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Living overseas

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Should we move to Paris?!

114 replies

Sparklemotion1982 · 16/04/2014 17:48

Hello!

I currently live in London with my husband, and he has been offered a job in Paris. I don't like London, I'm lonely here and hate the weather (before here we lived in Dubai for 7 years which I really loved, and I would love to go back there).

We have to decide whether to take the job in Paris and was wondering if anyone had any advice, having moved there.

We don't have children at the moment but would probably TTC over there as I am 32. I work from home so wouldn't meet anyone through work so am wondering what areas would be best to live in, and whether it is easy to meet people. We both only have rusty GCSE French so would have lessons over there.

Any advice would be very much appreciated as we are very confused!

Thank you!!

OP posts:
Bonsoir · 10/05/2014 22:13

You obviously aren't fussy!

WickedWitchoftheNorthWest · 10/05/2014 22:19

No bonsoir you obviously aren't well-informed. There are many lovely affluent villages that lots of people commute from. For example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Germain-en-Laye

SheherazadeSchadenfreude · 10/05/2014 22:43

Croissy, Bougival, anywhere out that way is nice. I had a friend who lived in Croissy, large house, right on the river. It wouldn't have suited me, but I could see the appeal.

Bonsoir, you are making it sound as if Paris is surrounded by Little Croydons!

Bonsoir · 11/05/2014 06:04

It mostly is! Greater Paris is a planning tragedy - lots of truly horrible building and transport links. Which is partly why Parisians don't move out but buy maisons de campagne which are not necessarily that far away in distance but are nonetheless inaccessible. I have come across quite a lot of Americans/British who thought that they couldn't survive in a Paris flat and needed a large semi-suburban house, a garden and lots of parking and nevertheless relented after a couple of years around Saint-Germain-en-Laye because life was so hard.

France has done a fabulous job with the TGV and I think that Paris public transport just gets better and better but suburban public transport and commuter links are terrible. Try taking the train from Saint-Lazare to Versailles .

GreatAuntDinah · 11/05/2014 07:09

Croissy, Maisons-Laffitte, Conflans, Auvers-sur-Oise, Bougival, Marly-le-Roi, Enghien-les-Bains... Need I go on?

PS it's not that I'm not fussy, thanks, I just earn an average wage Hmm

SheherazadeSchadenfreude · 11/05/2014 10:00

I quite liked my little journeys to Garches, Croissy etc etc on the suburban trains. I could always get a seat, there was plenty of space. Much better than the London Midland train to or from Milton Keynes, where you were packed in like sardines, or they would often cancel trains at whim, meaning you couldn't get to or from work at all. And have you been on the tube recently in the rush hour? Now that really is grim.

frozentree · 11/05/2014 13:04

All depends where you live - we're out in a beautiful village in the Yvelines, yet my husband has a extremely reliable and fast train commute into St Lazare which takes only 30 minutes, after a 10 minutes drive to the station. He tells me he always gets a seat...

LillianGish · 11/05/2014 20:22

I tend to think that if you are moving to Paris then you want to live in Paris - and anything extra-muros just isn't the same. I would also rent to begin with then you can have lots of fun exploring to see where you want to live. Personally I'm a big fan of the 14th which while not fashionable has some lovely bits (round rue d'Alesia for example) and is quite reasonably priced. You have to accept you will be in a smallish (by London standards apartment) but you will be a Paris for goodness sake. If you try to apply London standards to French housing stock you are destined for disappointment - vive la difference! I'm about to move back with two dcs and though we briefly considered a move to the banlieu for more space we both agreed that it wouldn't be the same thing at all. Apart from anything else as an expat I want something that feels faintly cosmopolitan and not just like living in France (if that makes sense).

PeachyParisian · 18/05/2014 22:26

I have days where I adore living here and others when I dream of moving back to London.

The 4th is lovely for bars, restaurants & shopping but the apartments are generally very expensive for very very very little space. DH and I live in the heart of le Marais and it's very loud at all hours so wouldn't really recommend it if you're planning a family. 16th is great for kids, lots of expats there too.

I would avoid the 18th & 19th (and parts of the 20th) like the plague. Lasted about a month in the 18th when we first moved here around the montmartre/barbes area and it put me right off Paris. Grim! and I grew up in SE London...

Agree with all the posters about bureaucracy, its a massive PITA here. More so because DH isn't from the EU but French helps a lot.

Good luck with your move!

butterfliesinmytummy · 18/05/2014 23:42

I used to live in 15th near montparnasse / falguiere and had my first studio apartment at la motte piquet, which I adored. The weekend market was right there and the cafés were great, the usual fromagerie / charcuterie / boulangerie on my doorstep too. This is going back a while but I presume it's still nice? Great bus and metro lines (after living there for years I learned to choose apartments on metro interchanges and a street or two back from a boulevard so there were plenty of buses passing).

I also lived behind place de clichy (not recommended but I was a student so severely budget restricted) and near pere lachaise which was ok.

GreatAuntDinah · 19/05/2014 15:59

I would avoid the 18th & 19th (and parts of the 20th) like the plague

It all goes to show there's no accounting for taste - I'd much much rather live there than in the 16th! Depends if you're after a Kensington or Dalston vibe I suppose. OP, you really need to visit various areas to get a feel for them.

Bonsoir · 19/05/2014 17:31

Drug dealers on your doorstep and in your hallway night and day isn't everyone's cup of tea Smile

WickedWitchoftheNorthWest · 19/05/2014 18:53

Boring wannabe snobs on your doorstop who brag about how many flats they own and their dull children' achievements aren't everyones' cup of tea either Smile

GreatAuntDinah · 20/05/2014 09:46

Yes nothing like a nice bit of sweeping generalisation to start the week. I guess I have to admit the 16th does have a better class of drug dealer

SheherazadeSchadenfreude · 21/05/2014 22:38

LOL at the drugs. The only time I was stopped and asked where one could buy cocaine, was early one morning on the rue de Courcelles. I said that this was the sort of area where people would have their drugs delivered to their apartments, not go to some grotty flat in the back streets to pick it up. I sent them to Chateau d'Eau but warned them it might be a bit early, as Parisians weren't early risers (I was doing an early shift at work in an emergency and had to be in at 0630).

Bonsoir · 22/05/2014 07:57

There was a location on rue de Courcelles for dealers to meet Neuilly housewives who rolled up in their Minis to collect and pay. It was a badly guarded secret and has since been stamped on by the new cafe owner. It didn't make the neighbourhood dangerous, however, as payment and delivery were very reliable and said housewives went back to the comforts of their own homes for consumption purposes.

revolutionarytoad · 22/05/2014 08:37

Took me 5 mins at the Gare du Nord...

will be living in a not particularly salubrious area in Paris from this summer. Had an opportunity to take an apartment off the Boulevard de Magenta- no thanks. Even around Rue Blanche you get idiots thinking they're fine to leer at you and make sexist demeaning comments as you walk by.

I say better to live in a boring but safe area really. Paris is so easy to navigate you can get to better places in no time.

riverboat1 · 22/05/2014 19:55

Paris is so different to London. Here, everything inside the periph is Paris, and everything outside is like a different world. I live in the east suburbs, 20m RER ride into Paris (and 20m in the car on those rare days where there is no traffic) and you would never believe that my town is just a few km away from one of the most beautiful, cultural cities in the world. There is nothing here, just apartments, houses, shopping malls and delapidated town centres with hardly anything going on.

Whereas London has stuff going on all over the place, in the inner and outer zones. I lived in zone 4 there, and there were destination bars and restaurants, street life, heaving parks, galleries, theatres...the main difference really being the street life. Outside Paris proper, it is non-existent. People don't walk, they drive everywhere. And if you want to go out, or do something of an evening (other than go to your one local restaurant, or to a generic Buffalo Grill or Leon) you go into Paris. It's just not the case in London.

I have friends who live in the west suburbs, Marly le Roi, St Germain etc. While those areas are infinitely prettier and posher than the east where I live, it still seems to be basically the same story in terms of lack of 'life' and vibrancy.

I don't get it really. Why is there not more demand from people living in the suburbs for bars, restaurants, culture, Paris-ness?

This is only tenuously linked to the OP, really. But if you take only one thing from it let it be this: don't contemplate moving to the suburbs of Paris if you already feel lonely in London. Stick to Paris proper. With your budget you can get something nice.

revolutionarytoad · 22/05/2014 21:04

Like an extreme case of local centralisation? I know someone who's talking about people getting pushed out of Paris. It's like people being priced out of their parents' neighbourhoods just outside London. I mean, Montmarte got gentrified too....

revolutionarytoad · 22/05/2014 21:05
  • always talking
LillianGish · 22/05/2014 21:30

Excellent post Riverboat - your analysis is spot on.

SheherazadeSchadenfreude · 22/05/2014 22:17

There are some very dull places in commuterland outside London. Bromley isn't exactly buzzing. Twyford, anyone? Buckingham? Ruislip? Slough? Epping?

LillianGish · 22/05/2014 22:26

But they are slightly further than 20 minutes out of Central London - though I accept they are probably quite dull. I was thinking more along the lines of Ealing, Chiswick, Richmond - essentially these are suburbs, but still have a London vibe and their own charm.

riverboat1 · 22/05/2014 22:35

Exactly Lillian. Here it's more like everything from zone 2 onwards is alone the lines of the places you mention Sheherazade. There are no 'buzzing' areas except within Paris, zone 1, itself.

riverboat1 · 22/05/2014 22:56

OK, actually there are SOME places in zone 2 that are nice and still Paris-y (Boulogne, Vincennes, Levallois) etc. But a lot of not so nice places too (St Denis, Villejuif, Bagnolet...)

Compared to the residential riches that is zone 2 of London ...Clapham, Camden, Islington, Hackney, Kensington...places that you'd CHOOSE to live in, rather than being forced to live there because Central London was too expensive.

And looking at the transport map of Paris, zone 3 is really a wasteland. Some of the places in the West are OK in terms of not being dumps, but there is nowhere in the east, north or south that is in any way 'buzzing' or 'dynamic'...

Whereas looking at the London map, in zone 3 you still have nice places to live all over the place like Balham, Greenwich, Hampstead, Wimbledon, Finchley, even Stratford now...

I would LOVE to be proved wrong though. I am pretty much tied to living in the east / south east suburbs of Paris for the foreseeable future and am constantly pouring over the map trying to spot potentially nice places we could move to. If anyone knows of any hidden gems in the south or east suburbs I'd love to know.