We’re moving to Strasbourg in about a month.  I can’t wait to never drive a car again!

The lifestyle you actually want can be quite the discovery and at times eye-opening! 😎🇨🇵

We chose Alsace village after trying quite a few towns out during scouting trips and staying in Strasbourg.  We often knew within a few days if a town was right for us or not.  We will only be 25 mins from Strasbourg so close enough to be  reasonable for added cultural connections.  I am a car enthusiast so we always planned on having a car but our trips confirmed it was pretty important to have one.  With family in Germany and close to Basel and decently close to Luxemburg and Paris the location is very good for us.  Coming from the midwest we watched the daily weather for precipitation and temps to compare.  Even with the harsher winter this year it is consistently better with shorter milder winters especially snow and milder summers along with actual spring and fall instead of basically summer heat and humidity and winter the other 6 months.  You make some really good points anyone thinking about a move should seriously consider.

c'est toujours un plaisir d'écouter tes locutions Ben
merci pour cette logique parfaite
you're kinda like the perfect teacher
so well balanced
i suspect that in due time your children will tell you that you engender trust
full disclosure, my musings are influenced by the spirits of a California Cab i'm sipping in Napa Valley
Philippe

You forget that Paris is also about the airports and your connection to home and their family.  Living overseas doesn´t mean we want to forget them and not go visit them. We go home at lest once or twice a year.  We always choose a place that major airports are easily accessible with 90 minutes.

Great video! I've enjoyed your more alternative approach to travel and immigration, things that most of us with no experience don't realise. I have lived in 5 different countries myself, from the U.K. and Europe, to Northern America. And I have been super guilty of this myself. It's not always easy to know if you are willing to compromise or how you will deal with some factors. For example, I enjoyed my time in Toronto but felt I was missing a lot of culture there, so I began giving Montreal a go. But the winters there are even more intense than Toronto, I honestly wasn't expecting to handle 7 months of winter (much more extreme than Toronto). I also didn't realise how much I enjoy cycling, so coming to North America wasn't the best idea in that regard.
Choosing the appropriate lifestyle, researching possible compromises and trying to make a considerable effort to embrace your desired location, has indeed, helped me long term

I have lived in Strasbourg for 18 years and it has changed over time. It's a great city but for me it's not as good as it was. I am looking at moving outside of Strasbourg or in the suburbs.
When it comes to rental prices, it's like any big city, it depends where you live. If you come from the UK it's still reasonable.
It is a vibrant city with lots happening which is good for tourists but not necessarily for residents
For the weather you have four seasons and winter doesn't change anything unless you want it to

What about Mulhouse as an option?

Very well thought out points.

Hate cars! Gimme S’bourg! Thanks, Ben. 😊

I swear you must have seen one of my recent comments (on another video) and posted this in response.

I've lived in LA my whole life, and I don't think there's another place on this planet with more perfect weather.  Not that LA weather is always perfect; it rains, and it gets gray, and days are shorter in winter, and it gets what feels like cold sometimes (in the 40's at night in winter).  But with the exception of the occasional heat wave for a week or so, it never really gets much above the low 80's during the summer, rarely gets very cold in the winter, is pretty much never humid (like Florida or most of the rest of the East Coast).

From what i can tell, France doesn't have anywhere with that same perfect weather.  Go north to Alsace (or worse, up by Lille) and summers are going to be mild, but winters are going to be cold and rainy (supposedly not much or any snow in Strasbourg).  Go south and winters are going to be mild, but summers are going to often be brutal.  Like in the 90's or 100's, and not just for a week here and there.  Or so people who live there have said.  West and it is going to be rainy and often dreary.

Am I going to LOVE cold and gray winters?  Certainly not, but I've been in really cold weather (I think areas like NYC are often far colder and more miserable than Western Europe) for shorter stints and it is tolerable.  Been to Paris right before Christmas, and Germany over Christmas and New Years (in Berlin) and it takes prep before going out, but it is doable.  Again, not happy about it, but I don't want the 90-100+ heat in the summers, either.

We were in Strasbourg in March for a week - certainly not "living there" kind of time, but we did the non-touristy things like going to the bakery, grocery store, local street market, pharmacy, laundromat, etc.  And Strasbourg is anything but homogeneous.  The different neighborhoods can be VERY different, and a very suburban area like Robertsau (where we're setting our target and where we stayed in March) is absolutely NOTHING like central Strasbourg with the half-timbered houses, the apartments above stores, cobblestone streets, and millions of tourists (and touristy shops and restaurants).  An area like Robertsau is very neighborhood-ish, nobody speaks English (some CAN but DON'T), and you're treated as a local.  If you want to walk to stores, unless you're really close, you're going to have a bit of a hike, and frankly, we realized (after carrying groceries in the rain) that a car was going to be a given.  Especially coming from LA, where car culture reigns supreme (and frankly, I LIKED driving around in Strasbourg).

If you want to go to the central areas, 10-15 minutes on a tram and you're there (and having a car, I probably wouldn't drive into the real central areas).

I don't really consider Colmar as a "village" - certainly smaller than Strasbourg itself, but it is still relatively large compared to the ton of truly tiny villages we drove through going to and from there and to and from Obernai.  Or Obernai itself, which is more "town" than "village."  We loved Obernai for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the town center is gorgeous, and it is very walkable once you're IN the town center.  But there's just not enough THERE, like no 24/7 animal hospitals (we have four cats).  Human hospitals, but are they REALLY going to be adequate for something beyond the basics like a broken bone, or maybe initial treatment for a heart attack or something?  There's ONE movie theater there.  And that "downtown" area is incredibly touristy - mostly FRENCH tourists, but touristy nonetheless.  The mountains and good hiking are relatively close, and the air seems to be cleaner than Strasbourg itself.

And so we realized that Obernai just doesn't have what we need, and that's VARIETY.  Not necessarily bars and such; we're old and don't GO to bars and nightlife (my wife is happy being in bed by 8 PM).  But we want to be able to go get sushi, or Thai, or Chinese, or Greek, or Parisian (aka - the rest of France that's not Alsatian), or Italian, or burgers, or whatever.  We want to be able to go to FNAC and get a phone charger.  Or to a clothing store that's not smaller than our 107 sm condo in LA, and that has CHOICES for what kind of underwear, or socks you can buy.

We don't have the luxury of finding someplace not in the area because travel for travel's sake aside, my wife's family in Germany lives a few hours from Strasbourg, and there's literally just nowhere in France that's not too far to just drive or take the train on a Friday afternoon, spend the weekend there, and then come back on Sunday or Monday.  Strasbourg to my wife's sister is about the same as LA to Las Vegas, and while I don't go to Vegas, that's for OTHER reasons (like it being absurdly expensive, and not gambling, and not having any actual REASON to go there).

We've found home (not "we've found A home" because we haven't actually started looking yet, other than searching LBC and SeLoger just to see what's out there).  Maybe it will fade a bit over the next few months before we actually move in October, but right now, it feels like Robertsau is home, and this condo we've lived in for 30 years feels like temporary housing.  I miss walking into the bakery and them talking to me in fast French, not slowing down, not dumbing down, not treating me like anything but a local.  I miss walking into the local cafe (Chez Pomm - and yeah, I suppose it is a nickname, not a misspelling of "apple") to get a latte macchiato for my wife and getting smiled at by the owner because she remembers us.  Or telling her she's out of toilet paper - in French.

I have two main concerns - three if you include the "before we move" logistics of how we're going to live here while still needing our day-to-day stuff (like our bed and sofa and TV and such) while needing to get rid of and/or ship stuff.  First is price versus what we know we want and also availability.  We're not Texans with those 400 sm houses, but we want someplace big enough for our 4 cats to be happy, able to spread apart from one another when they want (like in different rooms), and for my wife and me to not be tripping over each other, and if one wants to watch TV, for the other to be able to go someplace and do something else.  We plan on working at least part time (remotely - and yeah, my wife is an EU citizen so not a visa problem), so that means a room for an actual office, not a small desk stuck in the corner of a living room next to a TV.  And we'd like an actual guest bedroom because we anticipate my wife's family visiting relatively often.  Are we going to be able to even FIND something in the couple of months leading up to the move (we're planning on renting BEFORE we move, even though that means paying for a place we're not in yet), and yes, we've hired a local relocation person to help with the search and "boots on the ground" to video tour any places?  Are we going to be able to AFFORD anyplace even REMOTELY like what we want?

Strasbourg to BUY is far more than someplace like the Dordogne.  Far less than Paris, but then so is most of the rest of the entire world.  But even so, it is HALF of what things are here in LA.  And there seems to be a lot more available of what we want to BUY, rather than the RENT.  But we really don't want to BUY right off the bat, until we've actually LIVED there for a year or more, and absolutely KNOW what neighborhood and what PART of a neighborhood we want to spend the rest of our lives.

And the second is a car.  My wife has unrealistic expectations of what a used car will cost; she has a 20 year old Lexus she loves, but that's probably not realistic in France - having a 20 year old car that's not falling apart or that needs major maintenance.  I know that an even remotely decent 10 year old vehicle is going to cost at least three times what she's expecting to spend.

Interesting i did the 2nd yr of my masters in reims (without a car- ESC on the top of the hill) loved it - a friend lived in nancy really liked it --my (potential retirement) is basically based on proximity to golf/ golf course density/cost of living - the East may be on my hit list - not sure yet!

Reims has an excellent tram system! and you can walk without bicycles running you over!

Bonjour. Closed Captioning showed you said “Hausse”.  Is that correct?