51 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
51 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown
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date: 2012-10-01
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title: My new life
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category: Opinions
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---
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I am now a month in to life in France. Make no mistake I am so far very
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happy that we have made the right decision, even though not everything
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is perfect. The biggest beef is without a doubt the paperwork! For
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example, it took us a month to get a phone line and the stumbling block
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was not having the right piece of paper. To get onto the system you have
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to have a bill, but to get a bill you need a bill. Call it a catch-22 or
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a chicken-egg take your pick, but french beaurocrats love that.
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Working in France is a little different to England. Add to that the fact
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that I am going from a small company to working on a project for a much
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larger one and you have quite a culture shock.
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The attitude to lunch is probably the biggest single
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change of all that can only be attributed to country. All my
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colleagues take a 2 hour lunch religiously, during which they go
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elsewhere. I am used to taking a 30 minute break to read the Register
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with a sandwhich/salad at my desk. For now, past an hour, I get bored an
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return to work. Maybe I will extend my lunch as I get used to it, but
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maybe not - shorter lunch means I get to go home earlier.
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# Commuting
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My commute is quite a lot further than when I was at Snell:
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<iframe width="500" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&q=select+col2+from+1J0AXs2Oyzs-J9ChL5U7hgKWkHX-HimQZ699VSO4&h=false&lat=50.820603567709554&lng=-1.011776909545925&z=13&t=1&l=col2"></iframe>
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That was quite a nice route once you got to Langston harbour. What I do
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now is very different. For a start I have not cycled all the way yet.
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Partly because it it a lot further, but also because trains are a *lot*
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cheaper here. I pay 80 euros for a month, half of which gets
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re-imbursed. When your train costs less than 2 euros a day, it does not
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even make sense to take a car.
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The actual cycling is a lot more pleasant as well. I live in a hamlet,
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and my route take me past the *le lac tranquille* (the calm lake). In
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the morning it gets very cold and misty, which is very nice.
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Drivers are about the same. The vast majority give me plenty of space,
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but obviously you get the odd idiot. Just today someone shouted "Je
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vais te touer" so some things are pretty universal it would appear.
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I have also found that the paint on the roads (at least in Rennes) is
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more slippery in the wet. The simple answer has been to avoid the cycle
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lanes - no real change there then.
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