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 for immigration procedures. Staff of the European institutions here go through a different route entirely.

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

The Alsace-Moselle supplementary health scheme. Automatic if you work here, funded by an extra employee contribution, and it reimburses considerably more than the rest of France.

The body of law that still applies only in Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle — health cover, public holidays, Sunday trading, land registration, sick pay and more.

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

The land register, kept at the court under a judge rather than by the tax administration. Alsace-Moselle registers property differently from the rest of France.

An Alsatian wine tavern — wood panelling, checked cloths, choucroute and a carafe of local white. The regional equivalent of a bouchon.

Tarte flambée — thin dough with cream, onion and bacon, cooked fast in a wood oven and eaten in sequence until nobody can move.

The Christmas market, running since 1570 and the oldest in France. It reorganises the entire city centre for a month and you should decide how you feel about that before renting nearby.

15 for medical emergencies (SAMU), 17 for police, 18 for fire. 112 works for all of them and functions identically across the bridge in Germany.