Finding Work in Europe

 

Rick wanted to see where I lived in the late 80s while I tried to find a way to live, work and write in France.

After dropping Llara at the Toulouse airport, we headed for the suburb Castanet, where I'd lived.

In the late 80s my French friend had suggested I sell my condo and use the money as a base. He offered his home with his two children.

I did sell the condo, which had almost doubled in price from when I bought it, and moved.

Much had changed in Castanet over the decades, but I quickly identified the church, cinema and boulangerie.

Peeking through a side street was the mark that connected the house with the village center.

We bought three burgers and found a park bench for a picnic.

Sherlock found a little female papillion to play with as I chatted with its owner. The pup was a rescue after being found un-chipped in an abandoned house. We exchanged medical histories, something I couldn't have done when I lived there because of lack of French.

We found the cul-de-sac and my old house where I worked hard at three things.

1. Learning French by attending the Academie Française and lessons provided by the little girl of the house. 

2. Finding work: I had one job interview in Paris and told although I was a perfect candidate, my French was too basic. Contact them when I was fluent. A post with Airbus where I was the last eliminated went to an in-house candidate. I did do some guest lecturing in English at the local business school and taught English to Chinese neigbors.

3. In between one and two I wrote, working on my first, later to be published, novel Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook and more research on my never published Heretics and Lovers. Some chapters I used later in my published Murder in Paris.

Memories of that time came flooding back as I looked at the house. I walked by Françoise's house where I spent so many late afternoons. She was a true artist restoring old books into works of art. Despite a lack of a common language we called ourselves "sisters of two frontiers."

I passed the path where I walked my Japanese chins Amadeus and Albert.

Leaving, I realized how much a tree had grown. 

My dream of living, working and writing ended when my mother wrote she had a "wee bit of cancer." I returned to Boston.

After she died, I could no longer afford to live in France without employment.

I started to send CVs (resumes) to want ads and PR/Marketing people listed in directories as well as mailing lists of people in my profession. Over the next few weeks I was a CV factory.

By fluke, I answered an ad in the IHT in French-speaking Switzerland. At that point I'd sent over 800 CVs. I set 2000 as a limit before I would replace my original dream with another. 

I didn't have to give up the dream. I just had to move it to Switzerland. Within two months I was installed in a tiny Swiss village and working in the nearby suburb of Neuchâtel. Fifteen years later I became Swiss. And yes, I had become functional in French, although spoken with a Boston accent.

My husband and I started the drive back to Argelès where we have a second home. We used the national roads because of a mega-traffic jam on the Autoroute. 

We enjoyed an ice cream in one village and the changing scenery.  

Bob Hope's theme song, Thanks for the Memory, kept running through my mind. The memories of the past, the memory of the last few hours. 

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