rocherouge

About this website
(website about migration to France and buying a house in France)

In July 2006 we emigrated from a tight family dwelling in Rotterdam to an even tighter apartment in France (Aveyron), and next to move to our final home with 240 m2 surface and 1200 m2 garden.

Why did we emigrate?

For this moment I can give a long list of reasons why we wanted to leave the Netherlands. The suffocating pressure, the traffic, the tasteless bussiness parcs growing like cancer in polders, overcrowded trains, the uniform terrace houses, the airplanes, the tarmac, the sidewalks, the blocks of flats, dogpoop, air- and lightpollution, that is why.

I've been hoping to escape the Netherlands since my early childhood. When we went on Holidays to France together for the first time I started about it again: a house in France. Do I really have to explain why France... it is a beautifull country. And after all when do you ever see a French tourist in the Netherlands, if places like the Damrak and coffee shops in border cities are to be excluded?

Originally we wanted a second house in France, but we definitively lacked the neccesary funds for that. And then you have to make a choice: stay or leave. In november 2005 we put our house up for sale. In february 2006 it was sold and our search for a house in France was about to start. We had all the time up to july to find something and move.

Ruud and a friend have gone to Averyon for a few weeks to find a house over there. The only mission was: come back with something, whatever it is. And they did. It was a totally different house from what I had imagined at first, I wanted a restaurated dump from the 1700's in the South of Aveyron, and they gave me a mountain house from 1955 in North Aveyron. But the prices were so sky high that we choose the best from a whole long line of houses. And now we are here, truly there!

Emigration is not something one does every day (at least, I hope) and therefore I don't want to miss a second of this adventure, whatever the results. I started this website because I want to share my personal experiences about our emigration to France with a wider range of people. It is not a run-down of events, it is foremost meant to transfer a spark of recognition. Recognition, yes that's what it's about for me... after all that's what I have sought so often before we took the final decision.

Much pleasure in reading the site...

posted by Ruud at 02:02