[aborsy]

France can be tough!

Low salaries, high taxes, high prices around Paris area, heavy administration (I don’t wish anyone going to a prefecture!), hard to find information about services, hard and expensive to find apartment or relocate, congested public transport, mono-lingual static culture, hard to make friend with French, public litter and lack of cleanliness, periodic strikes, small apartments (in EU in general), complexity of system, no-skin-in-the-game nature of public system produces a lot of dysfunction everywhere, etc.

I for one gave up!

[lm28469]

Disclaimer, I'm French.

It's tough but it's a reminder that every country have their quirks and identities. People seem to imagine that moving from California to Texas is the same as UK to France or Greece to Germany, but it isn't.

It's relatively easy to physically move but getting integrated is a whole other story. I moved from France to Germany, salaries aren't crazy here either, I pay more tax, bureaucracy is equally complex, and people are just different, culture plays a big role. People underestimate how conditioned we are from birth to things like philosophical/political views, ways of life, humour, &c. and even language, no matter how long you'll learn a language you'll never be able to express yourself as naturally as a native (I'm not talking about ordering a beer or filling tax reports, but more on an emotional side, having deep discussions about complex topics, &c.) and tbh I like it that way. I'd say it also is extremely dependant on which part of the country you move to, big cities are hell almost universally, Berlin is an open dumpster but take the train for 2 hours to Hamburg and it's much cleaner, on the flip side it's much easier to meet peopel in Berlin than Hamburg. Same thing with Paris and Strasbourg for example

Small apartments, regular strikes, the public system, they all take their roots in French history; the good, the bad and the ugly.

Moving to another country is a chance, but it equally is a sacrifice

[erdo]

Well, this is true. Some of those things are also true of London though.

Re the admin (to get set up on the health care system etc) everything does need things like original birth certificates etc. And I spent several days going in person(!) to an office somewhere to deal with it (but that's mainly because my french is not really good enough to deal with things like that on the phone easily)

I think if I was on my own here, loneliness would have been a real issue until I had decent conversational french. (I moved with my family though, so it's less if an issue for me)