does anyone live in france?

pukey

was wondering if anyone lives in france and what they thought of it?

Hagar

Yeah. I do.

In Cavalaire on the coast about 16k SE of St Tropez.
I like it here.

What do you need to know?

pukey

don't really need to know anything as such. i'm back living in paris(lived here before) and kind of bored.

Hagar

Bored in Paris? That's a bit like being cold on the Cote d'Azur.

pukey

yeah you'd think so but no. gets to be like anywhere else after a while.

jm2k

Just moved to Nantes on saturday! its sooo hot

pukey

the submarine base there is so cool, just so huge. the bridge too.

pukey

sorry, i was thinking of st nazaire which is near enough to nantes, down the river some

Hagar

There'a a torpedo factory on the left as you drive into St. Tropez. The tourist's don't notice it because it's painted lovely pastel pinks and blues and made to look like an apartment block on the outside. Say what you like, but the French have style.

jm2k

pukey wrote:

the submarine base there is so cool, just so huge. the bridge too.

might take a trip there so one of the days

pukey

the submarine base is this huge second world war german base. it's mindbogglingly big. the roof is something like 4-5metres of reinforced concrete, there are 8 pens and a kind of lock seperating it from the open water. there's a french nuclear sub from the '50s there, and usually warships to be seen in the boatyards nearby

adonis

whats it like living in france? i was thinking off moving there sometime..probably to paris if i could, i like paris..
whats work like sans french?? i can only speak a little bit of french, but im a learning!

pukey

paris is cool(just a little too hot right now).i had a job coming over so i don't know how hard it is to get work here. there's a 10% unemployment rate i think so having mad skills would help. they like people to speak french to them too, so work on that. supermarkets are cheap. trains are cheap if you're under 25(there's a reduction card for people 12-25, takes up to 50% 0ff)

adonis

yeah i have been to paris a good few times...do you know any good job webistes or anytihng like that..i guess that i would be working in the IT industry, thats my background..im just wondering if it is all french speaking..failing that i am tefl qualified too...
the language i can see as a problem. i dont know what level i can get to without moving there...i can speak spanish though if thats any good... :rolleyes:

pukey

no idea about websites. maybe try looking for the anpe website(probably anpe.fr?) they're the french employment agency. i know people who work in marketing here that just speak english at work, with other internationals, and use french socially. the english language papers are full of people offering language courses so there's a market for that too.

adonis

thanks pukey! ill check it out!! vive le france..
should i be saying this after last night?

dundalk cailin

i moved to the south of france bout 3 wks ago, im studyn here for the yr. the town im in is pretty crap, there's no social life as such or much young ppl, the students mostly live in neighbrorin towns n drive to coll

Hagar

Where abouts in the SOF?

pukey

bizarely, the irish cultural centre here in paris are giving irish lessons, from french to irish. that was until it became apparent everyone spoke pretty good english and they reverted to the english/irish way.
there's even a french/irish dictionary

Hagar

Where could I get a copy of that dictionary?

pukey

well. whsmiths here in paris definitely, which doesn't help you being down south and all. it's part of a series of french/other language dictionaries so definitely try the fnac or bhv. it's A5 sized. i'll check the exact title on saturday and post it then. am actually sitting the class, brainfarted my way through the first one like a man who'd never done the 12yrs or whatever in school

Hagar

Thanks for that Pukey, sorry if the request looked a bit abrupt.

Check out www.angloinfo.com

Hagar

@Pukey I found this yesterday and stuck it up on the Gaeilge thread. Is it the one you're talking about?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=3456825#post3456825

pukey

might be, i've no idea who wrote it. went by whsmiths to confirm the title, couldn't find it, so i asked and was assured by the shop assisant that a book relating to welsh was alm0st certainly what i was looking for.
so in short, it'll be wednesday before i'm sure what book i'm talking about. i was told there's only one so the one you're on about is probably it. are you from a gaeltacht then hagar?

Hagar

No I'm from The Liberties in Dublin.

Not a well known Gealtacht by any means. The Christian Brothers in James' St tried unsucessfully to beat the language into me. They should have tried to relate Irish to where we lived and what we did in our day to day lives instead of pushing Peig Sayers and Mairtin O'Caiomhin (sp) down out throats. We weren't country people and talking to us about cows in any language would have produced a poor result. A couple of swear words would have made it a bit more real too.;)

pukey

my bad. the wording in the link made me think you spoke irish first, then english and then learned french. thus the double translating, irish/english + english/french
swearing in other laguages is great

pukey

just googled the isqwhatever number, i think we're on about seperate books. should i follow this here or in the gaeilge forum? anyway the one i'm on about is a phrase book with a small dictionary at the back, like something lonely planet would put out. again, i'll post the name asap

Hagar

No problem. After I left school I worked I taught myself Irish upto Gold Fainne standard. Life in general took over and lack of practice let my fluency slip away. Right now I'm learning French and it has woken up the Irish words and phrases in the back of my mind. So what I'm doing now is when I learn something in French I try to learn it in Irish too. One day I'll probably manage to go mentally from from French to Irish and back again without using English.


Sorry to the OP for posting off topic so much.

pukey

yeah when i was learning frrench and trying to talk about stuff i'd go from english to irish to german and finally find the french phrase i was looking for. now when i'm trying to speak irish i go french to german to saying "agus, agus" and then finihing by saying something in irish that had nothing to do with what i want to say but finishes my part of a conversation nicely. is this off-topic. it' kindoff about wanting to be able to speak irish when when we (irish people) are abroad, and how learning a foreign language reawakens irish in us? anyone i've spoken to has said that being irish abroad has made them almost ashamed to not be able to speak irish beyond "conas ata tu" or explaining why "tiocfaidh ar la" is scribbled on the toilet walls in every irish pub

Hagar

We have been at a parent teacher meeting at my son's school and the natural assumption has been English speaker = English person. We fairly quickly dis-abused them of that idea. They expected my son to have more French as an English child his age probably would have. I had to explain that the education system in Ireland was different and the we learned Irish from an early age and didn't start French, optionally, until secondary school. They then realised that he was working on his third language and most of them professed no second language. There was a new found respect. That made me smile inside, big time.

dundalk cailin

Hagar wrote:

Where abouts in the SOF?

hi hagar, im near montpellier. dont know cavalaire?

Hagar

Howdy, if you follow the coast road , D98, from Hyeres near Toulon through Bormes, Lavandou, Cavaliere, Rayol, Canadel you come to Cavalaire sur Mer from there it's about another 16k to St Tropez. It's a seaside town only 5361 people, I don't know if myself, the wife and son are included in that though.:)


What's Montpellier like, I've never been there.?

pukey

my recollections of montpellier are of a decent place with a pedestrianised centre entirely covered in dog poo

dundalk cailin

Hagar wrote:

Howdy, if you follow the coast road , D98, from Hyeres near Toulon through Bormes, Lavandou, Cavaliere, Rayol, Canadel you come to Cavalaire sur Mer from there it's about another 16k to St Tropez. It's a seaside town only 5361 people, I don't know if myself, the wife and son are included in that though.:)


What's Montpellier like, I've never been there.?

not stayin in montpellier itself, bout hr away, small town called beziers, jus slightly bigger than dundalk. visited montpellier once or twice, seems to b a student city, the centre has a good buzz bout it.

dundalk cailin

pukey wrote:

paris is cool(just a little too hot right now).i had a job coming over so i don't know how hard it is to get work here. there's a 10% unemployment rate i think so having mad skills would help. they like people to speak french to them too, so work on that. supermarkets are cheap. trains are cheap if you're under 25(there's a reduction card for people 12-25, takes up to 50% 0ff)

yes i got that carte 12-25, it cost €50, but im visitn friends of mine who are studyin in annecy, and the train tickets cost €60 rather than €120 so iv saved the price of the card alraeady. these trains are one tgv, one ter up, and one tgv, one ter back, theres no direct journey. i find where im stayin more expensive than dundalk, bad news for a strugglin student or rather bad news for my parents!!

jm2k

pukey wrote:

the submarine base is this huge second world war german base. it's mindbogglingly big. the roof is something like 4-5metres of reinforced concrete, there are 8 pens and a kind of lock seperating it from the open water. there's a french nuclear sub from the '50s there, and usually warships to be seen in the boatyards nearby

made it to st nazaire there last weekend as had a few friends over from home, was fantastic. there's a great view from the roof. did the tour of the submarine, really great the way you can roam the sub as you want. well worth the visit. also went to la baule, lovely spot, huge beach!

took a bit of a road trip while they were here as well, saw toulouse, montpellier, (passed beziers too) marseilles, toulon, and over to nice and monaco. had a great time. but the trip home was tough as we drove straight from monaco back to nantes! ...12 hours in the back of a clio with 3 in the back seat! we didnt plan it at all, once we saw the viaduct at millau we were going to stop, but just kept goin. never forget it, def want to get back to monaco for a longer look.

pukey

sounds legend, i need a roadtrip

pukey

having just finished touring many of paris' good, great and atrocious irish bars i was wondering if there are any where ye are, and if they're any good, whether they're just a french cafe with a name like "le somethinggenericlyirish" or have dangerous amounts of outdated farm machinery hanging from the ceiling with a bicycle in the window?

dawballz

pukey wrote:

was wondering if anyone lives in france and what they thought of it?

About 60million people apparently.

jm2k

Here in Nantes, I've found three so far...

John McByrnes - about as close as you can get to home, run by a man from donegal, you can even get a half decent pint of the black stuff.

Buck Mulligans - not bad, kind of irish/french melonge, good atmosphere.

Molly Malones - stay clear, only thing irish about it is the name.


Anything good in Paris pukey? (was amazed to find an irish pub in montmartre last time i was there)

pukey

am, just a quick round up, by no means comprehensive....

james joyce-the first pub you meet off the bus from beauvais, never met another irish person there the few times i've killed a half hour waiting for a bus

coolins-been there once, seemed alright but i wouldn't rush back there. i'm told it's great

corcorans-savage pub, recommend it

mcbrides-again a good pub, decent enough pints

there's a second corcorans but i've never been, there's few others i've not been to and there's a good few trading on the image but which are definitely french. a couple of good english speaking bars too, ozzie bars, canadian bars etc
yup if speaking english while you get drunk is what you're after, you can get it here

dundalk cailin

apparently there's one irish pub in beziers, but it doesn have the atmosphere of an irish pub, i was told this by someone who s never bn in ireland...i dread to think!! wish i was in montpellier!!

jm2k

pukey wrote:

am, just a quick round up, by no means comprehensive....

james joyce-the first pub you meet off the bus from beauvais, never met another irish person there the few times i've killed a half hour waiting for a bus

coolins-been there once, seemed alright but i wouldn't rush back there. i'm told it's great

corcorans-savage pub, recommend it

mcbrides-again a good pub, decent enough pints

there's a second corcorans but i've never been, there's few others i've not been to and there's a good few trading on the image but which are definitely french. a couple of good english speaking bars too, ozzie bars, canadian bars etc
yup if speaking english while you get drunk is what you're after, you can get it here

where abouts are they?, might check them out next time i'm in paris

if u want the difinitive non-irish "irish pub" check out the "Irish Tatoo Pub" in Toulon ...what it had to do with Ireland or Tatooing completely eluded me, but it was the best of the bunch there!

pukey

james joyce is by the palais de congres, metro porte maillot, opposite end of the avenue de la grande armee to the arc de triomphe
corcorans is on the south side of the river near notre dame
coolins is down the road from corcorans, opposite side of rue saint germain
mcbrides is a couple of hundred yards in front of the pompidou centre
the second corcorans is in clichy i think
cafe oz is between corcorans and mcbrides, handy that
there's an alright canadian bar on the island that doesn't have notre dame on it
um that's all i can think of right now

oh there's a horrendous abomination that might be called the guinness tavern near mcbrides. the inside is timbered out, there's always irish music playing too loud to hear yourself ask why you even came in, u2 videos being looped on the moniters and no-one english speaking working there. the others seem to hire either irish or english speakers as a rule so it's safe enough if your french isn't up to much

esperanza

pukey wrote:

am, just a quick round up, by no means comprehensive....

james joyce-the first pub you meet off the bus from beauvais, never met another irish person there the few times i've killed a half hour waiting for a bus

coolins-been there once, seemed alright but i wouldn't rush back there. i'm told it's great

corcorans-savage pub, recommend it

mcbrides-again a good pub, decent enough pints

there's a second corcorans but i've never been, there's few others i've not been to and there's a good few trading on the image but which are definitely french. a couple of good english speaking bars too, ozzie bars, canadian bars etc
yup if speaking english while you get drunk is what you're after, you can get it here

Irish pubs are such a rip-off, I remember paying 6 euro for a pint of Guinness in Coolin's two years ago. I haven't been into an Irish pub since!

BossArky

I lived in Strasbourg for 18 months, now in London since April this year.

Strasbourg has about 5 different "Irish" bars...3 of which have only a sign over the door indicating that Murphys or Kilkenny is sold here.

The other two bars were better

- "The Irish Times" was always great for live bands and general debauchery, until Jan 2004 when it started on a long sad decline.. don't know why exactly.

- "Murphys" on Rue des freres, near the Cathedral, was probably my fav by the end... even though no one there actually speaks English either... and they used to play Coldplay(??) and U2 on loop constantly.

Miss Fluff

dundalk cailin wrote:

not stayin in montpellier itself, bout hr away, small town called beziers, jus slightly bigger than dundalk. visited montpellier once or twice, seems to b a student city, the centre has a good buzz bout it.

Beziers is a bit of a funny one alright, try and get to Carcassonne and Narbonne as often as you can as they are pretty nearby to you. A lot livelier too

dundalk cailin

fly into carcassonne when comin over, passed thru narbonne on train! yea i must get out n about! u live in france? or visited?

pukey

was in narbonne in august, good craic during the summer at least. much more fun than paris in riot anyway

Miss Fluff

dundalk cailin wrote:

fly into carcassonne when comin over, passed thru narbonne on train! yea i must get out n about! u live in france? or visited?

My family live between the two for a good part of the year so I'm over and back a few times a year. Honestly, if you try and get out of Beziers as much as possible (I completely agree - it is a kip) you'll have a fabulous time! Thing is, train service is great so everything is accessible and at least there is a buzz around the places I mentioned. Just to console you, it's a wet, windy morning here in Ireland so take advantage of that mild weather girl and enjoy!!;)

dundalk cailin

yea im gonna try, the only prob is im on my own, n the classmates have loads of stuff for coll, plus they dont live local (lucky thm) i dont particularly like travellin, visitin places on my own