If you’ve ever considered leaving it all behind and starting a new life in France—as I have many times this year!—you’ve come to the right place. In 2014, author and college professor Eric Freeze and his wife, Rixa, decided to make a change. Having lived comfortably with their four young children (then all under the age of seven) in a small town in Indiana, they decided to buy a fixer-upper apartment in Nice, France—the idyllic medieval French village-within-a-city along the Côte d’Azur—and split their time between both countries (and cultures).
Prompting this decision was Freeze’s determination to provide his children with a unique Francophone experience. A bilingual Canadian native himself, he had decided to undergo an interesting linguistic experiment: to only speak French at home to his American children, in the hopes of giving them a second language. The ambitious feat paid off, as les enfants became comfortable conversing with him in French, and Freeze searched for a more immersive experience. Forgoing pricy private French integration schools in the United States, a teaching sabbatical provided the timing for the Freeze family to make the semi-permanent move to France.
Enrolling the children in French schools required proof of residence, which became the catalyst for purchasing their apartment in Vieux Nice, the medieval village in the heart of the city. The backdrop of a diverse, multicultural environment provided the opportunity to live like locals, rather than holiday tourists isolated in a single family vacation home outside of the city. Walking instead driving, taking on DIY home renovations—spoiler alert: the family was featured on HGTV’s popular franchise House Hunters International—and shopping at the local markets allowed the family to experience cultural immersion on a daily basis, and integrate within the fabric of the French community.
Sleeping six people comfortably in a former student rental apartment introduced them to the French décroissant philosophy—spend less, live better. Furnishing their apartment with flea market antiques, sending their kids to school in pre-worn clothing, and catching their own dinner by learning to spearfish in the Mediterranean, are just a few of the meaningful lifestyle changes Freeze documents in his memoir (and March 2021 book club selection) French Dive.
Read on to learn more about Freeze’s insights on bi-continental living, and the family’s adventures in the South of France, in a delightful conversation with The Chic American, below.
Click here to order French Dive.
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Q&A
TCA: How does the French [décroissant] approach to minimalism differ from the American approach? Has anything changed since writing the book?
EF: I’m a little hesitant to draw too many distinctions between the French décroissant movement and American minimalism. They both emphasize living in an intentional, less consumerist way. The difference I think—and I could totally be wrong here—is in degree. While the French certainly fell victim to late-stage capitalism and overconsumption like the rest of the western world, it’s still far less conspicuous than in the US. French households consume fifty percent of what US households do. Most people live in smaller spaces and don’t have multiple cars. They have less stuff because the system doesn’t support having as much stuff. Minimalists in the US are also a lot more evangelical in their approach. Take control of your life! They tell us, all the while ironically recommending the products that will help us live a more minimalist lifestyle (like maybe I’m doing here? Sorry!). The voices are fewer but louder in the US. But I think we need both those louder voices and grassroots cultural movements for people to start changing in this world of limited resources.
TCA: What was the hardest thing/routine to leave behind and how have you filled that void?
EF: I don’t really miss anything. The only adjustment for me was I had a pickup soccer group in the states that played three times a week. I’ve had a hard time replicating that in Nice even though it’s a soccer-crazed city. But I have other sporting activities like spearfishing that are pretty hard to do in land-locked Indiana.
TCA: What do you love most about living in France and what do you miss most about living in the US?
EF: I don’t really miss anything in the US. My kids miss peanut butter. My spouse really likes to garden and that’s been hard for her to give up since we live in an apartment in a city center. As a Canadian, I’ve never entirely felt like I belonged in the US. France, with its more robust social net and cultural similarities is much more to my liking. I love the food, the pace of life, the weather, the recreational activities, the opportunities for my kids. I love that I can live a block away from the sea, my kids’ schools, world-class cultural amenities like the opera and the symphony. The daily food market, the restaurants, and the outdoor space is all on my doorstep. I love that we can go to the public library and it’s adjacent to the Modern Art museum. My favorite museum is the Palais Lascaris that houses a collection of medieval musical instruments. It’s across the street from us. These amenities aren’t due to living in France so much as living in the community of Old Nice specifically. Where we live in the US is beautiful but it’s small town living in a house with a yard.
TCA: How has living in France changed your global perspective?
EF: Nice is a port city that has always accommodated people from other cultures. It’s one of the cradles of civilization. Living in a place that has always been in flux, always a part of something larger than itself, shows many of the complexities of living in a world of limited resources with people from other countries, religions or ethnicities. The world’s disparities are also on display. You can walk past the port filled with luxury yachts to the homeless encampment on the lighthouse jetty. It’s hard not to see these things.
TCA: What are your future plans/goals? Any new material we should look out for?
EF: Right now I’m working on a sequel to French Dive, a memoir that picks up where the last one left off: with a family trying to work out living half the year in France and half in the US. This one is a tougher book in a lot of ways as it also examines many of the difficulties in France the past several years, including the 2016 Bastille day terror attacks in Nice that left 87 dead. I also look in more depth at issues of discrimination and privilege and the effect of the current pandemic in Nice. But I hope to end it on an optimistic note, to show what learning to live with others can do for our world. I’m tentatively calling it Pioneers of France.
