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LIVING ABROAD
French Village Life — Charming, Peaceful & Idyllic, Or Boring, Frustrating & Impossible?
It depends on who you ask . . .
I’m a foreigner. My perspective is that of a foreigner who sees village life through the slightly rose-tinted lens of an outsider. I might feel inconvenienced by having to drive 15 minutes or so to get cash from the ATM, but I don’t have to depend on public transport. I don’t worry about keeping an old house warm in winter, or how I will pay for a new roof, or feed a young family. I love the village just as it is.
If you need quick cash here in my village, you’re out of luck. But if you love ancient history, you’re in the right place. One Saturday every month, there’s a guided tour of the 13th-century chateau that now serves as the village mairie (town hall.) Wander through the imposing halls, chambers and sunlit interior courtyards — peer into a dungeon. The bloodied plastic limb suspended from the ceiling serves as a reminder of what happened to those who ran afoul of the Lords of Fouzhilon who once controlled large swathes of the French countryside.
