House Hunting, French Style

Gilles and I are not strangers to searching for a house. We have owned four houses/condos in the last five years, and we rented many apartments before that. But none of that could prepare us for our house hunting experience here in France. We met with our mobility agent Wednesday morning. She is responsible for finding us a home, setting up utilities, and furnishing the house we select. We have budgets for each of the previously mentioned things. The house rental sector is quite different in France. The person who wishes to rent their house works with a real estate agent, who advertises and shows the house as though it were for sale. So everytime we visited a house, the renter's real estate agent was there to greet us and show us around.
We saw seven houses that day, and we started off with some of the worst. Fortunately, we had anticipated some of what we were to see, so were not as discouraged as one could have been. When people move out of a house in France, they take just about everything with them. This includes the light fixtures, all appliances, and the kitchen counters and cabinets. Imagine walking into a house with lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling and a pillaged kitchen. In addition, most houses have been shut up tight since being vacated. This includes the typical French shutters on all the windows. So the house smells damp and musty and is dark and dreary until the windows and shutters are opened.
The houses seem to age much faster here than in Canada. We saw one very large house that I thought was at least seventy years old. You can imagine my surprise when I was told it was built in the 1970's! Every functional room in this house was situated on the second level. The large garage and an adjacent large room were on the main floor. Both were walled with cement brick, had dirt floors and were damp and cellar-like. The real estate agent said the large room would be perfect for the children to play in. What children? We thought it would be a perfect wine cellar. However, it would take a small fortune to buy enough wine to stock it.
As the trip neared an end, we saw two houses that we are still debating between. One is just being completed. It is a semi-detached (jumelee) house with a large-by-Calgary-standards backyard, an "American-style kitchen", and three bedrooms. They call a kitchen "American-style" when it is large and open to other rooms. This requires further clarification: when they say 'large', they seem to be referring to the size of American kitchens thirty years ago. Housing developers have clearly not visited newly built houses in North America recently. This leads to another observation that always amazes me. French cooking has been revered for hundreds of years. Some would argue they have the best cuisine in the world, and created the basis for many dishes we are familiar with today. Yet they work in the tiniest of kitchens! We observed the same thing while traveling in Italy. Clearly, space is not a necessity for being a good cook. It makes me realize we are often spoiled in North America. That being said, I will have a hard time adapting to a small kitchen...sigh.
The second house was built in the 1980s. It is close to the historic centre of the town Idron. That is, it is walking distance to the old church and chateau of the town. It backs on to a river, or large stream depending on what your reference frame is. It has a huge tree in the backyard with an old swing hanging from it. It does have charm, and a certain draw that is making it hard for us to decide between the two. The typical Canadian, including Gilles and I, would go for the new house. But there is something in our minds that tells us we should experience French life to its fullest, including this house...even if it does contain two bidets and only one toilet.
The one deal breaker may be our two cats. The French chat wanders freely indoors and out. Our spoiled boys are indoor cats, and not about to be introduced to the great outdoors and the large, barking neighbours' dog at the age of eight years old. They would be instant dog food, or be stuck in the tree. So what is the problem? The French do not put screens in their windows or doors. In fact, they may not even know that it exists, because you cannot even buy screen in the hardware store. We were prepared, and brought a roll of screen with us, hoping to put it in all the main floor windows. Unfortunately, the older house has only doors: there are two single and three sets of double doors that lead to the outside on the main floor! And only one window!
We have not given our final decision, but it looks as though it will be the new house. We will join the fate of the other two Canadian families we know in Pau and overlook the charm of the typical French house and opt for the shiny new house. You can take the Canadians out of Canada, but you can't take Canada out of the Candians!