Experience in emergency situations with the South African Red Cross and responsibility for adolescent counselling in schools reinforced this choice.

GL: Why did you decide to develop a counselling service focusing on families moving to a new culture?

Trudi: The English speaking community was a lot smaller when I first came to Grenoble in 1986. Was it really more than two decades ago now?! Very little at the time, apart from house-hunting services and French lessons, was being provided by the companies and organisations that were relocating their employees, or students, even political refugees to the area. Interacting with other expatriates, I began to observe that wherever we’d come from, whatever the reasons for us being here, there seemed to be a pattern of common challenges and ways of coping with these – or not. It appeared that while some individuals embraced diversity and change easily, flourishing in a new cultural context and dealing well with situations and experiences very different from what they had known before, others managed less comfortably, sometimes very much less so.

What began as random observation and informal, voluntary help where appropriate, led to an avid interest in intercultural adaptation mechanisms, a need to understand these better and to establish the environment within which to contribute professionally. I spent a number of years reading and researching the thinking and behaviour patterns involved in cross-cultural adaptation, as well as studying the methodologies in cultural awareness training before beginning to work in this field.

GL: What challenges did you face in transferring your professional skills to France and set up your own practice here?

Trudi: Deciding to do something in France is one thing. Identifying the appropriate administrative processes and getting the paperwork right is another! Until I learned that “Non Madame, ce n’est pas possible,” were merely the opening words to further discussion, I would return defeated from the various offices that apply the regulations that govern self employment (trying to register my professional activity) or from the university (trying to obtain recognition of my qualifications).

Often when we’ve come from elsewhere, what we are trying to do in France doesn’t fit into any of the ‘boxes’ on the forms to fill in and much time is wasted in finding an alternative or solution. There is a cultural phenomenon that can work in one’s favour though and this is that unlike in our ‘bottom line’ Anglo Saxon cultures, negotiation can be a possibility, as long as one accepts the status quo to begin with and then looks at ways around obstacles from there.

Beginning almost as a ‘freelance consultant’, then establishing a practice and a small company concurrently, required carefully familiarising oneself with the details of ‘how things work’ officially, especially as in my case there are two distinct categories of services provided – i.e., Consulting in professional contexts as well as psychotherapy and counselling.

Balancing overhead costs and incoming revenue when we first start building up a client base can be daunting. I had the good fortune of sharing offices for financial reasons at first, with four wonderful French therapists, two of whom worked part-time for the government in judicial and social placement cases and also independently as therapists. Their input in terms of ideas, information and support was invaluable.

GL: What services do you offer?

Trudi: Although the services provided by Active Adaptation Counselling are two-fold – i.e., consulting in professional environments and personal counselling or therapy – the premise underlying both, is that active intervention can improve or repair our experience of a situation or event.

Intercultural consulting can involve any of the following: individual, management and team coaching; mediation and facilitation, which can be motivational, goal-directed or problem-solving; cultural awareness training programmes; workshops and lectures or presentations on specific topics or themes; independent screening for potential relocation; expatriation preparation, not only for those coming to France, but also for French expatriates moving elsewhere; preview visit interviews and ‘welcome’ talks; performance review and interview preparation; and repatriation or reintegration preparation for returnees.

Psychotherapy and counselling is provided for adults, adolescents and children, for couples and families. Problems and difficulties are addressed, but also aspirations and self development. What happens to us, as well as how we think and do things, all have an effect on how we personally experience of our lives, our work and our relationships. Psychotherapy and counselling can be useful when we are experiencing stress, emotional difficulties, psychological obstacles to learning, relationship problems, difficulties in adaptation to change, substance dependency, crisis situations, grief, difficulties in coping with physical difficulties or illness, post traumatic incident syndrome or simply when we need tools for going forward positively or improving a process rather than being stuck.

Lastly, my experience in the medical field has made it possible to provide medical interpreting services – i.e. the presence of an interpreter and counsellor during medical visits or hospitalisation.

GL: You work with international companies in the region – why do they approach you?

Trudi: Three main scenarios lead to requests for consulting to companies: Firstly, when intercultural awareness is important for individuals or teams working in multicultural or geographically diverse contexts and coaching, training programmes or workshops are required.

The second is when communication or motivation in multicultural teams needs to be stimulated and again, coaching services or workshops would be useful.

Thirdly, when cultural misunderstandings have led to errors in judgement or paralysis of a situation and external mediation or facilitation would get things moving forward again.

Smooth carrying forward of objectives can be hampered at various levels of management, by miscommunication or simple lack of awareness. This potentially becomes all the more complicated in diverse teams whose cultural filters are not all based in the same values and traditions. When we take the time to identify and focus on commonalities and the strengths to be drawn from diversity rather than differences and weaknesses – the most gridlocked of situations can gain momentum again.

Rarely, help can be required to defuse or get through a crisis situation, either the personal situation of an employee or group becoming critical in the workplace, or an external incident like a business travel accident, or hostage taking, which would require emergency support in handling the situation itself and for the employee’s family if necessary.

GL: What do your therapy sessions typically involve? (i.e., do you work with families, or in one-to-one sessions?)

Trudi: We find it appropriate to take responsibility for our own physical health. My sessions are about taking responsibility for our mental and emotional health too. Every case is different. Although most counselling is individual and face-to-face, couple, family or group counselling is often appropriate and constructive. Telephone counselling is also common for those living further afield and I’ve come to use this more often since consulting regularly by telephone for a company in America supporting French expatriates living there.

When the step of seeking help is taken, it is because something in our lives is not serving us well. As my clients often have to continue functioning effectively and in a ‘foreign’ environment to boot, my aim is always to actively begin the process of movement, from the present situation towards a more positively perceived one. When we look at our responses to others, to what happens to us, even to our own thoughts and fears, we also start reclaiming responsibility for ourselves and our own wellbeing, whatever the situation.

Endless digging about in the past without a clear intention or purpose does not make sense to me. Understanding where a difficulty may have its source is certainly important, but identifying and acting on what can be done about it from there, allows us to start leaving behind the ‘victim status’ we may be stuck in and become central actors in our own life stories again. This is what I help people do, through a structured method, like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I hold up a mirror of what I have gathered from what is expressed. This brings a life situation into perspective or provides a different angle of seeing things, which can affirm and reassure, provoke reaction or even motivate change.

Therapy is always an interactive process. It is not a random one however and requires structure and direction. Although Jungian and existentialist at heart, I draw on both CBT – Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and NLP – Neuro-linguistic Programming methods.

It is essential to me that those who work with me, leave every session more fortified and have access to the strategies and tools we’ve explored together, that will help them to be able to cope better, even if only a little each time, with the demands their lives are making on them.

GL: Are there cases where you find you cannot help?

Trudi: There are severe pathologies and difficulties, that I would be neither qualified nor capable of taking on and in these cases I would suggest referral to medical professionals who would be better suited to the problem, accompanying the client all the way if necessary though.

In recent years, more English-speaking medical and paramedical professionals have set up in Grenoble and I have instigated an English Speaking Therapy Forum so that we are in contact with each other, share information and are better able to serve the needs of the community. The WWNG (Working Women’s Network of Grenoble) has also been most important in facilitating the exchange of information so that professionals in the field get to know about each other, what is available and how to find it.

In part II, coming soon, Trudi will be talking about the difficulties familes can face when moving to a new culture and offering some advice on how to manage this adaptation.

Classroom. Photo: sfar

Gregg West is an American history and geography teacher at Cité Scolaire Internationale. He also handles the school pantomime, organic gardening club, interpersonal communication classes and music club.  In this explosive article for Grenoble Life, he describes his career-long efforts to change the education system in France.

It would be preposterous to assume that any education system in the world does its job correctly, when one observes the amount of poverty, crime, violence, drug addiction, alienation, loneliness, pollution, general unhappiness, and other symptoms of human foolishness, frailty, or limitations.  But one could just say, “Oh well, people do their best and one can’t ask more of them than that.” Nevertheless, when one is a teacher and has to face an educational system day in and day out with its many constraints, it can be very trying, for even if he or she sees many kids succeed and go on to brilliant careers and happy, if not totally unperturbed, lives, there are a lot of others who will live troubled existences.

Over the last 37 years, I have tried to learn to teach and have perpetrated my teaching upon unsuspecting people, both children and adults, in North America, Scotland and France, but I have also had these teaching systems (pardon my syntax) perpetrated upon me. The following observations about the French system are not at all intended to exonerate other systems from similar criticism.

More is better

Since settling permanently in France in 1983 I have witnessed a system which believes that more is better despite the famous saying of Montaigne (loosely translated) that a “well-made head is better than a full head.” Indeed, in the Connexion of February 2010, the minister of Higher Education, Ms. Valerie Pécresse went so far as to say to a journalist “you seem to be contradicting yourself when you cast doubt on the level of lycée students passing the Bac but then suggest reducing the number of hours.”  Really, Ms. Pécresse, this is a national disease, thinking that more is always better. So why not give children 16-hour school days? Children need time for other things than school work to become thinking, feeling, well-balanced individuals. I thought everyone knew that … hmmm.

A second aspect of the French system that is curious for those of us from English-speaking cultures is the belief held by many that school is only for instruction of specific subject matters, does not require a global education of children in terms of understanding their social and psychological context, learning to motivate them, inciting them to improving their citizenship, social relations, and so forth and that, therefore, teachers do not need to learn anything but their own subject matter at university. No interpersonal communication, no group dynamics, no pedagogical methods, no interdisciplinary knowledge to coordinate interdisciplinary projects … It apparently threatens many whose work status and contract only commits them to knowing their subject … even if inspectors put pressure on them to teach better … and the French government has just decided to shut down IUFM (teacher training institutes), something highly consistent with this view.

In this extremely cerebral environment, a third characteristic of the French system, at least insofar as it concerns university-bound students, is that they needn’t develop artistic, manual or day-to-day skills like typing, driving a car, first aid, or cooking at school. (Well, they DO learn road security, but only the theory … ) In short, learning does NOT involve doing things, except writing essays, carrying out a few carefully limited classroom experiments, doing research and other relatively abstract tasks. So these other skills surprisingly only get developed among a minority of people who have the money to do them outside of school or have families patient and qualified enough to help them learn these things. When I see high school kids pecking away with their fingers on a keyboard, when I have to fork out over 1000€ for driving classes, or when I see the beginnings of obesity among French young people like in my native America, I do wonder about these priorities.

Lip service

Finally, as with many other school systems, the French speak of democracy, but practice dictatorship, pay lip service to cooperation and solidarity but practice competition, praise acceptance of differences, but punish those who do not “fit in” with ridicule, humiliating grades, and other forms of social exclusion, lecture people about human rights while submitting high school students to 50 hour weeks (35 hours of class plus 15 hours of homework a week), claim to be ecological while using throw-away pens, producing millions of tons of new, bleached, non-recycled fibre paper waste that are not even recycled, and brag about their great cuisine while abandoning their children to canteens that serve poor quality, poorly balanced meals that contain pesticides, instead of making quality and organic food priorities.  What is the saying, “Do as I say, not as I do?” Problem is, it doesn’t work that way and, as Leonard Cohen said, “Everybody knows…” Kids’ strongest learning experiences stem from doing and from example.

In such an unnatural neurotic environment, is it any wonder then that many French kids suffer from depression, insomnia, smoke a lot of cigarettes, become fashion victims or anorexics, drop out due to a lack of motivation (around 10%), or decide not to care about politics or association activity, plunging into a life of semi-blind consumption as adults, with no personal artistic side that they can cultivate to express themselves healthily? Is it any wonder that they become recalcitrant at suggestions that they drive less (so little physical exercise during their childhood), watch less TV (when did they learn how to entertain themselves?), vote more (when did anyone ask their opinion anyway?), or think about important issues (weren’t they only supposed to give teachers the answers required?), or question notions the media and political elite expound as evident (nuclear energy and genetically modified organisms aren’t dangerous, are they, or THEY would tell us … like our teachers … wouldn’t they?) Once you’ve got people conditioned, it is very hard to change them. Some would even suggest that this conditioning has been done CONSCIOUSLY to preserve the privileges of elite, but I’m not much of a conspiracy theory advocate, so I’ll leave this idea aside. I think it’s just force of habit and past conditioning … an unwillingness to question what came before.

Unfamiliar future

At any rate, all that I have described is what one would call a SCHEMATIC, OVERDRAWN picture of the French Educational system. Of course, there are positive sides, but you all know those; France is one of the world’s leading countries in social programs, economic productivity, democratic freedoms, and so forth … well, for the moment at least … But is this preparing us for an oil-poor, resource-poor future in a world where company relocation to Newly Industrialized Countries may force us to reorganize a great deal of our economy and learn to share, be happy with less, and use our imagination to find new, workable ways of life?

But of course changing things is never easy. People are afraid of unfamiliar ways, they think that what they know is the only way, there are vested interests, it involves calling habits and training into question, it doesn’t suffice to throw money at problems, and even good ideas, if poorly or insufficiently applied will lead to failure. In short, it isn’t a technical impossibility, but it remains a political improbability.

Political debate

I decided in 1987 to try to do something about all this. I spent five years in a minor political party which seemed highly motivated to lead change in society as the chairman of their education commission, consulting hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and others involved in education, as well as union representatives and school directors. We worked out propositions to change school radically (more on what these were later) … something in line with the party’s desire to “create a cultural majority for change.”

I sent the propositions to the hundred or so representatives of various regions in the party’s governing committee a few months before it was scheduled for debate on the agenda. But the day of the debate, there were “more urgent matters” so debate was pushed back till the very end of a Sunday afternoon when one third had already left to take their trains, leaving only 10 minutes to debate a topic that concerns every single citizen of a democratic country. Of those remaining, fully half were teachers … and a plurality of these opposed all the measures which might require them to retrain to handle new functions. So without any guidelines on HOW to change our propositions, we were sent back to the commission to “work on the propositions some more…” Thoroughly disgusted, I resigned as commission chairman.

An alternative school

In the U.S., as a young teacher, I had already experienced the difficulties of even modifying one local system of education, so I reasoned that if what I considered the most progressive political party in France and its host of teachers were unable to be open towards real change, then there was little hope of changing such a huge system from within. I worked for the next seven years on the idea of creating an alternative school, parallel to the system, in hopes that an example outside the system might show people what is possible. But here too I was to be foiled. Among the enthusiastic parents supporting this idea, most were penniless; among the enthusiastic teachers supporting this idea, most, not surprisingly, wanted to be paid! Real estate was too expensive to rent in large towns, and small towns placed obstacles in our path, fearing we might lower already precarious enrolment figures, provoking the closing of their public schools. There were also dreamers who talked about “borrowing seven million francs” from a bank as if any bank would ever entertain such an idea. A subscription among political activists raised some 135,000 francs, but we were never able to establish a three year budget that promised any hope of surviving, even on minimum incomes, so we were obliged to abandon the plan and send people’s money back.

At this point I decided to give up. I had a good job in a public school and began trying to develop extracurricular activities to compensate for the unidimensional aspects of school. I created a music club and later a theater program where kids could learn self-management, cooperation, create, express themselves, develop their confidence, teamwork and self-esteem, associate with older students and adults as role models instead of submitting to age segregation, and receive recognition without grades from those around them.  I found no need to involve parents for the music club, but broke an additional taboo when I got parents involved heavily in the theater program … something few French school teachers like to see … parents in the school working with kids … perhaps because it threatens their own prerogatives to teach as they see fit … but this was only outside of class …

In my own classes, I developed a method of teaching involving considerable debate and discussion, with occasional projects and games, but the program was often so immense that time was always pressing us to return to a teacher-centered curriculum.

Moving the mammoth

I suppose this is why when I was approached by a sympathetic political activist, I accepted getting involved in an association whose goal, like mine, was to move the mammoth (change the educational system) even though I remained very sceptical about the possible success of such an effort.

Over a period of about three years, we developed a support group of some 300 people, including thirty to forty teachers and three school headmasters, and we elaborated propositions very similar to those the education commission I’d managed had put forth only to be rejected. We outlined a plan for creating special schools, particularly in the junior high years (collège), and hopefully one or two in each department, which would function differently and thus serve as an illustration of alternative approaches to education. The basic ideas behind these schools included:

• Only four hours of academic solids per day, so less Math, less French, less language, less science, less history and geography (oh dear!!!). Interdisciplinary projects as a way of exploring basic subjects.
• Groups for enrichment, remedial work and orientation for one hour a day.
• Workshops to learn practical subjects, develop artistic abilities, and physical education 1 hour a day.
• Collective expression and action a few hours a week to put democracy into practice.
• A severe limit on homework and no grading, but still evaluating and testing.

One can like or dislike these propositions, but the fact remains that they allow schools to handle a number of the objections mentioned above and the existence of a certain number of schools of this type in the Northern part of Europe tends to confirm that they can be a positive experience, developing well-rounded, independent, thinking students … if properly applied.

We sent a 10-page summary and a longer 40-page detailed version of the project to various people in positions to make decisions. We met with those in charge of education at City Hall and the Conseil Général, as well as the man in charge of innovation at the Rectorate and the Academic Inspector of Isère. All reacted favorably, saying the idea looked great. When we said we also had a list of teachers and an administrator to run the school though, the Rectorate and Academic Inspection suddenly began hemming and hawing about the fact that they would need to talk to unions about it, that they couldn’t name people on the basis of aptitude or motivation, but only on the basis of seniority points (meaning the death of the project) and that they would have to check with their hierarchy on whether this was all possible (i.e., if it wasn’t pursued, it wouldn’t be THEIR fault …) Despite attempts to get them to put this on paper, they refused and they began doing what bureaucrats do when they don’t want something to happen. They sat on it, refusing further meetings, correspondence or any other indication of their position, killing the project.

Things I can do

So, at age 57, tired of spending so much energy for nothing, I chose to devote myself instead to things I CAN do without political games and support from people higher up. I continued with my teaching job, interpersonal communication classes, the music club with its concerts and CDs, the theater program with up to five shows and 750 spectators per year (our headmaster even had a stage built for us … and other groups in the school to use.) And I created an organic gardening club in our school.

None of this however will make the changes I believe that France (and other countries) desperately need in their education systems if they want to create a vast majority of real human beings capable of adult behaviour, wisdom, commitment, values, and coherent behaviour emancipated from the manipulative, narrow channels that current systems carve for them.

p'tit vélo dans la tete on campus - photo: www.ptitvelo.net

Are you a student or a new arrival and want to know how to live in Grenoble on a budget? Expatriated Brit John Lubbock has learnt the hard way, and has kindly agreed to share his tips and experience with Grenoble Life readers.  

Grenoble is not a bad place to be poor. But, like a tramp with a favourite patch, you have to know your environment; or like a foraging bear, where the best pickings are to be had. You may need to change some of your bad, foreign influenced habits to make the most of your insertion into French culture (beer is expensive apart from Stella, which isn’t one of the best things about French gastronomy, is it?). 

Tourists, as we all know, are naive sponges who deserve to be squeezed dry, so try not to seem like one. People will often poorly attempt to converse with you in English when they realise you are not a native, but insist, “Je suis en France, il faut que je parle en français“, and they won’t despise you as much for usurping their language as the world’s Lingua Franca. It is mostly from lack of better information that tourists agree to pay higher prices, so I intend to give you some information to help you make better spending choices.

Accommodation

If you do not want to spend your first month in France on a sofa or in a hostel, it pays to research accommodation before you arrive. There is an association called OSE Club which you can join for €30 which will find apartments for you in a designated area of the city, if you want to be near to a university. Then there are websites such as www.appartager.com and www.vivastreet.com, which have petites annonces for flats, but these are generally only useful if you pay the €10 fee to see the telephone numbers of the advertisers and call them up directly as they don’t answer messages on the site.

Watch the French film L’Auberge Espagnole before you go to get an exaggerated idea of being interviewed by your future flatmates and the kinds of hilarious European stereotypes you are likely to be cohabiting with. If you are not a student, it is even more important to find a flat quickly, because without a rental agreement, you will not be able to get a French bank account or contract telephone, and will thus be considered a SDF (Sans Domicile Fixe) by the French. This will mean that you are forced to become a baba cool (hippy) and sit in the street with your dogs holding out a frying pan to ask for spare change.  

N.B. If you are staying for less than a year, it is worthwhile getting a contract phone, which will be cheaper than pay as you go, the phone will be nicer, and there’s little they can do about it when you tell them that you’re leaving the country before the contract finishes and close your bank account. But don’t tell anyone I told you.  

If you have never lived in the socialist paradise that is France, you may not be aware of the kinds of social benefits available to people living there. The CAF’s housing benefit system could pay for some of your rent if you are a student or living on a low wage, although like most bureaucratic systems in France it takes about six weeks to get anywhere with it, and since these forms are all in French, it is more like a test of your reading comprehension which you need to pass to gain entry to French society.  

Learning French

If you are (un)lucky enough to be a political refugee, asking at the Préfecture (a big administrative building which makes you feel like Josef K from Kafka’s The Trial, wondering if you’ll ever be told what you’ve done wrong in order to end up there) or at the Conseil Général can get you free French lessons, which can otherwise be obtained by calling the ADATE organisation. I am not sure if you can get lessons with them without being a refugee, but I am considering telling them that I have been forced to flee from the UK as a result of the impending government takeover by a bunch of Tories with accents so posh and annoying that they constitute a form of social oppression. If you have to go to the Préfecture for any annoying bureaucratic reason, like to obtain a carte de séjour, don’t ask anyone which ‘queue’ you should stand in. The French for queue is pronounced like ‘que’, while saying ‘queue’ sounds like the French word for something rude.  

Transport  

When it comes to transport, if you are poor, the bicycle/vélo will become like your husband or wife, or perhaps the god to whom you pray for benevolence. If it works well, you love it and praise it, and if not you curse it. There are three main places I know of to obtain bikes cheaply. Firstly: on the street. I found three bikes lying in crumpled heaps on pavements in the first month I was here. The problem then is to take them to somewhere you can repair them. So either have a bike repair kit (Decathlon, around €15), or go to the second place to get cheap bikes – Un P’tit Vélo Dans La Tete meaning something like ‘A little bit biked in the head’.

This atelier (workshop) sells bikes that have been repaired for between €15-60, or you can go there to fix your own by paying a €15 abonnement (subscription). It is a good place to practice your French, as there are lots of guys who can help you to fix your bike, and they have a handy board on the wall with a picture of a bike and the French names for every part of it indicated. However, fixing bikes takes time, and if you have a second hand bike, or one you bought at P’tit Velo, it will break down roughly every two weeks. On the plus side, you will get very good at repairing bikes. The third option is Métrovélo, who will give you a generic yellow bike for €75 for six months (plus €50 deposit) and repair it for you if it breaks down.  

Of course, you can always chance a free ride on the tram, but getting caught by the officials will land you with a €65 fine, unless you can pretend to be a totally clueless foreigner. The tram tariff is €24 a month for students, but Grenoble is the flattest city centre in France, and waiting for a tram and slumming it with Joe Public are hidden costs not worth paying in my opinion. That’s why liberté comes before egalité and fraternité: because it’s more important.  

If you want to go further that the city limits, go to www.covoiturage.fr and find someone who is making the same journey as you to go with. It will be far cheaper than any other method of transport, and the people I’ve met doing it have all been nice.  

Food  

Although many people come to France for the food, as an impoverished young person, this will likely be one of the areas in which you sacrifice quality in order to live within your means. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a man who lives within his means has no imagination; but you will likely be finding your culinary options limited by the exigencies of having little money to spend. Ed is a cheap supermarket, and it happens to bear the name of some of my friends, although since the name Edward doesn’t exist in French, they call it “Ee-de”, which sounds much more corporate and less friendly. It is worth taking a notebook around to the supermarkets to write down prices of items you buy regularly, because while vegetables may be cheaper in Ed, Géant may have cheaper milk, for example. Unfortunately, I have just been informed by my collocataire that Ed is closing down – evidently the world of modern commerce is too cruel for such friendly-named businesses – but Lidl is almost identical in that it has hardly any choice of products and brands you have never heard of, but they are all usually cheaper than the Géant/Casino equivalent.  

Yet if one just bought the budget Casino brand pasta/rice/couscous to eat with with vegetables every day, you might end up wanting to kill yourself. So for the minimum luxury of not cooking the food yourself, you can go to a CROUS canteen, near the gare, or in Domaine Universitaire. These are supposed to be for students, but you can just pay the €2.90 it costs for a meal there in cash without showing any student card as well. You get bread, salad or cheese, a main meal of canteen standard chips/pasta/vegetables/etc. and some meat served with customary indifference and a bad attitude by people who look deeply unhappy about serving ungrateful students who could pay their wages with their tuition fees (those who go to an École supérieure anyway).  

Working  

Of course, if you really want to make things easier on yourself financially, you could get a job. “A job? What’s that?” I hear you cry. “I am a student – they don’t work. Then I wouldn’t have time for all the drinking and Facebook which the energy I consume from crisps and Red Bulls goes into”. Well, you could work part time. If you are a native English speaker, you could get employed by a soutien scolaire company, telling kids what they did wrong with their homework. Believe me, it’s satisfying to be on the other end of this after receiving homework corrected in red-teacher-ballpoint ink for 10 or more years. Don’t be put off if you don’t have a TEFL or CELTA qualification, I didn’t find this a hindrance, though it may help to say you have experience of private teaching even if you haven’t.

If there’s one thing I learned looking for jobs here it’s that it doesn’t pay to be honest: always tell them you are available to work, always tell them you have the experience. It took me a while of offering my services to language companies (Grenoble Life already has a useful list here), universities and other places like the Chamber of Commerce and Rectorat before I was employed, but once you have your foot in the door, you will hear about other teaching  jobs that are advertised within teaching circles.  

The Pôle jeunesse on Avenue Agutte Sembat has a useful wall full of job and accommodation offers. But if you have a degree, they will tell you that they can’t help hoity-toity types like you and that you should go instead to AFIJ who have an office at 29 Avenue Felix Viallet near Cour Jean Jaurès. These guys mostly have offers for internships or well paid jobs, so if you are just looking for a petit boulot, the Pôle jeunesse might be more useful.

You could try working in a bar, but the French can be quite snooty if your linguistic skills aren’t up to scratch. This matters less when applying to one of the studenty bars like London Pub or Sun Valley, but you will invariably have to call a Frenchman ‘boss’ (and thereby lose all the nationalistic self-respect you have built up living in your own great land), and traipse around the campus putting up flyers just for the pleasure of sacrificing most of your evenings for €9 an hour. There are also lots of agencies you can work for who hire waiters and other restauration workers for company or other private functions, but I personally found them somewhat useless, though Adecco is worth a try. Then you can try the listings in Pôle Emploi, which is like the JobCentre in the UK, but with more paperwork.  

Of course one of the reasons why you came to Grenoble is to ski, so if you are a student, join the École de Glisse, and try to obtain some cheap equipment from one of the second hand ski places like Boite aux Skis. There is no way of getting around that skiing is expensive however you do it, but hopefully you will have saved enough money in other areas to afford the silly ski-pass prices. And if you injure yourself, just remember to have your European Health Card handy. Good luck, mes amis.

Les Nouvelles de Grenoble

In the latest post in his blog The Franco-American Daily Deconstructionist; History and Culture in Everyday Life,  John Hess leafs through the City of Grenoble Magazine Les Nouvelles de Grenoble. Here’s what he has to say about it.

Many of you who have the good fortune to live in Grenoble, wait breathlessly for the end of each month, because that means a small portion of your tax payments will be returned to you a hundred-fold, in the form of Les Nouvelles de Grenoble, “the city informational magazine.”

For those of you who do not have this good fortune : the magazine is a glossy, super-sized A4 format affair, arriving free in residents’ mailboxes each month. It is published by the municipal government, at taxpayer expense, and purports to provide helpful information about happenings in Grenoble, especially of a political, social, or cultural nature.

Perhaps you enjoy reading Les Nouvelles: it’s professionally produced, there are lots of color pictures, the articles are short and easy to digest, and it’s all so refreshingly upbeat. When I read Les Nouvelles de Grenoble, I realize that I am living in the world’s most wonderful city. Perhaps I have even died and gone to the urbanists’ paradise. Well, then I go out my door, and harsh reality sets in; but o the illusion, however fleeting, is delightful!

But have you ever wondered about the content of the magazine? For it clearly is not just the neutral statement of city-related current facts and goings-on that you would expect from a publicly-funded publication. There is, of course, the natural phenomenon of editorial selection: the magazine is strangely silent about the crimes, mishaps, and dysfunctionalities that weigh on city life; we hear only about the good stuff. The temptation to intellectual dishonesty seems to be too great, however, for the editors to stop there. What they do report on has to be qualified with glowingly positive adjectives.

So does issue n° 131, October 2009, tell us on the front page that in matters of sustainable development, “Grenoble is keeping its promises”, even though this is a self-evidently worthless statement. If one wants to know if promises are being kept, one generally has the sense not to ask the promise-maker, which is sort of like asking the accused if he’s guilty or not–and basing the verdict on the answer.

On page six of the same issue, we find out that the city-engineered renovation of St Bruno Square has “restored its soul as the lively and convivial heart of the neighborhood.” Well, I hadn’t noticed, but if the city engineers say so, then that’s good enough for me!

On page seven, we find out that there is not just a new crèche in that same neighborhood, but a “spanking brand-new” crèche, which is somehow different from a new crèche, though I suppose appropriate for child-rearing disciplinary purposes.

On page eight, we find out that the Philippeville Square crèche is “new, beautiful and environmentally-friendly”, which will certainly be a relief to parents concerned that their children’s day care was aggravating global climate change, though they may regret that the newness is not spanking in this case; and while some local residents find the crèche “butt-ugly”, they were apparently not interviewed for this article.

On page fourteen, we have another “spanking brand new” building, this time a library in the Teisseire quarter, also qualified as “magnificent.” (If the Teisseire library is already “magnificent”, then what adjective remains to us to describe, say, The New York Public Library, or the Great Library of Alexandria ?) It goes on and on, upbeat snippets about all the wonderful and progressive developments in Grenoble, directly or indirectly thanks to the actions of the city government, culminating in the municipal self-love-fest about sustainable development from page 18 onwards.

How can this sort of thing be possible ? Well, in a country where the press is expected to be partisan and indeed captive of a particular interest group or ideology, and where the state likes to pose as the benefactor to all (and never mind where the money comes from), it is not just possible, but considered quite normal. And this is the problem !

But why do I complain ? You know, in fact, the business model of Les Nouvelles de Grenoble magazine has inspired me. Watch this space, as Grenoble Life becomes John Hess Life, full of interesting articles about how wonderful, nay, ineffably divine, John Hess is, all written in breathless prose by John Hess. You will, of course, pay a monthly subscription fee for the privilege.

Freebox: Photo Martin Menu

Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple has one piece of advice for readers hoping to set up an internet connection in France: don’t use Free. Here’s why.

One of the first considerations when setting up home in a new country is getting an internet connection, nowadays almost as essential a utility as gas, electricity and water. When I arrived, one company dominated combined phone and internet packages: Free - seemingly the only good value alternative to France Telecom at the time. Now there are better value options on the market, but extricating yourself from your contract with Free is not as simple as it should be, to say the least.

Customer service in France often leaves a lot to be desired, but Free goes beyond the normal depersonalised call centre experience to seemingly deliberate efforts to overcharge and stonewall customers that have spawned large internet communities of unhappy punters and consumer associations, but has not apparently done enough to make Free contemplate their reputation.

A Free account is relatively easy to set up, but when you want to cancel your contract, they require you to return the Freebox router by post. All very well, except for the fact that – in our case, and that of many others – receipt of the box is not acknowledged, even if you have paid for a registered delivery service which enables you to track the package by internet to its destination. Free don’t receive the boxes themselves, but subcontract this task to a logistics company.

When Free disputed receipt of the box, our enquiries at the Post office were met with the response (or something to this effect) “Free do this all the time.” Angry consumers in numerous web forums support this, as does the existence of an association named Freeks, dedicated to helping customers untangle themselves from unpleasant disputes with Free, among other internet companies, and who list ‘mediation’ with Free as one of their services. This leads one to suspect Free are quite aware of the situation many of its customers find themselves in, and it is not just a case of logistical inefficiency.

Having claimed that they never received the box, Free then demand that you send them proof of dispatch (i.e., the receipt for registered post) by fax. That’s right, an internet service provider who communicate by fax - everybody’s favourite  21st century means of contact. It gets worse. There is evidently only one fax machine, apparently located at a call centre in Eastern Europe, which is engaged for large periods of the day. As if people don’t have better things to do than spend entire working days trying to send the equivalent of cyber bog roll to the other side of the continent.

Further still, the company insist that you call them within two hours of having sent the fax (assuming you have been able to get through), on a premium rate number. Finally, when we reached the call centre by phone, the operator was both vague and reluctant as to whether they had received the fax – maybe try again tomorrow? (another day loitering by the fax machine, more premium rate numbers). Only on being pressed did the unhelpful operator admit to receiving all the pages of the fax, but claimed it was illegible. Of course it’s illegible, it’s a fax! … we wanted to scream.

It’s a Catch-22, for if we hadn’t rung the bank to halt the direct debit we would probably still be in some daily fax-rage limbo while we almost certainly continued to pay for a service that we are not receiving, and have no wish to receive. We have written to complain to Free’s Customer Services, a postal-only service in France, and they have accepted the end of the contract, but not receipt of the box. They are demanding payment for a additional month’s subscription, and are still asking for the box back, which apparently costs around 400 euro.

Unfortunately you can fight with your principles but short of getting the consumer associations interested, you run the risk that Free will sell the debt on to debt-collection agencies, which really isn’t funny. It’s all over the web, from customers in the same situation as me, to those who never received the box in the first place, and have been paying for a product that was never delivered.

Thus, if you are a new arrival to the country hoping to choose an internet supplier, I strongly recommend that you opt for one of the alternatives. For example Numéricable, the optic fibre cable company, offer a faster connection and a basic telephone and internet package which costs around 20 euro a month, at the time of writing 10 euro less than Free. Numéricable at least have offices in Grenoble with human beings to whom you can speak face to face – which is reassuring – and send a technician to install and remove the router. I haven’t had the pleasure of having to close a Numéricable account, but it can’t be worse than my experience with Free.

Please use the comments box below to share your experiences, good and bad, with internet and phone providers. I hope that this word of warning might help other customers avoid falling into the same trap.

'Crise immobilière'. Photo: _02_

 Grenoble Life editor James Dalrymple shares his personal experience as a first-time home buyer in the Captial of the Alps – and is happy to report that it’s not all bad news!

Now that I am starting to see a flicker of light at the end of the rather dank and cavernous tunnel called home-buying, I feel compelled to share some of my observations. Whereas I can confirm its status as one of life’s more arduous experiences, it has not been worse than I had anticipated, for no-one ever said it would be a breezy walk in the park with a big piece of cake.

Before deciding to buy a flat I’d had several friends trying to re-educate me on the value of renting for life; unconvinced by the merits of life-long debt and the likelihood of paying the price of one’s property several times over in interest. “Be cash rich and asset poor,” these savvy characters insisted, pointing to the lower home maintenance costs and fewer taxes for locataires (for example the annual taxe foncière is only levied upon owners, not tenants).

One fact of life as propriétaire in a co-property is that one can face hefty fees if the exterior of the entire building has to be repainted, or if there is a shared heating system to be replaced: neither a tenant’s problem. Owning one’s own home, though, is pretty much brainwashed into Brits as a rite of passage, even if we have to accept that we can’t necessarily afford what our incredibly lucky baby-boomer parents had. When my career is over, however, I would like to have paid for my home, and be able to subsist rent-free on whatever meagre pension I have accrued.

To quote a Grenoble Life contributor, Felicity Lodge – whose article Arranging your finances in France is well worth a read - ”buying a property in France is highly regulated”.  I concur, and there are some major pros and cons to the regulation. She goes on to say, “the amount you can borrow is controlled so loan payments and any other regular obligations cannot be more than 33% of your monthly income (net of social charges)”. This may seem strict but the French are a prudent people, and the banking culture befits a country less footloose with borrowing. The kinds of problems that led to the sub-prime crisis in the US couldn’t have originated in France. Likewise, credit is not as easily available as in the UK, and I have the impression that people are more sensible with their disposables.

The upside of a regulated home buying process is that there is less risk. Once you have agreed a price with a seller, you can engage the process via a specialised lawyer (a notaire) who manages the sale from then on. Once you have signed the pre-contract compromis de vente, there is little chance of being gazumped given that the seller would subject themselves to a significant fine if they chose to break it.

In Britain you stand the risk of having incurred legal and surveying costs only for the seller to pull out in the 11th hour to accept a better offer from a rival buyer. That this gazumping is allowed to stand in the UK is obscene, one feature of the county’s rather lunatic housing market. In France, however, the absence of risk comes at a cost: namely 6-8% of the sale price. This covers all legal, tax and surveying concerns, but certainly amounts to much more than the sum of those individual costs in Britain: and most of it goes directly to the government. This fact lends credence to the idea that renting is better value than buying – it is an enormous financial consideration to face on top of one’s downpayment, and a serious obstacle to owning a number of different properties in one’s life.

In the event our notaire was good value for money, something of a showman in fact. Having let his juniors take care of the preliminaries we were marched into his office for the final exchange of contracts. With well-honed comic timing and vigorous gesticulating, his beautifully flowing oration was magnificent to behold: condensing a summary of France’s unsurprisingly substantatial housing law into an hour-long address. Furthermore there were some last minute complications with the bank but he - a force of nature not to be meddled with - was by then sufficiently committed to our purchase to bang some heads together at the bank to keep the ball rolling.

Personally I could see no advantage in approaching an agence immobilière (estate agency). Assuming that you have an idea in which quartier you would like to buy, and the appropriate value for a property in that area, you can search for private sellers online on sites such as Paruvendu and Leboncoin. We negotiated directly with the seller, bypassing the middle man. Given that the notaire conducts a thorough survey of the property and that you can withdraw without charge at the signing of the compromis de vente, then the need to work with an agent did not make itself apparent to me.

If, like me, you are a first time buyer in France, you could be entitled to a zero per cent loan of up to around 30,000 euro. Such loans, and their duration, are defined by your means. We qualified for approximately half of the thirty, and it has to be repaid within the first six years of our mortgage.  However, we found ourselves in the slightly sticky position of having (for reasons too boring to explain here) to apply for this from a different bank to that from which we had agreed our principal mortgage. Of course, the bank from which we were requesting the zero per cent loan held us captive while they tried in vain to beat the mortgage we had secured from our other bank, and upon realising they couldn’t do it, saddled us with a rather inept trainee to administrate the loan.

Trying to get a bank to hurry up (necessary when deadlines have been imposed by the notaire) when there is essentially no profit in it for them is quite futile – more so when you’re main contact hasn’t a clue what he is doing. Amusingly, said bank tried to fob us off by saying something along the lines of “there’s so much admin involved in this loan that it’s hardly worth it”. That’s right, admin not worth potentially thousands of euros – I don’t think so! However, they almost had a point, the sheer quantity of justificatifs required would have impressed even the most hardened of fonctionnaires. Just the photocopying and stapling drew a Herculean effort from our trainee bank manager, who made a clerical task seem like Fort Boyard.

Anyway, now that the boxes that once dominated the flat start to empty and disappear, and life seems worth living again, we can look forward to the much fabled tax credit for first time buyers: apparently the interest we pay on our mortgage is deductible from our annual income tax bill for the first five years of repayment. Rumour has it that if the interest is greater than your obligations, the French government start mailing you cheques. I’ll let you know next September. These advantages put a little shine to the lie that renting is throwing you’re hard-earneds away to a landlord whereas paying a mortgage is like putting money in your own piggy bank. A mortgage is still (in my case) a 25-year burden, but on balance I think it’s worth it.

Loving life with the kids

Felicity Lodge is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group, offering independent financial planning advice for expatriates in France. Felicity is based in Grenoble and works with English speaking expats the Alps region.  Here is her guide to some of the personal finance considerations for those making the move to France.

Moving to a new country can be a stressful time – changing jobs, finding somewhere to live, moving schools – and all this in a foreign language. In the midst of all this, financial issues get overlooked. People often assume that because their savings and pensions are well arranged in their home country, they can leave things as they are when they are living in France. In fact, all countries have different tax systems and what is tax efficient in one country may not necessarily be as suitable when you become French resident.

A common way of saving in the UK is with an ISA. Whilst you can continue to hold (but not contribute to) existing ISAs if you are non-resident in the UK, many people do not realize that an ISA is not tax exempt in France and any interest, dividends and capital gains must be declared on your annual tax return. If you will be moving back to the UK it may be worth holding onto your ISAs anyway – this will depend on your personal circumstances. Another popular way of saving in the UK is with the Post Office through National Savings and Premium Bonds. These are also not tax exempt in France and any interest or winnings will be taxable (since you can get your money back, Premium Bonds, wins are considered as interest not as lottery winnings). Some people place their money in offshore banks thinking they will not have to pay tax, however, a French tax return requires you to declare all worldwide income, including interest, and all accounts. Paying withholding tax does not remove the obligation of disclosure.

Bank Savings Accounts

Luckily, as a French resident you have other options available – different but equally valuable. Your first stop will be your bank for savings accounts (compte epargne), specifically a Livret A and a Livret Development Durable (LDD). These should both be offered by your bank and allow you to save a significant amount without tax. However, the interest rates at the moment are not very enticing, so while these accounts are good for holding emergency funds or money you will need in the immediate future, in the long-term your savings run the risk of being depreciated by inflation.

People today are aware of the risk of loosing some of their savings if a bank collapses. France has a compensation scheme that covers up to 70,000 € of a depositor’s net deposits per banking group. The UK scheme covers £50,000 per banking group. People are less aware that the biggest threat to your savings is that the return may not keep pace with inflation, eroding purchasing power in real terms.

Long-Term Savings

For money that you have no plans for in the near-future you might want to have some exposure to bonds or shares, to try to improve long-term returns. The safest way to do this is by investing through funds, since this way you have the expertise of a fund manager and his team and also, since your money is pooled with that of many other investors, your money will be invested in a wider range of shares, which reduces risk compared to holding shares in a few individual companies.

There are two main ways to do this tax efficiently in France. The first is through a Plan Epargne Actions (PEA) which is an account in which you can hold shares and funds. There are tax advantages, but these are combined with restrictions. You can only hold funds or shares that are based in and invested in companies in the European Economic Area (EEA). This is quite a severe restriction and means that you cannot fully diversify and take advantages of growth in other parts of the world. In addition, you cannot continue to hold a PEA if you cease to be French resident.

An alternative and less restrictive option is to hold funds in a life insurance bond. A French approved life insurance bond (Assurance Vie) is similar to a PEA in that it is an account with tax advantages in which you can hold funds. Funds held in an Assurance Vie must be based in the EEA but can invest anywhere in the world. Assurance Vie policies are widely held by French people for long-term savings and to supplement retirement income, since personal pensions in France are not as developed as in the UK and have quite strict requirements on when and how you can take your money. An Assurance Vie is much more flexible: for full tax advantages you must hold the policy for eight years although you can continue to hold it for as long as you wish and you have access to your money at all times.

Holding your savings in an Assurance Vie offers a number of advantages, particularly in France where the tax treatment of an Assurance Vie is very favourable. No tax is due on any asset held within the Assurance Vie whilst it remains in the policy and funds can be bought and sold within the policy with no tax payable, which means that the policy grows tax free. Tax is only payable when money is withdrawn from the Assurance Vie, and this is at extremely beneficial rates after the policy has been held for eight years.

In addition, there are benefits with regard to succession. The policy can be left to whomever the holder wishes, currently with a considerable tax free allowance and a comparatively low rate on any excess. Holding assets together in an Assurance Vie also simplifies your paperwork, tax treatment and asset management. The policy can be kept if you leave France, in which case the tax regulations of your new country of residence will apply.

Assurance Vie policies are not all made equal. Those offered by your bank are often expensive and have little choice of what to invest in. Some are available online with very low charges and a wide range of funds (supports) offered, but for this route you must be comfortable with a DIY approach. If you consult a financial planner, they will be able to find the best policy to match your needs and help you tailor the investment to your risk profile and to changing personal circumstances as your life changes. An Assurance Vie can be a lifetime investment that evolves with you.

Mortgages

Buying a property in France is highly regulated.  The amount you can borrow is controlled so loan payments and any other regular obligations cannot be more than 33% of your monthly income (net of social charges). This amount must be sufficient to cover any existing financial commitments, your new mortgage payments and the associated life insurance cover (which French banks insist on). The same rule applies if you are renting accommodation. French people tend to use fixed rate mortgages, but other options are available and are becoming more common. Re-mortgaging is more difficult in France, so choosing the most suitable mortgage in the first place is essential.

Succession

Inheritance law in France is very different to in the UK and other countries. French succession law applies to properties in France, even if the owners are not French resident, and to worldwide assets if you are. Under French succession law you are not able to leave your assets to anyone you please. Protected heirs (usually your children) are entitled to a portion of your estate and you are not able to leave the total of your assets to anyone you please. Inheritance tax, especially for non-related beneficiaries, is severe.

If you have a complicated family situation or have a will that does not agree with French law, it is vital that you consult with a notaire and a financial planner.

If you have not yet moved to France, professional guidance is essential since there are tax advantages to making some arrangements before you are French resident. If you are already resident in France, trying to understand the details of your different options can be a nightmare, especially when everything is written in a language you do not fully understand. A financial planner can help you to work out the best route to achieving your personal and financial goals within the French system.

Felicity Lodge, based in Grenoble, is a financial planner with The Spectrum IFA Group. For a free, no-obligation consultation please contact felicity.lodge (at) spectrum-ifa.com

Euros. Photo: Zempt

Kate Daligault is a financial advisor at Banque Rhône-Alpes in Grenoble. She talks to Grenoble Life about the banking culture in France, getting financial advice in English, and what new residents need in order to open an account.

Grenoble Life: What is your role at Banque Rhône-Alpes?

Kate: I work with international clients, guiding them through the pitfalls of the French banking system and hopefully making their lives in France easier. I can also help with tax returns and financial planning – even the French find these difficult!

GL: Banque Rhône-Alpes has produced a lot of practical advice about its services in English, why?

Kate: Most of our clients do not speak French or simply feel more comfortable talking about their personal finances in English – the French banks use a lot of technical jargon which can be daunting. We also have part of our website in English, a corporate brochure on Banque Rhône-Alpes, means of payment and different types of accounts in France, and several product brochures as well.

GL: Tell us a little about your background and where you come from.

Kate: My passport is British, but I think I’m what you call one of these third culture people. I was born in the States, and travelled mainly in Europe during my childhood years, due to my father’s career, learning to speak French in Switzerland. I first went to England when I was 12 years old and completed my secondary school and university studies there, and then went to work in The City, London, for Natwest Bank. For my first permanent position, they sent me to France, and I’ve been here ever since.

GL: Why did you come to Grenoble originally?

Kate: Like everyone else – because of my husband’s job! We used to live in the Southwest of France and he was transferred to his company Head Office in Grenoble in 2004, following a promotion.

GL: When did you start working at Banque Rhône-Alpes and what kind of training did you need for the job?

Kate: I’ve been with Banque-Rhône-Alpes for just over a year now, and although I’m a qualified UK Financial Advisor, have a degree in Banking & International Finance, and have been advising expats in France for over 12 years now, I still had to go through the in-house Private Account Officer training! This consisted of four separate weeks of training, spread over three months at the Head Office in Paris. It was difficult to go back to full-day lessons, but very worthwhile.

GL: How can new residents to Grenoble get face to face financial advice in English?

Kate: The best way is to contact me on 04 38 02 38 81 or kate.daligault (at) banque-rhone-alpes.fr and arrange for an appointment. Our branch is right next to Chavant cinema, in the centre of town.

GL: How has the banking culture in France changed since you arrived in the country?

Kate: The main difference has been the introduction of online banking and call centres. Although these provide greater ease of access for clients, they tend to dehumanise banks and make clients feel anonymous. I feel that one of Banque Rhône-Alpes’ great strengths is to move away from this commercial banking model and retain personal contact with clients – I know all my clients by name and see them at least once a year.

GL: How does the banking culture differ from that in your native country?

Kate: Ever wonder why you have debit interest to pay, but your account was never overdrawn? This is due to the French value-dating system, which means that for a cheque for 1,000 € deposited on day one, the funds are not available until day three. Therefore if you write a cheque before that date, you may be overdrawn in value terms.

The other big difference is the legal status of cheques in France. Writing a cheque without having sufficient funds or a pre-arranged overdraft is a misdemeanour, as is bouncing a cheque. This results in being blacklisted by the Banque de France for five years and will affect your credit rating. You will not be able to obtain credit until you have cleared your previous liabilities.

GL: What advice would you give new residents looking to set up an account in France?

Kate: The main difficulty when you first arrive in France is that you cannot open a bank account because you don’t have a fixed address yet, but estate agents will not let you sign a rental agreement if you cannot provide details of a French bank account … it’s Catch 22. At Banque Rhone-Alpes, we have over 20 years’ experience in dealing with new arrivals, and all you need to provide is:

• a valid passport or national identity card if you are from within the EU
• proof of employment / studies in France
• a valid address

Rebecca Skillman at work

Rebecca Skillman practices shiatsu from her home near Uriage and also in a well-being centre in Meylan. From the UK originally, she did her practitioner training in Bristol before moving to France at the end of 2004. Grenoble Life wanted to find out more.

Grenoble Life: What is shiatsu and what are the health benefits?

Rebecca Skillman: Shiatsu is a type of massage. It comes from Japan and literally means finger pressure. As well as fingers, I use my palms, elbows, knees – depending on what part of the body is being worked on. I may also include some stretches and other movements to free up the body and release the tensions that many of us develop.

Have a look at www.shiatsuinfo.org to see the range of health benefits (just about every condition can benefit since mind and body are so intricately linked). On the site there’s also a summary of recent research which shows that science is now backing up what practitioners have known for decades about the positive effects of shiatsu. But here in France it’s important not to shout too loudly about this as shiatsu is only recognised as l’art du bien-être – fine as far as it goes, but it can work at a much more profound level for those who want that.

GL: Where did you train and how long have you been practicing shiatsu in Grenoble?

Rebecca: I trained at the British School of Shiatsu, in the UK, between 2001 and 2004 and I’ve been practising in France since the beginning of 2005.

GL: Was it difficult to set up your business in Grenoble?

Rebecca: I am in an association, Chemins du Bien-être, and that works fine because I have a modest level of activity. Since I moved here the auto-entrepreneur statute – a new law aimed at helping small businesses register themselves legally and more simply – has been introduced and I may investigate this further.

GL: Describe a shiatsu session with you.

Rebecca: In an initial session I would spend 5–10 minutes getting to know what the client is hoping for from the session and whatever they want to tell me about what’s going on in their life. The more I understand this the better I can judge what type of session will give most benefit – each session is unique. I think I can safely guarantee that it will always be relaxing on a physical level. But, by putting the receiver in touch with their body, and all the emotions that are bound up with it, shiatsu can also support and release a range of emotional issues and help the person move forward in their life.

A typical treatment lasts 45–50 minutes and takes place on a futon mattress at floor level. The receiver is clothed and the style of touch is a gentle (or vigorous) pressure rather than the sweeping movements of, say, Californian massage. It can therefore suit people who prefer a more neutral and less intimate touch than with oil-based therapies.

GL: Is shiatsu well known in France, compared to in your native country?

Rebecca: Shiatsu is becoming increasingly well known in France. It is supported by professional bodies like the FFST, and if you are looking for a practitioner in any département you can start by looking on their website. Shiatsu is now sufficiently well recognised for mutuelles like Alptis to include it in the therapies they reimburse. That said, the relationship between the medical establishment and complementary therapies is not as developed as in, say, the UK. And shiatsu is not integrated into public healthcare to the same extent.

GL: What reaction have you had from your customers?

Rebecca: People sometimes say they feel lighter – or even that they felt like they had wings! And several have noticed an improved range of movement with muscular-skeletal imbalances. They often sleep better. And the effect can last days or even longer.

Some feedback from my clients:

« Celà a été vraiment très, très efficace, et que je n’hésiterai pas à en parler autour de moi. »

“I felt very good after the massage – positive and energised.”

« Je te remercie pour ce beau travail qui passe par tes mains, tes gestes, ta tête, ton accueil de ta personne et de ton intuition. Une invitation à ce que la vie et l’énergie trouvent un chemin pour circuler. »

“I just wanted to thank you again today for the Shiatsu – it really was a great session. My hips, etc. were really tight yesterday and now I feel great. In general, afterwards, I feel physically better than I have in a while.”

GL: How can we book a shiatsu session with you?                        

Rebecca: You can contact me by email (rebecca_wwng (at) yahoo.com) or phone (04 76 00 06 13).

Sarkozy & Chirac

In the second post in his blog The Franco-American Daily Deconstructionist; History and Culture in Everyday Life, John Hess asks ”Are you all as bored by the Clearstream affair as I am? If so, then excellent, this blog is just for you!”

Clearstream: Clients, Patrons, and French Political Parricide

by John Hess

For those of you who prefer reading Hello! and Closer, here’s a one–sentence summary: in 2004, in the course of an investigation into a kickback scandal involving the sale of French-built warships to Taiwan, a forged document linking Nicolas Sarkozy (among other prominent politicians) to the malversations was leaked to the prosecutor, allegedly at the behest of Dominique de Villepin, then the Interior Minister and a protégé of President Jacques Chirac.

(Whew! I did it!)

The details are all over the more serious sort of newspaper, and as promised, I shall not bore you with them. Buy Le Monde if you’re interested (it’s cheaper than Hello!, and you get to find out what Left Bank intellectuals did during their holidays in the sun).

What’s really great about this whole affair is the element of pure political assassination, which is unusual in the contemporary Western world, and is more reminiscent of the later Roman Republic than of a modern democracy. Sarkozy and de Villepin are, after all, from the same political party.

Clearstream really began in 1995, when Nicolas Sarkozy, originally a protégé of Chirac, betrayed his erstwhile patron by supporting Edouard Balladur’s rival bid for the presidency. Balladur lost, and both Balladur and most of his key supporters were exiled to the political equivalent of Siberia by the victorious Chirac; the satirical TV show Guignols de l’info portrayed him as John Travolta’s hit man from Pulp Fiction, knocking off Balladur’s entourage one by one, including Sarkozy.

Most of the balladuriens never managed to slip out of their concrete boots and stayed put at the bottom of the Seine, but the buoyant Sarkozy, with his ability to handle the media and generate popular support, proved indispensable, and muscled his way back into the heart of right wing French politics, gaining a ministerial post in 2002 at the start of Chirac’s second presidential term. But for the chiraquiens, Sarkozy was only suffered, not forgiven. During the course of 2004, Sarkozy’s relations with Chirac degraded to new lows, as Sarkozy managed to get himself elected as leader of the political party that Chirac had himself created; and Chirac began grooming de Villepin as his successor, naming him to replace Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior. And, coincidentally or not, 2004 was the year that the Clearstream forgeries were produced. Much of the energy of the three year remainder of Chirac’s presidency was wasted on other fruitless efforts to stymie Sarkozy’s inexorable rise, so as to clear the way for the president’s adoptive “political son”, de Villepin, a brilliant but otherwise politically ungifted man.

This storyline would have been quite familiar to the readers of Cularolife.com, had the internet existed in the first century AD, because it’s a Roman, Latin story: the story of patrons and clients, and the personal favors, betrayals, and vengeances that pass between them; of adoptive heirs and lethal political manoeuvrings.

Anglo–Saxons are used to tribal politics: liberals against conservatives, socialists against free-marketers, etc. Personal rivalries exist (e.g., Brown/Blair), but they are subsidiary to the considerations of the interests or ideologies of the political tribe. In France, it is the opposite, for the Roman tradition of patronage politics is still dominant. Political parties are more like “a loose coalition of personalised alliances, in which everyone belongs to someone.” Ideology is much talked-about, but it’s the networks that really count, which determine who gets access to the governmental goodies. Thus the importance of respecting the patronal hierarchies – and the depth of the anger of the patron when betrayed by the client.

When one considers that Chirac catapulted himself to the top of the French political right by betraying and subsequently destroying his political patron, Valéry Giscard-D’Estaing, it seems fair enough that he should be deprived of the right to name his political heir by the betrayal of one of his own clients.

Now, stay tuned for the inevitable coming drama: who will betray Sarkozy in the eternal quest for the fruits of power?

Nero (left) poisoned his way into the cushy job of his adoptive father, Claudius

Xavier Darcos announces plans to combat stress in the workplace. Photo: Ministère: Travail, Solidarité, Ville

James Dalrymple of Grenoble Life asks why the French – despite sleeping more and living longer than everyone else – are so stressed. Apparently the French government wants to know too …

This month Labour Minister Xavier Darcos confirmed what I had already suspected – France needs to start dealing with stress, which has reached epidemic proportions. The proposed measures may be viewed by some as a knee-jerk reaction to the media storm surrounding the apparently high number of suicides at France Telecom since 2008, which – when taking into account the size of the organisation – may not be much higher than the (admittedly relatively high) national average. However, the new regulations likely to be implemented may not solve deeper issues related to national character: having lived in France for a few years now I feel qualified to say that, contrary to popular belief internationally, stress is endemic to the nation.

Ignore the latest OECD survey that says the French spend more time eating and sleeping than anyone else, a posteriori the French are an anxious lot. As a teacher I have come into contact with a broad cross section of Grenoble’s business community and I am constantly surprised by the amount of furrowed brows and hand-wringing I encounter, and this is not just because of a lack of love for learning English.

Despite the abundance of reasons to be happy in comparison to, say, British people (having quality healthcare, for example, or efficient public transport, good weather, a proliferation of delicious fresh produce, living two years longer on average, being paradoxically slim, etc. etc.) – the French strike me as a far more stressed people.

Call it what the British would refer to as the Blitz spirit (i.e., putting on a brave phizog in the face of abject misery) but we seem to deal with life’s inconveniences better than the French. Maybe our self-depreciating nature would simply not function in a society like France’s where, on the whole, there is much less to justifiably gripe about.

But tell that to the French. I realise now why the French hold that generous stereotype of the Brits as monocle-wearing stoics, bastions of calm in the midst of chaos. It was a view of the Brits that I found laughably alien when I arrived in France as a bruised and bewildered London commuter, but now I see why.

While a Londoner can somehow find it in himself to tolerate entire weekends (and bank holiday periods) of engineering work shutdown on the Underground and dreaded Thameslink, or the limbo of an NHS waiting list, or finding that every shop he knew from his childhood has turned into a Tesco-metro-mini-express … he can probably laugh it off down at the pub.

He may even indulge in that national sport, binge-drinking, but take refuge in regaling his colleagues about the quality of his hangover the next morning. According to recent press, the Frenchman will drink 10% more than his British counterpart, but by stealth – his habit of quaffing half a bottle with every meal perhaps slowly spiralling out of control.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the French work very hard. Yes, they enjoy unrivalled amounts of extra holiday time, but the only way to deliver France’s much-vaunted productivity is to slog it out at the desk. The French believe this too, they justify their stress by pointing out that they work harder than everybody else, something that might amuse American readers.

But no matter how much holiday is around the corner there is no doubt that the French feel the pressure in their highly regulated job market. Maybe it’s the coffee here – it makes people jumpy and brisk where the British workplace ceremony of making and drinking tea is a big cuddly arm of comfort around the shoulders: there there!

I was surprised to learn that the French sleep more than the international average, since the quality of my own sleep has declined since my arrival; it must be that coffee again. How to cure this? Making sport (sic) is the advice given by most Grenoblois as a cure-all for stress: whether it be slogging it up a 45 degree slope on a bike plastered in lycra or, even less logically, a gym, where the promise of more skin-tight neon and casual nakedness is hardly an attractive prospect to sooth my nerves.

The latter strikes me as particularly pointless in a city where – even if you don’t fancy tackling a near vertical ascent by bike dressed as an extra from Fame – plentiful cycle tracks make it the easiest of cities to work up even the most modest of sweats (my favourite kind!).

On a darker note, the relatively high suicide rate in the country may be representative of a more inherent inability of the French to cope with stress. In France Telcom’s case this has been blamed, by unions at least, on a never-ending drive for efficiency since its 1993 privatisation. The 40,000 jobs that have been lost in transforming France Telecom from public sector flagship to competitive multinational company are certainly not to be sniffed at, but I can’t help but wonder if this constant evolution - more characteristic of the American way of doing business – is a sometimes fatal anathema to a people for whom stability, security and prudence are cherished. How other nationals would react in similar circumstances is a moot point.

However, I find insistence by students of mine – who work at a recently internationalised French company - that in France one person does the job of three people in another country, as laughable. When French workers speak with misty-eyed nostalgia about the not-so-long-ago when they were less blighted by pressure, it is clear they are talking about a pre-globalised world. Is globalisation – France’s modern-era bogeyman – to blame for all this stress?

From a personal point of view, I suppose what I really want to know is: why is everybody in such a hurry? If I’m not being hassled off the road by drivers (often female I might add) for whom driving at the speed limit – or, in most cases, just acceptably above – is not fast enough, I am being harried in shop queues. The French are not quite the monster queue-pushers some Brits – sensitive in this matter - would like to suggest: it’s not quite like (and I’m talking from personal experience here) in India or Morocco, where queues are just for tourists, or in Italy (so the rumour has it), for fools.

Nevertheless, the French don’t like queues, and many try to expedite them, quite unsuccessfully, by standing as close as possible to the person in front of them. Most confoundingly, there are the women d’une certain age at my local primeur who have solved the age-old indignity of being next-in-line by placing their pannier by the cash-till before a desperate (and evidently stressful) snatch and grab job around the shop to fill it up - their place at the head of the queue secured.

I am often tempted to assuage the anxiety of those around me by saying hey, don’t stress: it’s France! when I realise how meaningless this would be. But again, what is there to be stressed about? In Britain, we have surely one of the most hysterical televisual news formats in the world, dramatised by the strokes of Big Ben: BONG! Feral youth on the rampage … BONG!! Knife crime escalation blamed on diet of Fanta and Turkey Twizzlers … BONG!!! Nuclear apocalypse beacons … etc.

How we manage to take this constant diet of failure and self-flagellation in the UK is a mystery, whereas in France the news is suspiciously neutral: 500 cars were set on fire in Paris last night but this is not representative of a wider malaise in French society and you needn’t worry your pretty little head about it.

My conclusion: maybe in Britain we are always being told that life is much worse than it really is and therefore are pleasantly surprised when we can laugh it off. In France, government promises (disseminated almost unchallenged by the television news) that the social state can cure all, can create a gap between the ideal and the reality. Anxiety may lie in between. Careful, it might be contagious!

Struggling to find accomodation? photo: michaeluyttersp

Shonah Kennedy shares her experience about relocating to Grenoble, and interviews Isabelle and Julie of LC Mobility, the agency that helped her find accommodation and deal with the trickier aspects of setting up life in a French city.

When my fiancé and I found out we were coming to live in Grenoble, for an extended period of time, we were very excited and started to plan immediately. We thought we had plenty of time to find accommodation, look for a language school, open a bank account, find an Internet plan, and all the really “fun” aspects of moving to a new city in a foreign country (the “romantic notion” of living in a foreign country comes after the organisation!).

Now, we were not totally inexperienced with this process, as we had been living in Paris for over a year. However, there are certain aspects that are always daunting, such as: finding a quality place to live, having enough French to understand your rights, insurance, internet connection with everything you need in the plan and … the list is not exhaustive!

We started to get a little concerned, when a month out we still had no place to live!  Then, salvation!

Out of the blue, we received an email from a company called LC mobility who assist foreign researchers (which is the category my fiancé falls under) and students to settle in Grenoble. Julie asked for specific details from us and within a week we had a place to live!  Below I interview Isabelle and Julie who are LC Mobility in Grenoble.

Shonah Kennedy: How did you start LC mobility?

Isabelle and Julie (LC Mobility): When Julie was doing her bachelor’s degree, she did an internship in Montreal and benefited from the services of a company that helped her to find her internship, find accommodation, welcome her at the airport and help her with social security in Canada.

Considering the market in Grenoble for accommodation and the fact that French people don’t speak English very well, especially in administration (such as the Prefecture), we thought that foreign students might need some help from French people to settle in Grenoble. So, at first we created an offer for students only, and then we realised that even researchers could use this help …

Shonah: When did you start LC mobility?

LC Mobility We started LC Mobility in February 2008, during our last year of our studies (Masters level).

Shonah: Why did you start LC mobility?

LC Mobility: We started LC Mobility because we did our studies in Management, and specialised in entrepreneurship. So, at first we just wanted to create a company together, for the challenge and the independence. We chose to create this company because it matched a need, and it was something that we can do and would like to do (because we know how helpful these kinds of services can be when you have just arrived in a new country!).

Shonah: Who is LC mobility?

LC Mobility: We are two girls: Isabelle and Julie. We both received our masters degrees at IAE Grenoble, in entrepreneurship (where we met).

We have very different tempers, so we work very well together, we are complementary!

Shonah: Who are your main target clientele?

LC Mobility Our target clientele are students, PhD students, and more and more researchers. We also help French people to settle in, when they come from a distant city (such as Bordeaux or Lille).

Shonah: What do you do?

LC Mobility: We help people to settle in Grenoble and Lyon in three steps:

1. Find their accommodation (most of the time before their arrival)
2. We welcome them at the station and accompany them to their accommodation
3. We realise for (or with) them all procedures to settle in. Such as: opening a bank account, getting a residence permit, getting Internet access, cell phones, insurance etc.

Shonah: Are there any plans for expansion?

LC Mobility: We are developing the company in Lyon. We have already welcomed a few people there, so in November Julie will move to Lyon and be there permanently!

Shonah: Are there fees for your services?

LC Mobility: Yes, there are fees that are available to view on our website.  We also offer services in packages.

For more information, or to talk to these friendly approachable girls you can find all their contact details on the contact portal at Contact LC Mobility – Isabelle and Julie.

Map of Grenoble - check!. Photo: Ambrosiana Pictures (G)

Shonah Kennedy – aka Miss Shonah – is an experienced and qualified ESL teacher from Australia. She has agreed to share with Grenoble Life the highs and lows of looking for work in Grenoble as a non-EU citizen.

by Shona Kennedy

It was a hot and oppressively muggy day. However, I had given myself a mission and it had to be accomplished.  Job search time!

Now, I could have just sat down in a park with wifi access somewhere (as the internet connection is still in day four of a possible ten-day operation) and emailed schools in the area and waited patiently for replies, BUT I am a little more masochistic than that, so …

I decided to arm myself with CV, confidence, a smile, comfy shoes, a “never say never” attitude and hit the streets – and as many English language schools as my comfy shoes could take.

This was a mission I was not taking lightly.  I prepared my itinerary over a good cup of morning coffee – again a big thanks to James’ post on English language schools in Grenoble. I started with schools closest to my new house and worked my way around in a clockwise direction – and made most excellent use of Grenoble’s more than efficient public transport system.

I was ready: List of schools – check!  CV – check!  Maps – check!  “Never say never” attitude – double check!  Off I went.

There were some “unknowns”:

Firstly, I had been warned of Grenoblois indifference, however after living on and off in Paris for almost two years I thought I would be able to cope with a little Grenoblois indifference – as I was sure nobody could do that as well as the Parisians (and I mean this with the upmost respect – they have indifference perfected and it truly is an art form).

Secondly, cold calling is not an action I personally like.  Cold calling reminds me of the pool game “Marco Polo”.  One person knows exactly what is going on – where in the pool they can move, running around, laughing at the other blindfolded person aimlessly trying to follow the replied “polo”, to their desperate calls of “marco”, when (and if) it is called out. In this job searching endeavour I felt like the one running around the pool knowing exactly where I was going – especially because I had a map!  And the poor unsuspecting English Language institutes were the ones with the blindfolds on.

Thirdly, my French is bad – no actually it is worse than bad.  Can you get worse than bad?  Well, if that is acceptable, that is where I am on the badness scale!  I have taken classes (top of the theory test, please note!) and I can see the words in my head – I can even spell them!  I can hear the sentence perfectly spoken in my fantasy scenario … then there is some sort of malfunction between my head and my mouth, unfortunately they do not co-operate and what emerges is an awful hodgepodge of spoken French with an Australian twang that does zero justice to this beautifully flowing language.

There were some “knowns”:

Firstly, I love teaching English as a second language.  It is fun!  As a teacher I have fun (and learn), and the students hopefully have fun, learn and teach (unknowingly) too!  So, basically I want to work (a very big positive when job searching!), and the quicker the better. By treading the streets I am speeding up the whole process!

Secondly, I have just arrived in this area, so what better way to meet people than to work.  Again, the quicker I can do this the happier life will be.

Thirdly, I have a carrot dangling at the end of a stick – I promised myself a new phone when I acquire a great job!

Oh!  And lastly, I am an Australian.  Sadly I don’t have a European passport, valid ancestry or any magic card up my sleeve that – at the moment – allows me to work in France.  However, I had heard a rumour that companies can “sponsor” people for work; therefore I thought I would see if there was any truth behind this whispering.

So … weighing up the “unknowns” and “knowns” I decided my best bet was to hit the streets.

The first school was curtly efficient.  She was nice, all smiles and positive.  However, she told me directly they were in no need for any new teachers – at this time (perhaps next week, then?!).

After that it was a breeze!  Everyone I met was friendly, enthusiastic and, at a stretch, encouraging.  As expected everyone cringed at my French and most changed immediately to English – I think more to stop me murdering the French language!  Everyone took my CV and said they would give it to the “right” person (which I am sure wasn’t just “a line” as, within the 24 hours post this little adventure I was contacted by 75% of the schools!).

On other positive notes: as a new resident to this gorgeous city, it was a fabulous way to get my bearings and use the public transport system.  I got some exercise walking the streets and I was able to practise my halting French (it can only get better)!

Job searching at street level is definitely a great way to overcome fears of: rejection, isolation, language and getting lost.  I would suggest (as James did to me) to get out there and show prospective employees what you are made of.  And really the worst anyone can ever say to you is “no” and what have you lost then? Nothing!

On that note this teacher of English (still looking for work) is slightly stuffed after all that walking, talking and – I must admit – enjoying.

Chic Throws Collection 2009

Kris Leroy is the American founder of Grenoble-based soft furnishings design company Chic Throws. Grenoble Life wanted to know more about her business, her background and being an Anglophone entrepreneur in France.

Grenoble Life: What sort of products does Chic Throws make?

KL: We generally create and market what the shop name says: ‘chic throws’ – designer soft furnishings like throw blankets and throw pillows for modern interior design. It is quite funny as guys haven’t a clue what a throw is but they often become our best customers! Throws are blankets that you literally throw on the end of a bed or use to dress up a sofa or daybed. They are chic in design but are functional-chic as well so that you grab them in front of the TV to keep warm in winter or by the poolside in the cool summer evenings. Many of our customers use them to dress-up tired old furniture or add the final touch to modern contemporary furniture.

GL: Tell us about some of your different brands

KL: We have an exclusive - unique piece line that we sell directly to the public on our website, bi-annually (Winter & Spring Collections).  We either sell a matching set (throw and pillow) or separately. Each collection has many different patterns, colors and textures to choose from.  We also have limited edition collections for interior decorators and e-tailers on line which we produce in a local atélier in Grenoble. All our products are designed and made in France.

All the throws are terribly chic but are backed in very soft materials to encourage cuddling and use! (Italian soft wool, satin, velvet, faux-fur….)

GL: Is there a Chic Throws ‘look’? And is there an Anglo-Saxon influence and how does this compare to classic/modern French furnishings?

KL: The chic look comes from the fabrics which speak for themselves.  It is funny that you ask this question between French and Anglo-Saxon tastes as we have just figured it all out … The British and Americans love our unique piece collection available in the boutique which highlights the quality of each fabric and the combination with stripes, motifs, and texture. However the French are more design-oriented and are falling for the new Winter 2009 collection with our brilliantly-colored faux-fur collection (see below).

Chic Throws Winter 2009 collection

KL: We use only high-end designer, upholstery fabric from Paris, Lyon, London, Milan, Barcelona and New York. The combination of the textures is orginial as well: silks, taffetas, velvets, faux-fur, brocade, chintz linen, etc. There is no polyester chez nous!

GL: Tell Grenoble Life about the design and production process. Where are Chic Throws manufactured?

KL: We are so excited as we have just confirmed local production in an atélier that makes high-end furniture for a top design company, right here in Grenoble (Le Versoud). They have lag time available for us due to the economy and the fact that they are local helps us control quality and timely deliveries to our e-tailer customers. The unique pieces are all made by local seamstresses that work for us bi-annually. Their normal jobs are spent making custom wedding dresses so you can see where our attention to detail comes from.

We are able to stay small and exclusive by outsourcing all production and logistics. By purchasing small cuts of fabric from top designers we are able to remain cost competitive whilst producing in France. We maintain a low stock for the unique pieces and produce on-demand for e-tailers.

GL: Where do you sell your products?

KL: The unique piece, bi-annual collections are available on Etsy via the Chic Throws website. We share the same hand-made values as Etsy and want to help them grow this market. All other production for interior decorators and e-tailers are created and distributed directly to our partners.

GL: Where do you come from originally and how did you end up in Grenoble?

KL: I am an American love-hostage* in the Trièves area south of Grenoble.

*my husband is French

We had studied together in France and decided to come back after living in San Francisco to continue our careers and start a family.

GL: How did Chic Throws begin?

KL: I was finishing my MBA at the business school in Grenoble and needed a final project. Instead of plunging back into the high-tech world, I wanted to do something more creative. I had taken a few sewing classes for fun and thought of the idea of throws and pillows when I couldn’t find what I wanted to buy in home decor shops.

I started making them for wedding gifts and the orders started coming in so I pursued the project through a formal business plan and we were off!

GL: Do you think Grenoble is good environment for entrepreneurs such as yourself?

KL: Let’s just say we are making it that way! Some people may have given up by now but you really need to push forth, network and don’t listen to negative criticism. The aid to entrepreneurs is such that you really have nothing to lose by trying and many of the procedures are being centralized now and made more user-friendly.

GL: Where should potential entrepreneurs in Grenoble go first?

KL: My business depends on the Chambre des Métiers as we actually produce our products and market them. If you are simply a re-seller, you would need to go to the Chambre de Commerce. The procedures are quite complicated at first but it is best to seek a mentor in your business area and not hesitate to ask for help. My personal network has been fantastic for moral support & customers (Working Womens Network of Grenoble to name one). My mantra is: ‘Patience, Persistence and Low Overhead’ (borrowed from Seth Godin).

GL: You have emphasised in your labelling that Chic Throws are ‘Made in France’ – why is this so important to you?

KL: As we are targeting a high-end customer market (at mid-range prices) the ‘Made in France’ label truly denotes luxury and quality. We imagine our customers curled up under our throws in front of their wide screen TVs while sipping French champagne (even though I don’t have a TV personally … but love to drink champagne with a good book!).

GL: Can we also visit you at your workshop?

KL: Remember what I said about ‘low overhead’ … I do have an atelier / showroom in Grenoble which is very modest compared to our products. We are busy creating on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday from 9am to 4pm. We love to have visitors and suggest you call first to ensure we are there: 39 cours de la libération (1st floor behind the traîteur). Showroom tel: 04 57 39 38 81 or mobile: 06 31 24 17 78

GL: Do you have to travel a lot to meet buyers in France and abroad?

KL: That is the part I love! I go to Paris quite frequently for buying trips and to visit the Maison & Objet fairs bi-annually. I now do a lot of sourcing via the internet from London, Lyon, Brussels, New York and other fashion capitals now that I know my suppliers well.

GL: How important has the internet been in promoting/selling your products?

KL: Very important for my e-tailer customers as they have to sell our products from a thumbnail photo which is the greatest challenge … This B2B market is just beginning for us and now we will test it for the Winter 2009 collection. As for our personal internet sales via Etsy it is slow going as we’ve chosen to not invest highly in the B2C market (i.e. I’m not about to buy an e-commerce platform and be available 24/7). We are also high-end for Etsy which is difficult in a challenging economy.

GL: What’s next for Chic Throws?

KL: We are continuing our relationship building in the B2B market to launch limited edition collections for winter. This will allow us to focus on the fun of creating unique pieces for discerning customers as well as interior decorators. I dream of hiring a colleague to help us grow the business but the next six months will indicate if this dream is achievable!

Ben interpreting for Anand Gokani (great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi)

Benjamin Penin swapped sunny Manchester for downtown Grenoble in 2002 to pursue his dreams of living in the Alps and becoming a freelance translator.  Grenoble Life wanted to find out more …

Grenoble Life: You have an interesting bi-cultural background, tell us about it.

Benjamin Penin: I was born in London to an English mother and a French father. Intent on creating bilingual offspring they spoke to my sister and me in their respective mother tongues, while our schooling took place in the capital’s French schools. It was the family’s move to Manchester that thrust us into a more traditional British education, just in time for my GCSEs. A massive culture shock I’m still struggling to deal with! I was French, then I was English, and now I’m not so sure…

GL: You are a translator and an interpreter. Do you need specific qualifications to do this in France?

BP: Specific qualifications in translation certainly aren’t essential to finding work (except if you wish to work as a “sworn translator”, for legal documents, court work, etc.).

My university degree included specialist training in translation, but to be honest, “on-the-job” experience is far more useful than any diploma … this may be news to some in France [laughs].

Customers are primarily interested in the quality of your work, so once you have proven your worth and built yourself a strong reputation, work tends to come in through contacts and word of mouth.

GL: What kinds of clients do you generally have for your translating work?

BP: My translation clients are firms and other organisations that need to communicate to an English-speaking public or with their subsidiaries abroad.

A huge variety of sectors benefit from the services of people like me, from high-tech industry, to banks, cultural associations, conference organisers and ski resorts!

You have to be versatile and knowledgeable because of the variety of the work out there. I might translate detailed promotional material on a region’s winemaking industry one week and guidelines for energy-efficient building construction the next!

GL: What kinds of clients do you have for your interpreting work?

BP: They might be companies or associations who hold conferences for an international audience, training courses for foreign employees or meetings between individuals who don’t speak the same language, or even regional authorities receiving foreign visitors.

GL: Are your clients mostly based in the local area?

BP: For translation, not really. The rise of the internet means that customers can be acquired from anywhere, although local organisations tend to look for suppliers in their vicinity, and translation is no exception.

Interpreting work tends to revolve around the Rhône-Alpes region for obvious reasons of travel costs, although I have had assignments in Utah, Tunis and Amsterdam.

GL: Do you translate from English into French and French into English? Is there a difference in the way to approach such work? Is one more challenging than the other?

BP: People consider me to be completely bilingual, but I find the subtleties of French slightly more challenging (and time consuming!) so it makes sense for me to translate only into English. I’m sure some people work in both directions, but I have doubts over the quality of the results.

GL: Tell us about some interesting jobs you’ve done as an interpreter.

BP: The end of last year took the biscuit in terms of unusual jobs.

September kicked off with an assignment interpreting for the French Minister of Finance during her tour of local multinationals, and ended with a day accompanying Mahatma Gandhi’s great grandson (above) to press conferences, radio interviews and lunch with the Deputy Mayors.

Not long after, I spent a month in a laboratory near Nîmes with a young Russian chemist who was being trained up on the various ways of testing dog-food quality!

I could tell you about my four weeks in the countryside with a group of Indian civil engineers, but it’s a long story involving hydroelectric dams, frogs’ legs and rather too much time spent in coaches.

GL: What are some of the challenges / drawbacks of being self-employed in France?

BP: France certainly isn’t known as being an entrepreneur’s dream, but once you’ve got your head around the accounting rules and paperwork (pension, tax, insurance, etc.) I don’t think it’s any worse than other countries.

However, those exercising “professions libérales” pay a huge whack in social contributions and taxes (40-50% of their income) and of course they don’t have all the advantages of French employees.

GL: What are some of the advantages to being self-employed in France?

BP: You can take the day off at a moment’s notice and be on the slopes in less than an hour!

GL: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working at home?

You avoid office politics and traffic jams, but you need serious self-discipline to get your work done without it overflowing into your free time.

GL: Why did you come to live in Grenoble?

BP: I like Britain, but the weather would have driven me over the edge eventually, plus it lacked both a lifestyle conducive to a long life and sufficiently extreme geology – the Alps definitely exerted a gravitational pull on me.

GL: Is Grenoble a good town in which to do your kind of work?

BP: It is insofar as the local organisations involved in the leisure sector, high-tech industry, culture and tourism usually seek to work with local suppliers. But the web-based nature of my work makes my location almost irrelevant. There is a good little network of translators and interpreters here, though, and word of mouth works well.

Benjamin Penin – French-English Translator & Interpreter
Tel: 06 65 16 27 14
website

photo: donaldtownsend

by Alison Dupré

Until 1999 I had always lived in the UK. When I decided to settle in France I soon realised that there were as many cultural differences as there were new words to learn. I was fortunate enough to study languages at university, so at least I could get by; nevertheless I found it difficult to sort out everyday administrative tasks. After several years of living in France I have discovered that even the French find their administrative system complicated!

I meet English-speaking folk, some of whom have decided to settle down in France, others who have a holiday home here, but who don’t speak much French. They invariably find themselves in great difficulty when they come face to face with French bureaucracy. Even paying a bill can seem complicated if you don’t know how to write a French cheque or if you cannot fill in the direct debit request form.

For newly arrived French-residents the main problem areas seem to be taxation, banking and social security cover (health insurance). Whilst the main difficulties encountered by non-residents tend to be paying invoices and bills, how to transfer funds to France cheaply and efficiently and understanding how French companies and institutions work.

French banks can offer information and solutions to most of the above, but there are relatively few French people who are fluent enough in English to provide this information and this can lead to various misunderstandings. For example, contrary to popular belief, it is possible for a non-resident to open a bank account in France. However, given that bank personnel are often unable to identify a proof of address or proof of tax residence in English, foreigners have often been refused bank accounts unless they already have a property in France.

In reality, however, the documents which are required to open a bank account are as follows: a valid passport, a recent utility bill for your home address, together with a recent tax return/pay slip/ P60 or other tax document which allows the bank to correctly identify your official country of residence. (Generally speaking, where you spend more than six months in any one year is where you pay your taxes and is therefore your country of residence). Some banks do ask for additional information such as bank statements as a form of credit check in order to verify that you are entitled to have a bank account in your country of residence.

French banking usually works on a pay-as-you-go system whereby you pay a monthly fee for your account for a package service including several services free of charge or at half price and an overdraft at preferential rates. There is also an annual charge for bank and payment cards. The costs vary in accordance with the type of card.

Together with a bank account and direct debit card, most non-residents require a cheque book (there is no such thing as a cheque guarantee card in France) and a savings account. Many non-residents choose to have a French mortgage in order to take advantage of the low rates and advantageous conditions offered.

Most French banks now offer a full range of insurance policies most of which are available to their non-resident clients. These include home insurance, car insurance and legal cover.

A range of banking services are available through most high street banks, although few offer an English-speaking service. Although staff have mastered English, they haven’t always mastered the cultural differences between France and neighbouring countries. But things are improving …

Alison Dupré is Bilingual Account Manager for Crédit Agricole Sud Rhone Alpes

Cours Berriat in the good ol' days, when it was very easy to get your baby's picture taken

For now my daughter is uniquely a French citizen. British citizenship – and hand-cramp inducing paperwork that involves – will have to come later, preferably with me excused from block capital inscribing duties, since it seems I have long forgotten how to use a pen. As my wife and I were planning to take our daughter to the UK for a holiday this summer (OK, it’s not so much a summer, but the notionally warmer period that sometimes takes place, probably for around two weeks, between July and August). we have set ourselves up for the administrative rigmarole of applying for her carte d’identité in a relative hurry. Easier than getting a passport, the bureaucratic requirements didn’t seem so exigent on paper, but necessitated the usual documentative suspects that have become a regular feature of my administrative life in France: both the mother’s and baby’s copie integrale de l’acte de naissance *; photos taken by officially designated photographer; and a recent bill as proof of address.

It all seemed so suspiciously easy, but alarm bells started to ring when our casual enquiry about where such photographs should be taken was met by a bureaucratic stonewalling: would the town hall give us some tips where the official photo should be taken? No, of course they wouldn’t. Fools us for having the gall to ask. Apparently photomaton booths no longer exist, and in the digital era only photos numériques suffice these days for such purposes, despite the ease with which they can be manipulated. No matter: a five week old baby girl could hardly operate a photo booth anyway, considering how much trouble they can give certain 31 year old men (ahem).

Without enormous difficulty we located an appropriate place of business, at the somewhat dingy and conspicuously non-air-conditioned K’Store on Cours Bérriat. When we arrived we were surprised to find only a small photo developing counter in the middle of the mall where a young woman both serves customers and develops the photos herself (I am developing a totally unscientific theory that the much-fabled French productivity may be the result of sacrificing service, or at least combining service into a job which would perhaps be done in another country by a separate person – not unlike those bossy owner-waiters in restaurants who seem so displeased to see you). To be fair, the woman was making the best of a difficult juggling act: it was surprising how much business this little photo lab was doing at half past three on a Tuesday afternoon.

However, there was one major spanner in the works. For a carte d’identité, the baby’s eyes must be open, which seems ridiculous given that her eye colour is bound to change in the coming months, not to mention the fact that her entire appearance is transforming with every passing moment. Furthermore, my daughter has a curious defence mechanism when in the company of strangers, and that is to retreat completely into herself like a hedgehog, either feigning or genuinely falling into a deep and unshakeable sleep. Normally this is a blessing – we have even managed to take her to a restaurant and she has slept peacefully and angelically without interruption, attracting appreciative glances from other diners (yes, that’s right! It’s only been five weeks and we’ve already nailed this parenthood business!). On this prematurely sticky May day, however, the blessing became a curse. We tried to wake our daughter up but she wasn’t having any of it, despite us employing our full arsenal of tickles and noisy toys.

All this was taking place with increasing desperation as I had to periodically run out to the street to top up the parking metre and the photo shop lady, camera tripod at the ready, had to attend to customers. During a small window of open-eyed opportunity, she managed to take a couple of shots, but these proved too blurry given that we were doing our utmost to jolt some life into our daughter at the time. Stubbornly, she fell back to sleep with a swiftness that might lead you to suspect that she was toying with us. Another sweaty dash to the parking metre later and we intensified our efforts to rouse her in full view of bemused onlookers, starting to feel oddly abusive to this ostensibly peaceful little baby, knowing full well that she would choose to ‘release the tension of the day’ as soon as we set foot in our apartment.

Finally we were reduced to undressing her to just her body suit, and after a generous amount of begging and bouncing she awoke with a startle and promptly vomited over herself. As any parent knows, a baby being sick is no exceptional occurrence, but the next few moments were tense as we tried to position my daughter decently in the camera’s line of sight, her mouth working languidly as if ready to be sick again. (Once, in her first couple of weeks, she vomited so spectacularly it was like the detonation of a milk-filled grenade. One moment my wife was cradling her, the next moment both mother and baby were covered in regurgitated milk. It was a like a scene from Ghostbusters: She slimed me!).

The photo, taken seconds later, managed to transform my once beautiful baby into a slavering Shrek-like creature; or more precisely Phil Mitchell from Eastenders. Not a big deal until you realise that this will be her identity card photo for the next ten years. On the other hand, the application is yet to be approved – which is touch and go considering the fact that she appears nearly diagonally in the photo, and is meant to be completely upright – we could have to do it all over again!

*Copie integrale de l’acte de naissance is a copy of the official birth registry that can be obtained from the Hôtel de Ville or Mairie of your home town. This is only required for the carte d’indentité application when one parent is a foreign national.