We wake up to yet another morning of hearing that the Greek crisis will find a conclusion, perhaps even a solution, soon, imminently, before the end of the day, before the end of the week.  It is tempting to lose patience and faith.  It is easy to fall into the rhetoric (and many countries do) of labelling Greeks as lazy scroungers who have never done a serious day's work in their lives, waiting on hand-outs from the EU.  (The similarity of the language in UK newspapers about people on benefits is astounding and unsettling).

Sometimes the cold brings out the best in people... and sometimes the worst.  But there are certainly differences between the way different cultures cope with the cold.  Or even what they define as being cold.

I initially laughed when English friends were telling me that they were worried about 16 cm of snow and -3 degrees (Celsius) last week.  This pretty much describes the generalised winter picture here in Rhone-Alpes in the morning. Besides, I grew up in Austria and Romania, with hot summers and cold, snowy winters.  I can deal with having four seasons and struggled initially with the mono-seasonal English weather.

However, many years of living in the UK have softened my defences.  I have even forgotten how to dress up warmly enough.  And now that we are experiencing -15 on the school run, I can understand my English friends and apologise to them for laughing.  For it is not the absolute temperature that makes the difference, but the relative temperature!  Relative to what you are normally used to, and relative to your own preparations for cold and snow.

Here in Geneva/Rhone-Alpes, schools (and businesses) continue to function as normal despite snowfall and low temperatures, but comparisons with the UK are unfair, because here everyone has winter tyres, snow shovels, grit on the roads.  The schools have reliable heating, the children all have thick clothes or ski suits.  They wear winter boots instead of the wellies I saw many English children wearing last year when we had snowfall in December.  Not because their parents genuinely believed that wellies were the best thing to have on your feet in the snow, but because you could not find proper boots anywhere.  And at least they were marginally less slippery.

Things are not perfect, even in these countries used to adverse winter conditions.  Trains and planes are delayed while they clear the snow, some villages are isolated in the snow, there are power cuts here and there.  The unexpected catches us out even when we half-expect it.  Milder winters and rainier summers have made wimps of us all.

And, of course, homeless people everywhere can die of cold, at any subzero temperature.  And that is not a laughing matter.

I've tried to be a good girl, Mr. Tax Man (or Tax Woman). Honestly I have! I informed the UK I was leaving, I informed France I was arriving, I checked what I needed to do online and over the phone and I have notified all necessary authorities that I intended to continue carrying out my business in a new country. I had also been told that the newish 'auto-entrepeneur' system would mean fewer nasty backdated payment surprises and a simplified process for registering yourself as self-employed, if you have an annual income of less than 32,600 Euros.

Perfect! I thought.

Simple, I anticipated.

But, just like getting your residence permit, buying a car with the right kind of licence plates, getting car insurance or internet access, having your gas connected or your roof repaired, nothing is ever simple in this part of the world.

Here is how setting up your own business works in the UK: you decide to become self-employed, you inform HM Revenue and Customs as soon as possible, and they send you a self-assessment form after you have been operating for about a year.

Here is how it works in France:

1) You find out if you can become an auto-entrepreneur, as not all types of activities are covered. If you want to work freelance for the local 'mairie', for instance, as a gardener and driver, you have to choose which of the two activities you will pursue, as they belong to different areas (different chambers) and are taxed differently.  Switching activities can be expensive and a logistical nightmare.

2) You have to give an exact account of your most recent activities and income for the past two years, as this will impact on your ability to register for the auto-entrepreneur status. Have you been working freelance, were you in full-time employment, were you studying or receiving unemployment benefit? There are certain restrictions, to discourage people to keep on starting up new businesses (and thus pay less taxes) or to discourage employers from using casual workers instead of properly insured and protected employees.

3) You need to find out where to register. If you're opening a shop, you will inform the Chamber of Commerce and Industry CFE, if you're a jewellery maker or boulanger, you will inform the Chambre de Métiers CFE, if you're a consultant or language teacher, you'll be informing the URSAFF and so on.

4) You fill in a form online and send it off. This really is simple. Except that the form has many options that you don't really understand, so you tick things somewhat randomly.

5) A few days later you will get a phone call from an adviser at the CFE asking if you really intended to charge VAT and whether you qualify for the régime micro-social simplifié. I thought it was my language ability holding me back, but when I attended a course on setting up your own business, where 99% of the attendees were French, I found the others really struggled to understand all the differences and implications too.

6) You will then become a target for letters, some of it junkmail, but some of it demands for payment. Your cotisation. The URSAFF, the RSI, the CIPAV, Groupe Mornay, INSEE and many others will be in touch. Some are optional, but it's not always easy to tell which when you see rather solemn-looking invoices attached. Of course the Inland Revenue will be in touch very soon too, even if you don't have to pay any taxes for a few months.

7) It gets even more complicated if you want to apply for help (tax relief) for starting your business, the so-called ACCRE, which applies to the unemployed workers or young people aged 18-25. Another form to fill and your circumstances will be checked before a decision is made.

8) Throughout the year, there will then be a complex pattern of different dates for different sums, some of them upfront (regardless of amount of revenue), some of them based on your declared income, plus different dates for declaring your chiffre d'affaires (which is overall revenue, rather than just profit).

In conclusion, accountants must be doing a booming business here! In the UK I was doing my own accounting, but the risks are too high here of getting something wrong with all this complexity.  Best if you see this is a personal crusade against the tyranny of bureaucracy, to put you in the right frame of mind!

Second observation, the local chambers of commerce for your ‘département’ organise regular workshops or information sessions on becoming self-employed. I strongly recommend attending one of these and asking lots of questions.

Finally, there are some useful websites out there, although none of them quite 100% as clear and straightforward as us of little minds would like to see them:

www.lautoentrepreneur.fr

http://www.autoentrepreneurs.com/

http://www.cci.fr/web/auto-entrepreneur

And, if you prefer some information in English, I would also recommend the following:

http://www.startbusinessinfrance.com/index.php/news/category/auto-entrepreneur

http://www.frenchentree.com/france-employment-work-jobs/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=20544

http://paris.angloinfo.com/countries/france/business.asp

I switched on my laptop today, determined to blog about something completely different, when I came across this article about the emotional highs and lows of expat life on the BBC website.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16408203  I especially liked one of the comments, that life at home is like cruising along the highway, while life abroad is almost always going to be a rollercoaster.   So I started wondering why some people choose the rollercoaster over the highway (or motorway, or freeway, or just any stretch of straight and relatively uncomplicated road).

They don't have a choice in the current economic climate.

That has always been true to a certain extent, although the pressure is usually more subtly exerted.  Of course,  an unresearched and unwanted assignment will be doomed to fail, especially if the family hate the move as well.  You cannot force people to get on a rollercoaster, knowing that they will get violently sick.  Especially when your well of bribery (generous relocation packages, additional allowances, private health insurance, private schools etc.) is running dry. 

Still, for most people it continues to be sound career advice to garner some work experience abroad, even if your own company does not appreciate it as much upon repatriation as they initially promised they would.  It is an odd and expensive truth that many former expats are then snapped up by other companies for their global mindset and experience!

They are adrenaline junkies.

They are the adventurers and nomads of this world, the new pioneers (although that word, as well as 'settlers', has developed negative connotations now).  They are restless, always seeking out the big thrill.  After a short while, they get bored, their feet get itchy and they set off again to find the next challenge for themselves and their long-suffering families.  Again, certainly true of the fans of real rollercoaster, perhaps less so for those who move abroad, as your boredom threshold will be sorely tested when you commit to a new country for several years.  In my experience, those who can balance restlessness with patience, persistence and inner quiet are most likely to be successful and happy expats.

They are looking for something.

Well, ain't we all?  But I have heard psychologists speculate about how those who are really keen to move abroad are prey to the myth of 'starting a new life, with a clean slate'.  Perhaps they feel something is missing from their current life, that they have taken the wrong turn somewhere, made the wrong choices.  What a great opportunity to reinvent themselves, to run away from their problems, to simplify their lives!

Of course, in practice, for every story of someone who finds that idyllic farmhouse in Tuscany, the bucolic lifestyle, inner peace and lasting happiness, we hear five more horror stories of being ripped off, of endless bills and administrative errors, of broken hearts and just sheer boredom.  You cannot leave your own state of mind and character behind, and often the life you are seeking to redesign will fall back into its all-too-familiar and all-too-despised moulds.

So if they are not cynical career junkies, superficial thrill-seekers or naive idealists, what does motivate people to choose the rollercoaster?  And not just once, but possibly many times in life? Perhaps it is curiosity - the desire to know more, and to recognise and respect different ways of being.  In my own case, I do believe that in today's world you are at a serious disadvantage if you are only exposed to a single country, single ideology, single way of life.  It is this fear of chilling certainty and one-track mindedness, what one might call 'totalitarianism', that makes me choose the loops and twists, the highs and lows, every single time.