“To maintain order in your bureaucratic life, you more or less have to stay home; go away for any length of time and you’re always likely to run foul of some agency or another.” – Michel Houellebecq, Submission One of … Continue reading
Firing Société Générale
One of the earliest articles for this blog was about my experience getting my first French bank account at Société Générale. The process was relatively painless, but that was before FATCA came into force and made life more challenging for … Continue reading
Quarantined in the City of Light
While Paris started the year in the midst of a transportation strike that the strikers by and large lost in the end, there was only a brief respite for the hospitality industry as the specter of the global panic pandemic … Continue reading
Strike Hype
So I should confess that I’ve mostly avoided any experience of the strikes here in Paris. I flew out of Paris on December 4th for a long-planned holiday Down Under. The next day, the strikes began. I just arrived back … Continue reading
Visa Video Courses Posted
One of the things I did this summer during a trip to the US was film some video courses about subjects I knew very well. Two of those courses were about French immigration. I did one on the Long Term … Continue reading
Five Must-Subscribe Newsletters for Your life in Paris and France
A big part of how I keep up with all the latest developments in my adopted country is, of course, living here. I organize almost a dozen monthly business and social events and am always learning how to integrate more … Continue reading
First Visit to Paris: Arc de Triomphe
I sometimes share with people that I moved to Paris on eight total days of evidence: three days in 2009, two days in 2010, and three days in 2012. It wasn’t until the third trip that I had any truly … Continue reading
Notre Drame: the Fire
I was in a train back into Paris from Frankfurt when the news started to trickle in about our disaster here in Paris. We’ve had various shocks during the time I’ve lived here, whether it was terrorist attacks in years … Continue reading
Pinch Me, I Live in Paris
There are hundreds of postcards I’ve made of Paris in my mind. I’ll stop, clear my head of whatever I was thinking of, and be truly and appreciatively, in the moment. A soft sunset on Île de la Cité seen … Continue reading
Auto-Entrepreneur: A Tax Classification, Not a Visa Status
On more than one occasion I’ve gotten emails from people who use “auto-entrepreneur” and “profession libérale” interchangeably. They aren’t interchangeable, and more importantly for readers of this blog, auto-entrepreneur is not a visa status. It’s a tax classification, and not … Continue reading