How to Retire Without Money
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE: FRANCE (page 3)
THE FRENCH. There are two ways of melting the French.If you're a tourist, dashing through the country, you'll probably wind up hating this people. The only ones you'll meet are hotel and restaurant employees, shop keepers and taxi cab drivers and these, of course, make their living by milking the tourist. You'll be no exception. Everywhere you go you'll meet the outstretched hand, no country is more tip hungry than France. And everywhere you go you'll probably feel you're being gypped and part of the time you'll be right. And even though you are a gregarious type person, interested in people and the way of life of others, you'll find the French home closed to you. You won't even meet any of the French, with the exception of those who wait on you.
But if you settle down in France, take a house or apartment, learn the language, then you will find another people. The Frenchman who has had the tourist pouring over the boundaries of his country for centuries has built up a barrier to them. He suffers them, because he must since France's largest single industry is tourism. But he keeps them at a distance so far as his personal life is concerned. He is another man when you settle more permanently.
The French as a people probably take more trouble to achieve the good life than any other in the world. Unless pushed by poverty, they wouldn't dream of eating poor food, wouldn't dream of sleeping in less than a comfortable bed, wouldn't dream of not looking the best in regards to clothing. It has been no mistake that France has become the luxury nation of the world.
Once you have made friends of a French family, you will find them honest and hospitable, very good friends but very bad enemies. You'll find they have as great a love of country as any nation in the world and an attitude, even stronger than we Americans have about the States, that there just is no other place to live in the world but France.
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. . . more about retirement in France
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