Essential French phrases

Your residence permit. A long-stay visa only becomes one once you validate it online within three months of arriving.

The national online platform where nearly every immigration procedure now happens. Slow, occasionally broken, and unavoidable.

The green health insurance card. It takes months to arrive; until then you pay and claim back on paper, so keep every form.

A rent guarantor — the central obstacle to renting in France. Visale is the free state-backed substitute, and almost nobody arrives knowing it exists.

An industrial site classified for major-accident risk. There is a ring of them along the Seine here, and each has a published emergency plan.

The plan particulier d'intervention and the warning siren. The sirens are tested on the first Wednesday of the month at noon; a real alert sounds different and means go inside and close everything.

15 for medical emergencies (SAMU), 17 for police, 18 for fire. 112 works for all of them and has English-speaking operators.

The half-timbered facades the old town is built from — several hundred of them, more than any other French city outside Alsace.

The great astronomical clock spanning the main street on its own arch. The centre of the city's mental map — everyone meets under it.

The tall-ships gathering that takes over the Seine quays for ten days every few years and brings millions of people to the city.

Norman rice pudding, baked for hours with cinnamon until a dark skin forms. Eaten with a fallue brioche and defended fiercely.

The shot of calvados taken mid-meal to make room for the next course. Occasionally still literal, usually now a sorbet, always offered.