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It's very hard to live in Paris if you are not fluent in French... Or you're doomed to live amongst ex-pats, which defeats the purpose of the experience.
Paris is the most touristic city in the world.
You can be perfectly fine if you don't speak word of french.
It's very hard to live in Paris if you are not fluent in French... Or you're doomed to live amongst ex-pats, which defeats the purpose of the experience.
Edit : 10 years ago I tried to live in Paris. After only 2 weeks I ran away to my little French town that nobody on HN ever heard about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days. According to Wikipedia [1] it’s only 30% (650mm/year, while it’s 980mm/year in Bordeaux or 800mm/year in Nice [2]) > the random brasserie is an expensive tourist trap To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climat_de_Paris [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cli…
> To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. You'd have better luck with a random $3 slice of pizza in NYC IMHO. Don't get me started on the kind of lunch €5 gets you anywhere in Italy.
But you should try a sandwich with a good baguette !
Does anyone have any insight as to how painful it is to relocate to Paris from outside of France, or even from outside of the Schengen zone?
Finding an apartment in Paris is a special circle of hell, get help by whomever is hiring you, because it's a very lengthy and humiliating process for foreigners. I've visited apartments for about two months before finding a place outside of Paris and have been asked all sorts of private questions about my life, for example looking at your tax and salary receipts is considered standard practice.
There are a bunch of nice things to be said about Paris and the tax rebate system they put in place for startups and companies that spend heavily in R&D. However I think that Paris has a very low quality of life in most of the fields that are ignored in metrics: - Apartment prices are usually measure by the room when doing comparisons. In Paris the room count is misleading: I've seen studios smaller than 15 m^2 and 1…
> The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days. According to Wikipedia [1] it’s only 30% (650mm/year, while it’s 980mm/year in Bordeaux or 800mm/year in Nice [2]) > the random brasserie is an expensive tourist trap To be fair, a lot of “random brasseries” are pretty good, you can eat a good meal for €10 everywhere in the city. [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climat_de_Paris [2]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cli…
Do most Parisians speak English? Or will I be considered an outsider and Immediately ignored if I speak only English? The best thing about the Anglophone world is the language. I wouldn't mind learning a new language, but it takes time.
It's very hard to live in Paris if you are not fluent in French... Or you're doomed to live amongst ex-pats, which defeats the purpose of the experience.
You're better off making your startup almost anywhere else.
EDIT: and as other comments said, people don't speak English, the French have some sort of pride of only speaking their native language ...
There are a bunch of nice things to be said about Paris and the tax rebate system they put in place for startups and companies that spend heavily in R&D. However I think that Paris has a very low quality of life in most of the fields that are ignored in metrics: - Apartment prices are usually measure by the room when doing comparisons. In Paris the room count is misleading: I've seen studios smaller than 15 m^2 and 1…
I've lived in Paris (and Lyon) for years, and here is what I have to say about that: - "Apartment quality is really really bad": no always true, like in any other major city (try NYC), - "The weather is awful, it rains 40% of the days": the same, - "food quality is abysmal": very true (only applies to restaurants, supermarket food is standard), - "Parisian being grumpy": fair enough, - "pretending not to speak Englis…
It's not that they pretend, they really don't speak English ;-)
More precisely they have some notions of English but 1) they won't understand a native and can only pick a few words 2) they're ashamed of their accent so they won't even try to speak 3) due to their poor lifestyle Parisians are (mostly) dicks and do not represent Frenchies in general.
Don't get fooled by the French people you see on HN (like me) they are a rarity.