{"id":2688,"date":"2022-03-13T19:14:53","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T19:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unlockingfrance.com\/?p=2688"},"modified":"2022-03-13T20:20:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-13T20:20:46","slug":"expat-life-2-a-new-life-in-montpellier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unlockingfrance.com\/?p=2688","title":{"rendered":"Expat Life 2 – A New Life in Montpellier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written By: Paul<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving to a new country is both exciting and scary. On the one hand, there’s the potential for adventure, new beginnings, and in the case of Montpellier, a huge upgrade in winter weather. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, there’s a possibility it can all go sideways. Expats deal with mountains of paperwork, bureaucracy, financial challenges, and language barriers. While we consider ourselves optimists, Angela and I had no idea which way our experience in Montpellier was going to go. When planning a move like this it’s all sunshine and mountains of delicious cheese in your mind, but reality could be rainy days and disgruntled football hooligans for neighbours. It’s impossible to know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As outlined in our first Expat Life post<\/a>, we arrived in Montpellier on January 1st. It’s often been said that if you want to test out a city as a potential place to live, to do so in the lowest season and see how you like it. It’s too easy to fall in love with a place when it’s at the height of its mesmerizing powers, only to learn that it’s mind-numbingly dull in the downtimes. January, it turns out, is about as low a season as Montpellier experiences. So we were happy to land on New Year’s Day and test out our new city at its worst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that we’ve been here for two months, we’re happy to report that our experience has been incredibly positive and our neighbours are not disgruntled football hooligans at all – we’ve only met one of them and she’s very nice, with the likelihood of hooliganism quite low. And since you’re here for details, I’m happy to share with you some of our January and February highlights (and lowlights) as we began to build our life in our new French city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The City<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Montpellier is a great place to live. Let\u2019s start with the weather \u2013 compared to the Toronto area in winter, there\u2019s no contest. January and February in Ontario were pretty nasty this year, with plenty of snowy, icy days dipping below -20 degrees C. Here in Montpellier we enjoyed sun almost every day, with cloudy and\/or rainy days being extremely rare \u2013 I can count them on one hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Montpellier,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As we explored Montpellier we found a city full of energy, things to do, good restaurants, and fun little corners to explore. There are great alleyways, cobblestone streets, and every neighbourhood has its own identity. When we imagined moving to Europe, this was the kind of city we always envisioned, a mixture of things to do and a reminder of the long history that endures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Montpellier,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is a city of town squares, gardens, cathedrals, and walking streets. Montpellier is fantastic for maintaining local parks, public spaces and gardens. One of the places we enjoyed exploring in February was the Jardin des Plantes, a massive public garden that’s open year-round. There weren’t a lot of leaves on the trees or flowers to marvel over, but it’s still a nice place to wander and I dug this small bamboo forest they planted in the middle:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bamboo,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Each week we vowed we would explore a new quadrant of Montpellier in the hopes of getting to know it better. What we found was a very unique place that has many identities – each neighbourhood quite different from the next. Thanks to Montpellier’s incredibly well developed tram system (free on the weekends for residents) it’s an easy city to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Montpellier<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Accomplishments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

January and February were big for us. We had some tasks that had <\/strong>to be completed, and we tackled them with all the tenacity of a French rugby team fighting for the Six Nations Championship (which, incidentally, is happening right now). In our first month we were extremely fortunate to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n