It was July 2021. I ran out of contract time: no more salary. After 10 years in Santiago de Chile I had to find a new place to write my PhD thesis and for doing some extra computations. My grandpa accepted me to live in his house for several months while the task was being completed (approximately 6 months). I had to move 1000 km to the south with all my belongings though (small detail!!).

November 2021: In the cold room I adopted as my office in that house, I was polishing some of the chapters of the thesis and fixing bureaucracy related to the defense. Out of the sudden, I received the acceptation letter for my job application to move to France as an Ingenieur Chercheur, or colloquially speaking, a postdoc.

Putain de merde ! je dois partir en France !

I was the happiest man on Earth. I came to the realization that I did something meaningful with the skills I acquired during the PhD. What adventures will I encounter now?

Since my time in Grenoble reaching its half way through, I felt like writing the bright and not so bright aspects of my time here.

C’est parti !

1. This time is for real: French bureaucracy

We, chileans, adore bitching about how inefficient our bureaucracy is. Sadly, compared to France, we are fortunate.

Holy crap, I could never imagined that I would miss the “efficient and friendly” Registro Civil webpage and services. The “crystal clear” requirements for documentation and the centralized “Clave Única” system. Now, I have to deal with something called Preferecture that makes me long the days of my infamous south american bureaucracy that is… better (???)

In France you receive (and have to send) some of your paperwork through mail (Yes, mail not email). The processing time of your papers might take up months!

When I was preparing my paperwork for France I found myself several times with circular dependencies for the papers. Say: you need document A to get B, and then get C. Surprise! to get A you need C. WTF?

To be fair, paperwork here is slow and cumbersome, but once you get it working everything goes smoothly. This was a big shock nonetheless; as a south american I was always brainwashed with the idea of the developed countries being superior in every aspect. In this one, this is not the case at least.

I will not get even started with the post office: an absolute nightmare! I have just lost my cool with La Poste; we have reached a point of absolutely despise of each other.

2. Cultural aspects - after all is not that different

Remember that I come from Chile, most precisely where Patagonia begins, so my opinion is framed from there.

Western Europe (WE) does not look towards Latin America besides for vacations, exotic destinations or interesting outdoor adventures. Fair enough, our side of the world is fantastic for that.

However, even though our countries are not as developed as WE, culturally and ideologically and as young countries, we inherited a lot from Europe. Furthermore we are a big mixture of precolombine people and Europeans. This similarity (or affinity if you will) is somewhat expected.

Regardless of our deep historical connections, it seems that we are not perceived as part of the western world. For instance, I have received many times weird questions and I provided answers because they unleash a bit my anger, I will let you judge yourself which are sarcastic, some are not.

For example:

  • Do you have Nespresso at home? (No, of course not… we also don’t have Coca-Cola, Apple, Renault and Oreos)
  • Is your country democratic? Don’t the elections get rigged frequently? (coldwar passed some longtime ago, but I get where this comes from)
  • But Latin America is a really hot place, right? (I come from a region that is as cold and rainy as Scotland. The idea of Latin America being beach-mojitos-fiesta-bachata is so fucking wrong haha)
  • Do you speak portuguese in Chile? (Fun fact, Chile has no official language, only de-facto one. Which one? not portuguese of course)
  • Did you learn about ABBA here in France? (Bingo! we did not have 70’s and 80’s. No Maddona, no Michael Jackson, no Earth Wind and Fire… nothing!)
  • Do you have good universities there? (I did my PhD there, I guess it is a no?)
  • It is actually summer during Christmas down there? (Nope, Earth has just one hemisphere: the north)

I come from a region of the world that has no the reputation of being a scientific powerhouse, or for the manufacturing quality of their products, rather the opposite due to historical reasons. However, we still hold an enormous potential, we are people who thrive. We are also serious people, not just your regular reggaeton/salsa dancer (though we can play that too ;) )

At this point I think it is quite clear what I want to say. Besides that we are really far, me, as part of western civilization, had no significant problems culturally speaking because it is almost the same thing in France but with higher development from economical point of view.

I have to admit that I am a bit unforgiving too; people should not really know about what is happening back in South America (Chile, in particular), but as part of the western world, I must admit that we feel a bit forgotten and is a bit frustrating.

3. Work ethics

I love french work ethics.

You do your work in your office time and then you fuck off. On top of that you have a good amount of holidays.

In France I learned how to not to work during weekends (or at least not as hard as I used to) or taking time for myself without any regret. In turn, I think this made me more efficient, more complete, and gave me time to grow in other aspects.

People really care (at least in my experience) about the quality of the work too.

10/10

4. Finding my best version

Grenoble might not be the best city for parties and crazy stuff, and that is super great!

The vibe of the city is very oriented towards outdoor life and is full of sportive people. When I arrived I was a bit reluctant to get myself involved in those things: they were considered really bourgeois stuff back home, hence, not really attractive for me. I decided to give it a chance, and I do not regret it at all.

Scientifically speaking, I work in a wonderful institution with amazing colleagues and my career is thriving at good pace.

Since the city is not really tempting with those crazy and very wild parties (even though you can find them with the right guidance), the fact that it does not trivially lean to that (compared to big cities, lets say, Barcelona, Madrid, Santiago etc). That helped me a lot to make me spend my outside time reading a lot, and learning new crafts… and as a bit of a nerd myself, I love that.

Sometimes I miss a bit of that vertigo (I was a proficient party animal, they say), but I am aging and the gueule de bois (hangover) is not a joke anymore haha.

5. Vous venez de l’Espagne, monsieur?

My mother tongue is spanish. This is a huge advantage comparatively speaking to non-romance language speakers. I could read french without any problem, even when I had no formation at all.

But what about speaking it?

In this language the letters are just abstract entities; they are useless haha.

Nowadays I can certainly say that I speak french with a very decent level. Also, I am doing a strong commitment on learning it further.

But the first months in France were certainly a funny experience. I did something that is a bit cringe but it paid off really well: even if my french was crap, I would forcefully use it regardless the discomfort of my interlocutor (which btw, was really unlikely to speak english). This was a bit harmful, because I knew that I would feel bad when doing stupid mistakes… and it happened a lot. My self-demanding mind will haunt me and won’t let me sleep without thinking how could I have done such a shameful mistake; a sensation that lot of us have felt but for many other reasons… the remorse was real!

The number of nights like that was staggering. Eventually they started to dwindle. Making mistakes helps learning, after all, when it hurts is even more effective, or at least in my case.

Today, I can understand when a french speaker replies Hein ? to someone who mispronounces. They are not mean, they genuinely don’t understand when you fail to pronounce the words. Or perhaps I became a bit of a frenchie too? haha

My spanish accent in french seems to be stupidly strong. A lot of times when I speak in french and I say au revoir they reply: hasta luego, señor. They do not even bother to ask me if I speak spanish hahaha. I don’t take it badly, but sometimes it is a little bit annoying. Depends a lot on my mood.

Interesting experience.

6. The expat dimension

This is probably the most uncomfortable point. I must clarify that I am not whining with this, I am just describing my personal experience.

I will beginning stating one fact: I am a foreigner. Well, you don’t say Sherlock!

The reality is that knowing that and feeling that belong to two really different dimensions. Of course I knew that I was going all alone crossing from one continent to another, and while (as I described in point 2) the adaptation from a big picture was not hard at all, connecting with the locals in a deeper way has been an incredibly hard experience. I know plenty of nice locals with who I can share a good time, yet I have not met a single local with who I could sense I could bond closely with. This is not the case when I interact with the expat sphere; I have meet incredible people from different countries with which I have created strong ties and belong to my deepest inner circle and I cherish them as if I knew them from really long time.

Nevertheless, it feels a bit odd the fact that I did not happen with any local yet, and it seems there is no interest from them anyway haha. I am foreigner and locals make me notice this. France is not welcoming in this sense.

In this point I have more questions than certainties. Even in my short time in Hungary, despite my really basic skills in the language, I was embraced as another Hungarian… they even had a nickname for me: István. Ahh Magyarorszag, nagyon szép ország!

Well, this experience varies from person to person, city to city, etc, you get the message. I am always keen on getting to know the people, their language and their culture.

7. The guessing game

This one is a bit odd and funny. For some unknown reason to me, people try to guess where do I come from and this has become a widespread running joke among my friends that encourage new people we meet to try their luck.

I must say I look flat out Latin American, but that is not saying much, because there are a lot of countries there. Things get funkier when they do not know that I speak spanish. So, the most prevalent good guesses are:

1) Colombian

2) Mexican

3) Argentinian

4) Equatorian (WTF, why?)

Then comes the very prevalent ones that I find somewhat funny:

1) Turkish (I get this one a lot!)

2) Morocco

3) Algeria

and of course some really odd outliers, that are just bullshit:

1) Kazakhstan

2) Malta (oddly specific)

3) Belgium (got this one while speaking in french haha)

4) Armenia

While I’m not sure what prompts people to play this guessing game, my friends seem to derive endless enjoyment from it, and since it doesn’t bother me either… well, I laugh along too.

Final remarks

France is a country to which I owe a lot. I have had an incredible time here, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to experience such growth. However, it is far from perfect. Nevertheless, I can safely say that I would be more than happy to contribute and settle down here.