ON BECOMING AN EXPAT: The Beginning

From infancy through young adulthood, I lived just west of the center line of the Great Northeast Corridor of the United States, that stretch of a few hundred miles along the Atlantic coast that starts in Boston, cuts through New York and Philadelphia, and terminates in northern Virginia just past Washington, DC. I LIVED there. It wasn't just my home. I never strayed. I knew nothing of the rest of the civilized world except for what I heard and read, saw on the television or in the movies.

In the first place, our family never traveled much when I was a kid. Dad's lunch counter required his attention seven days a week. When we did vacation, we went down the shore, the Jersey shore if you didn't get the idiom. I don't remember a single night in a strange bed that wasn't in a relative's house or down the shore.

And the personal histories of my family discouraged any incentive to travel in order to return to the lands of my genealogical roots. My paternal grandmother Dora and her brother Sam told stories of waves of antisemitism culminating in pogroms in their native Ukraine, of risking lives to rescue the Torah from burning synagogues, of walking with all of their belongings in pillowcases to Milan in order to take steerage to the New World. We never knew any of Dora's five husbands, the last a cousin so we can assume that his story matches hers.

Mom's Russian progenitors apparently lived more comfortable lives. Bankers led the family. Still, they were Jewish bankers. Some chose to remain, the 'home' base for a family network that facilitated its members' desires to emigrate, not unlike today's new Americans. Gino, our favorite pizza guy when I was a kid, told of how his family in Italy put together the money to send him to New York. A cousin took Gino in, taught him the business, and put up the money for Gino to open a shop in Flemington, in what was then rural Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Gino brought over other cousins to help in the shop. Business boomed. Gino opened a second shop, staffed by the cousins he had trained, allowing for additional cousins to be brought over. That's how Grandma Rose's family operated.

Nothing in these stories created a desire in me to retrace the steps of ancestors who left their native lands so willingly.

Then one day in 1970, I climbed into my VW Beetle and embarked on a road trip sufficiently epic to merit a Ken Keyseyish novel if only I had the talent.  My intention was to travel to Atlanta to visit a friend, then on to Dallas to visit a cousin. I had no plans beyond that. But in Dallas I met Cathey, who was born in New Orleans, raised in three different Texas cities, and who attended college in Mexico and did the backpacking-in-Europe scene years before. I was to spend the next forty years (and counting) with. Cathey. . On that one trip, I left Dallas for Indianapolis, returned to Dallas with one of Cathey's sisters, drove to New York with Cathey, to Boston and back to New York with another friend, with Cathey and friends to Chicago and San Fransisco, to Los Angeles and back to Dallas. After a side trip to New Orleans, Cathey and I found our way home, to my home, then our own first home together in northern New Jersey.

I'd been bitten by the wanderlust bug and Cathey was a carrier. With such a start, how could I not consider the unthinkable, the idea that living out my life within a few miles of my birth would not satisfy my soul?

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE: PARENTING IN FRANCE

The Wall Street Journal can't help but have a schizophrenic attitude toward France and the French.

On the one hand, France is a social democracy. Not technically socialism, but close enough that you can call it that if you're a Republican politician. The French enjoy  universal health care. (Maybe the word 'enjoy' is not one that the WSJ would use.) The French are part of that European Union thing, encouraging sloth among its populations, running up debt, threatening the markets.

On the other hand, those who read the WSJ are presumed to have disposable income. They want the best and they can afford the best. They live lives of relative leisure. If they knew how, they would be decadent.

Who knows more about decadence than the French?

So what is the editorial board of the WSJ to do? The answer comes in three parts:
1. They denigrate the French on the news and editorial pages for their corrupt politicians, their 'entitlement' economy, their lack of good old Protestant work ethic.Can you believe that the French are entitled to more vacation by law than any other country in the world and that they take just about every day of vacation time to which they are entitled? And socialized medicine? Don't even go there.
2. They worry on the financial pages that the European Union's apparent inability to solve it's economic problems will have a negative effect on the US economy. Their problems are their own fault...if you overlook that uniquely American invention, derivative trading. But if they blow their recovery, we might go down with them.
3. They lay it out plainly on the pages that deal with life-style and the arts. French wine is the best. French food can't help but tickle the palate. French museums, the Musee d'Orsay in particular, set the standard. And today, I learned that the French are exemplary parents.

Exemplary parents? How can this be? How can the same people who demand to be coddled by their government be the kind of parents who successfully teach their children patience, discipline, and self-sufficiency?

I believe that attitude stems from a mistaken premise, that the French have persuaded their government to create a society that expects more in services than they are entitled to and are willing to pay for. I believe that the French have demanded exactly what reasonable people in the modern world deserve - working conditions that allow them to have a decent family life, healthcare that is among the best in the world and available to all, and a retirement age that allows them to be fully active for many years before the ravages of time set in.

But are the French willing to pay? I think that they are. Certainly, they would prefer lower taxes to higher ones. But they have a simple income tax system and a high Value Added Tax, both of which can be easily adjusted if necessary and when politicians exhibit the will to explain the need to their constituents.

They'll get through the current financial crisis. They'll keep universal healthcare. They'll get plenty of time off from work and they'll take all of it. And they'll be healthier than we are, live longer than we do, and raise patient, disciplined, and self-sufficient children.

CREDIT LYONNAISE MORTGAGE PRE-APPROVAL

We've had a checking account with Credit Lyonnaise since 2005. We've paid all of our French bills through the account either by check or debit - mortgage (through a different bank), taxes, utilities, property management, the works. We have a Carte Bleu  (French credit card - Visa - tied to our bank account). We have a 'personal banker' with whom I can exchange emails (thanks to Google Translate). We  recently opened a savings account in which we've parked the equity from the sale of our house.

I recently contacted our personal banker to ask how to pre-approve a mortgage. That's how we purchased the house in Cazouls. We'd contacted Banque Patrimoine & Immobilier on the advice of an expat on one of the expat forums. We faxed and FedExed a bunch of financial information. Eventually, we were pre-approved for a mortgage of up to 100,000 euros. It made things simple when we found the house. Put the money down, inform the bank, and away we went.

Credit Lyonnaise does not work that way, I'm told. When we've found the property, we'll let the bank know. They'll decide then and only then. No pre-approval. Not terribly convenient. Oh, well. If these things were easy, we'd all be rich.

EDIT: Credit Lyonnaise crapped out. We found the house that we were looking for in Quarante, called with the particulars, and they simply disappeared. The mortgage company that the real estate agent suggested wasn't interested. We weren't looking to borrow enough to make it worth their while to write the note. In the end, we went back to BPI. Even though we had a history, our age was a problem. We had to fill out endless form, have blood work and an EKG sent to them, and had to have our doctor fill out a four-page form that ended with the question: Will the mortgage holder live long enough to pay off the mortgage? And we had to buy mortgage insurance anyway. But they got it done and the rate of 2.68% fixed for 15 years works very well for me.