21 March 2020

I originally planned to write about what it is like for an American to integrate into society in Alsace.   Eventually that is what this site will probably be about, but obviously I’m not doing a lot of integration right now.   Until a week ago I went exploring every day and saw things that I thought were amazing all the time.  I’m guessing that’s what most of my American friends want to read about, but maybe your cabin fever is intense enough to read this substitute material.  Honestly, it’s harder for me to write from my house than it is when I’m out in the world, but I really appreciate those of you who have already subscribed to this page and so I’ll do my best.   Since I cannot go out, I’ll take you on a tour of chez moi.

We downsized.  It was intentional.  We had a Texas-sized house in ummm Texas and we were tired of feeling like slaves to the house.  My wife did most of the cleaning (because she cared more, not just because I’m an asshole), but I did most of the maintenance.  We were sick of it.  And it was expensive.  We spent a month in our tiny camper trailer before we left the USA.  I’ll probably blog about that at some point during the quarantine because we had no idea when we left on our camping trip that we were moving to Europe.  By the time we got back to Texas, we’d sold our house, given various family members the best of what possessions we had taken with us, and were trying to figure out what we needed to live in next.  I really like my camper.  It’s twenty-two feet long by eight feet wide, so that’s one hundred seventy-six feetsquared.  That is roughly equivalent to almost seventeen meters squared.  Damn, I should have put that tidbit in my adjusting to the metric system blog.  My wife and I get along pretty well so the small space is OK for us, but we figured we needed about three times that much space to be comfortable.  We decided to look for a fifty square meter apartment and set a budget of 1,000 euros per month.

No plan survives first contact with reality.  The university paid for our stay in an aparthotel for two weeks.  It was a small hotel room with a kitchenette.  The staff was nice, the public spaces were adequate, and the breakfast was pretty good.  I hated it.   There were two problems with the aparthotel.   The first problem was that it was in a suburb of Strasbourg that is reasonably convenient to the university but not much else.  The other problem is that it was August.  Moving to France was a good idea.  Doing it in August was a bad idea.  The country of France goes on vacation in August.  Seriously, the whole country goes on vacation for the whole month.  Skeleton crews are left to whatever businesses have to be open.  These skeleton crews are not made up of the elite members of the team.  Accordingly, it was really hard to find realtors to help us find an apartment in August.   Things get better in September once “la rentrée” happens, yes the French have a word for when they are ready to open the country again.   Did you know that “bureaucracy” is another French word?  Let me prove it.  I opened a bank account in Paris over ten years ago.  Maybe moving to France wasn’t entirely a decision made in the back of a camper trailer last June…  France doesn’t have interstate banking so my account in Paris is equally useful to me in Strasbourg as my account in Texas.  We needed to open a local bank account.   The French are not overly fond of the American president and changed their laws last year to make it more difficult for Americans to open bank accounts in response to a what they perceived as an inequitable tax policy change.  They also changed some laws to expedite the French visa status for American scientists and their families who believe climate change transcends politics and quarterly earnings, so I’m not criticizing French laws at all.  The problem is that you have to have a residence in France to open a bank account and you have to have a bank account to sign a lease.  Furthermore, it is illegal to make or accept payment in cash over 300 euros.  This has something to do with tax evasion and fighting drug trade.  I expected that moving to France would have challenges…

I had done some apartment searching online from the USA and found one that was interesting on “leboncoin” which is kind of like French “craigslist”.    It was still available.  It was a lot bigger than we needed at eighty-five square meters and almost €200 over budget, but it had some other things going for it.   First of all, the apartment was built in 1320 during an expansion of the church, and this appeals to the history major part of me.  My apartment was old by the time Columbus was born.   More importantly, the apartment is owned by the church.   I am not religious by any means, and if I was, I almost certainly would not identify as a Christian.  But doing business with the church has one definite advantage:  they are a cash business and were happy to accept a quasi-legal cash payment for the security deposit and first month’s rent.

The bulk core of the “modern” church was built in the year 1180 on the foundations of an Irish church which was built before the year 800, which in turn was built on a Roman cemetery. The apartment is over one of the transepts of the church and is situated on two levels, both with views of the only surviving cloisters in Strasbourg.  The church is home to a famous 1780 organ which can often be heard in the apartment (like it or not).  There is a small courtyard which is usually private.  Two of the chapels can be accessed from the courtyard and we share the courtyard on Wednesday nights when they do music services and don’t want to open the main doors.  There’s also a strange locked alley which leads around the church from the courtyard to nowhere.  We use it to store our bicycles, flowerpots, and our patio furniture on Wednesday nights when the front gates will be open.  From the courtyard, there are two sets of double doors leading to the chapels and a single door which leads to our private spiral staircase.  You may take a flight down to our dungeon, or three flights up to the apartment.  You are climbing a tower adjacent to the bell tower which is complete with angled windows to defend against zombie invasions.   It’s many steps to the top.   You can read more about the church on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune_Protestant_Church  or better yet on their own website  https://www.saintpierrelejeune.org/L-eglise_r1.html 

I like living here.  We are in the very center of the city close to the most important squares and the main tram station where almost every tram intersects.   One of the innermost canals (originally moats) is at the end of our street.   It was great fun during the famous Christmas markets to be a block from the heart of the festivities but on a quiet street where tourists only come during the day (when the church is open to them).  I can’t say I like the 56 stairs up to the apartment from the courtyard, but I’ve gotten used to them and they don’t hurt as much as they used to.  We did say we wanted to move to Europe to embrace healthier lifestyles…   One nice thing is that we have plenty of room for guests when the borders reopen!