France: Location scouting

Things had been getting a bit stressful lately with the house sale/timeline. While we’d been encouraging our neighbour to act quickly, we started to think we’d gone too early with this. The time between her getting an offer and the first opportunity of us vacating the house felt like too long a gap.

This wasn’t helped by some orange idiot launching a war in the Middle East leading to crashing stock prices and soaring interest rates.

It was further compounded by us reading that we might be required to produce 3 months of evidence of receiving our pensions rather than base it on estimates. Ben from Ibanista was too busy to speak to use, so we set up a call for when we were away.

We’d also still not heard back from Forth Capital about what would happen with our two private pensions, which led to even more uncertainty. Again, a call was lined up for when we were away.

Saturday

We arrived in Strasbourg around midday and had arranged to meet our AirBnB host at the apartment we’d rented in Neudorf¹. This gave us a feel for what apartment living might be like with 90m² to play with.

It was a cool little area with a nice set of shops and a really nice cafe we had a late lunch in. I was pleased my Apple TV experiment (we’d brought it with us) worked perfectly with VPN as we chilled out with a bottle of Alsace wine.

Sunday

This was to be our first day of scouting, not to mention my birthday as well.

We’d signed up for the 3-day CTS transport pass which gave us unlimited travel in and around Strasbourg for €10.20, so it was tram all the way, baby!

Strasbourg trams have personalised announcements which turns out to have been an art project called Vox Populi by Rodolphe Burger, commissioned by the city and designed to turn the commute into a unique sensory experience rather than just a functional announcement.

But first, it was off to the nearby Patisserie to get in the essentials for breakfast. This place was so popular that even with 3 staff people were queued back out into the street.

Schiltigheim, Bischeim and Hoenheim.

We’d lined these three areas up as they felt like they would be typical suburbs and perhaps easier to find accommodation in when the time came. Checking them out on Google Earth really didn’t reveal much.

In all it was pretty depressing; nothing made us want to get off the tram and explore these areas. They just looked so grim. Hoenheim was the worst - a desolate park and ride site surrounded by huge tower blocks. We got straight back on the tram to get out as soon as we could.

Given we had saved so much time we then thought we may as well stray into tomorrow’s target location of Robertsau.

Robertsau

The last time we were in Strasbourg, just for the day, we’d had an unsuccessful attempt to visit the European Parliament buildings (Rachel didn’t have any suitable ID) so it was odd to be just a few hundred metres away from this fabulous building once again without going in as we waited for our tram.

The journey out to Robertsau took us right past the Cour européenne des droits de l’Homme (European Court of Human Rights) and the inner EU fanboy in my couldn’t be more thrilled. Here was the building that was the source of so much right-wing fury sitting there in front of me.

(Actually, it’s a pretty odd-looking building; more like an oil refinery than a place of justice)

Then as we travelled further down the route we started to see greenery, low-rise buildings, and we started to get a really good vibe. This was far more like the kind of place that would suit us.

We took a long walk through the neighbourhoods and the more we walked, the more we loved it. As it was election day in Strasbourg there were lots of people around, walking dogs and chatting to each other. You got that sense of community straight away.

So, ‘La Rôb’ (as it’s known) shot to the top of our list.

L’Orangerie

It was shaping up to be a lovely day so we decided on a long walk back to the centre of the city, taking us through the L’Orangerie district.

Centrepiece of this was the stunning Parc de L’Orangerie, which brought Rachel right up close to storks nesting in pollarded trees.

In terms of housing nearby, this all felt a bit too austere and high-end; a bit like a collection of embassy buildings rather than places to live. Although we didn’t spend long looking at housing we’d certainly found a lovely space for days out.

At the end of our walk we stopped in at a brasserie for a birthday lunch. I made the mistake of ordering Choucrote d’Alsassian, which was a meat fest I suspected my son in law would appreciate more. And despite my best efforts to avoid the dreaded birthday song, an sneaky request for a candle by Rachel meant the mâitre d’ came over with it stuck in my mousse chocolat singing away.

A really successful and lovely day.

Monday

Illkirch-Grafenstraden

In the morning we took a trip further down tram line A near where we were staying to check out this outlying suburb.

Again, more high-rise blocks everywhere. Not us at all. A quick about-turn and back to the rail station for another out of city visit.

Hagenau

Gemini had really talked up Hagenau, so our hopes were high that this would be a good ‘outside Strasbourg’ option, as it was a reasonable-sized town on a good train route.

How wrong we were….

By now we’d found ourselves finding Oxfordshire names for the places we saw. For Hagenau it was ‘Abingdon’; OK if you’re desperate, but not somewhere to live out of choice.

We headed back to our apartment in Strasbourg to console ourselves with wine and crisps.

Tuesday

Obernai

Our first impressions were “can we live here?!?!” as Obernai was a stunningly pretty little town with half-timbered houses everywhere, a nice little park and waterside walks.

Did I mention the town ramparts? These form a wide walkway around the town.

We took a walk out to the edge of town to look at potential areas of housing. This one could be a tricky one to land as its smaller size means there’s much less opportunity in terms of rentals.

We had an excessive lunch at a great brasserie. Rachel was over the moon to see that not only were there storks nesting on the roof, but that there was a live TV feed of it within the brasserie.

Back in Strasbourg

We had our scheduled call with Ben from Ibanista. We gave him an overview of the efforts we were making to see as many places as possible. This was in order to improve the chances of his searches coming up with the desired 7-per-week opportunities. He sounded pleased with our travels to date and our plans for the rest of the week.

Most importantly, we got some good news from him about the evidence of income needed for landlords when renting. He confirmed that estimates from local government pension schemes would be fine. This was a huge relief as it saved us from adding 3 months to our timeline.

And finally, some culture…Rachel had booked us tickets to see L’Orchestra philharmonique de Strasbourg, who were playing a ‘L’Heure Joyeuse’ (literally ‘Happy Hour’) full of lovely Beethoven.

I’d figured these guys would be like the Oxford Philharmonic, which is for amateur musicians, but I couldn’t have been more wrong - these guys were fantastic, and reading up on them I realised there were elite professionals.

It was nice to bracket the performance with a visit to the Blue Note Café before and after. All the more pleasant as a bunch of the musicians came in to have a celebratory drink too.

Wednesday

Back on the trains again for find another ‘outside Strasbourg’ option…

Saverne

Saverne had been billed by Gemini as “If you loved Obernai, Saverne will feel like its grander, slightly more rugged cousin”.

Rugged was right. All a bit too ‘Witney’ for us

Everything was kind of in the right place, but neither of us warmed to it at all. I’ve tried to use a measure of a place by ‘would we be proud to shown other people around it’ and neither of us were feeling it. So we cut our losses and headed back into Strasbourg.

Mittelhausbergen and Koenigshoffen

As we’d had a barometer of what was most likely to be on offer at the outskirts of Strasbourg, I quizzed Gemini again about good matches for Robertsau so it produced Mittelhausbergen and Koenigshoffen as potential options.

It was wrong. Again. These were borderline Rose Hill.

I’m sure my AI-loving work colleagues would tell me it’s all down to my poor prompts, but I’m not sure how I would explain to it the extent of our snobbery. Just nothing appealed to us in these rough districts with unappealing apartment blocks.

Pensions

Feeling a bit deflated but also pretty tired out, we headed back to our apartment as we had a scheduled Teams call with the rep from our financial advisers.

This had felt like a long time coming, but we understood why a bit more when we spoke to her. It wasn’t the value of our two private pension pots that were the key info, as that arrived ages ago; it was the nature of the schemes any any clauses they might have.

The Assurance Vie was still looking strong for holding our savings, but the benefits of this was really to accumulate and take advantage of the tax benefits after 8 years. It also comes in a portable tax wrapper in case we headed back to the UK after a couple of years

Her initial thoughts were:

• take 25% of Rachel’s pension as a tax-free lump sum (before leaving the UK)
• take all of my pension (which is about half the size) out as a single sum once in France so this would be taxed only at a 7.5% rate.
• combine these two to act as a draw-down fund for the 6 years until our state pensions kick in, rather than withdraw any of our savings from the Assurance Vie.
• set up a separate pension for Rachel for the remaining 75% of her private pension.

Pretty slick thinking - I don’t think I’d have thought of that!

We agreed the proceeds from the house sale get put somewhere safe and on an easy access basis so it could be ready for when we do decide to purchase a house.

Thursday

Freiburg

Although we’d done lots of travelling and seen lots of places, it never quite felt like we’d had a holiday. So it was great to take Thursday off from the location scouting and just gave the day over to sightseeing.

We’d been invited for lunch by our friend Alison, who’d we’d met by absolute chance while we were in Cheltenham as she was helping sell Cremant d’Alsace! As well as buying a couple of bottles from her we got to talking about our plans and stayed in touch.

After a frighteningly expensive train trip (we really must work out the best rates and how to get them) we found ourselves back in Freiburg, which we’d visited last September. But this time we had a guide.

Her apartment was drop-dead gorgeous, and invoked pure envy. She had done an amazing job of creating this from scratch to give her a bolt hole right in the centre of the city.

Friday

Colmar

We had planned to travel to Colmar, stopping off at Sélestat on the way since it’s on the same train line. But a mix up on trains meant things didn’t work out in that order.

So instead we found ourselves back in our beloved Colmar. It really was like visiting an old friend, as so much of the old town was so familiar to us.

I was taken aback at how stunningly beautiful it was; quite the contrast to some of the less desirable areas in Strasbourg.

The plan was to hire bikes and cycle around areas we knew a little and others we didn’t, to make sure we knew which should be on our shopping list.

We started with Mittelharth as an unknown area, and pretty soon found some nice apartment possibilities right next to vineyards and lovely views of the Vogues mountains. But we were getting pretty tired after a couple of hours so headed into the Old Town for lunch. We ended up having lunch at a brasserie we’d eaten at last year.

Refreshed, we turned south to check out the Sud and Maraichers districts. And we fell in love. These areas were just perfect for us! They rocketed to the top of our list.

In terms of Oxford comparisons Rachel called it as Norham Gardens. Spot on.

Sélestat

As this was our last full day in Alsace we chanced our arm by hopping off our return train at Sélestat, just 20 mins outside Strasbourg.

This was really our last throw of the dice to find anywhere else for Ibanista to work from. And we scored well!

It was a small town (around 20,000) but just lovely in how it was presented. It was a joy just walking around and stopping for a coffee.

Definitely on the list as a good fallback given proximity to Colmar and Strasbourg, but hard to say how well it will do for housing as we didn’t really find that much around.

Reflections on the week

We covered a lot of ground in 7 days

It was easy to get a little downhearted at times through the week, as Strasbourg housing didn’t always match what we’d hoped, but taken as a whole:

• nothing beats seeing an area on the ground to get a real feel for what it is like
• we’d found one really nice area in Strasbourg that would work perfectly for us
• we’d reignited our love of Colmar and how certain we are it would work for us
• we’d found two other towns besides these that would do nicely
• we now knew our timeline could stay as it is thanks to info from Ben on providing income evidence
• we had some good progress on our private pensions and how best to use them

Can I have another week off to recover please?

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