Planning trip to France to decide where to move

Moving to or from France
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touché

or should that be touchée
:bewildered again emoji:

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I’ve only ever had plate-slamming once, in Budapest. Out there for a conference with the MD, first meal and the waitress did that leaving us puzzled. It was only later, after we’d been propositioned and then seen the stag parties that we realised why.

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I sued to have to drive that road a few times a year, hated it.

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Only if there’s something you want to tell us about your gender identity :wink:

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I identify as normal (if that is allowed these days)

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Of course, everyone is normal under their own definition of whatever normal might be.

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Wow you must have been really keen… :smiley:

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Thanks for your reply @Shiba, apologies for some reason I thought you were in Argeles. Certainly makes sense to be aware of flood risks between the Tet and and Agley - and elsewhere. If that weather pattern from Valencia ever moves north to the Golf du Lion could make a big impact…

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Hopefully he will discover that he’s a natural with languages. I’ve been trying to learn for 3 years and can barely say a thing. :slightly_frowning_face:

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If you are seriously planning to move to France to live… next year…
then I’d suggest you help your OH to get some language skills and/or provide him with a suitable instant-translate app…

It’s very different living somewhere, to merely visiting on holiday and the more preparation you can all do beforehand… the better things will/should be… :crossed_fingers:

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As I say… get him a really good app… :+1:

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Absolutely standard service m.o. in the Lower East Side Jewish restaurants, I found [back in the 70’s/'80’s]. Perhaps because I’m a goy.

“Daddy! Daddy!”
“Yes bubula?”
“Why did God create the goyem?”
“Somebody has to pay retail”

I visited VLC for 15 years, every year at least twice, before moving there full time. The weather that has caused this disaster was an unprecedentedly intense seasonal event called ‘La Gota Fria’ - the cold drop.

The temp falls like a stone on the instant and a cloudburst follows. In a ‘normal’ gota fria these cloudbursts last 30-45-60 mins, then the sun comes out again, dries everything up. This goes on for a few days before the weather resumes blissfully sunny 22C-24C autumn.

Sometimes la gota fria goes a bit mad. In 2016 the crew doing my reformar couldn’t get in to the city because massive rainstorms had washed boulders the size of Transit vans onto the road.

Due to the persistent droughts the water courses of the rivers are like concrete channels. The results are as we see.

But this one has broken all records. Awful.

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He has a few :sweat_smile:

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Une chose. :slight_smile:

I do sympathise though, I can cope with basics but fast French flummoxes me.

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A few years ago I built a website for an English teacher of Danish, and he reckoned it was the hardest language to learn.

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I have no hesitation is stopping someone in “fast-flowing speech” and asking them to talk slower… with my gentle/apologetic smile… not had anyone refuse… yet… :crossed_fingers:

on a rare occasion, the person might offer to speak English, but I explain that I prefer to keep to French… just slower… and that really does seem to bring out the best in 'em :wink:

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I have several Danish friends, who were all taught English as kids, since “everyone knows that only Danes are daft enough to speak Danish, no foreigners are going to bother to learn it” :rofl: :rofl:

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Take the word ’ Lyø’. How hard can it be to pronounce this 3 letter place name? It took my Danish pal several goes to get me anywhere near and that involved slitting the word into ‘Ly’ and then ‘ø’.

But I believe Finnish and Hungarian are more difficult still. I think the Finns are relieved to learn and speak Eng.

When I make a half-hearted attempt at a self-build camper the one thing I was certainly not going to do without was a good diesel heater. The Eberspacher is the default heater, along with Webasto, in coaches, HGV, boats et al.

A auto-electronics pal fitted mine, complete with a button on a panel on the side of the bed frame. I could lean down, press the button and hear a faint sound from under the van of burning diesel being blown over a heat exchanger. In 10 mins the van was cosy warm enough to get up and dressed, even when I was overnighting at 2500m on the Spanish mesa in winter - some degrees well below 0C

Any rented camper will have such a system.

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I believe that Basque is probably the worst European language to learn.

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No worries about apologies. I crossed the Tet downstream here at teatime today and it had completely been re-designed in that great piles of mud and trees had cut it in half and it was flowing, something we had not seen for over 2.5 years. The Agly is still dry as a bone though and people have been warned not to descend to the bed and try and walk in it so as not to disturb what is left. Saw Barcelona on the news earlier, not as bad as Valencia but still pretty horrible and only 1.5h from here but I think the mountains have a lot to do with it and we are slightly protected.