From the Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/55294b78-5823-11dc-8c65-0000779fd2ac.html
Ice cream by the Canal
By Sorrel Downer
Published: September 1 2007 03:00 Last updated: September 1 2007 03:00
Parisian Alex de Beaulieu, 35, is - with his wife, Aude - the proprietor of a gourmet French-style ice cream parlour, Granclement, in Panama City. The couple left France in 2001 and spent four years in Costa Rica (where daughters Louise, five, and Charlotte, three, were born), before moving to Panama, where their youngest child, Inès, was born in 2005. What we have done here in Panama would have been impossible in France.
The French social laws and tax system are difficult to overcome when trying to set up a business. First you have to work 35 hours. You can't open on Sundays without special authorisation and you need a lot of money. We wanted to leave France and believed Costa Rica would give us more opportunities and open our minds to other ways of life. We weren't disappointed. We loved it but we felt that a major city like Panama City would be the better place to start our ice cream business. There is still room here and lots of opportunities. All around us we can see evidence the economy is booming. We'd look out of the window when we first came, see all the buildings being built everywhere and wonder how they were ever going to fill them. Now we look out at night and see lights on in all the apartments.
During carnival everyone in Panama is drunk like hell.
The annual carnival before Ash Wednesday is like Mardi Gras. You can't use a car in the streets, nobody works for four days, life stops. We didn't realise it was such a big deal until we arrived in Panama with the girls and Aude five months pregnant just days before it started. We had to improvise and use old newspapers for curtains in our apartment but it was a lot of fun. The idea is that each town is divided in two - rio arriba and rio abaja (where there's no river, the dividing line can be a street) - and each chooses a queen, the nicest-looking girl in the area. They spend a lot of money on her dress, parade her through the streets on a decorated float and people vote for their favourite of two. It can be hard. It's a bit of a scrum. The girls insult each other: "your hair's a mess", "you look like an old witch". Everyone's shouting, dancing, drinking.
We live ina high-rise apartment in the centre of Panama City. It has wonderful views towards the bay. Panama is very hot but up here it's less humid, there are no mosquitoes and we don't have to worry about security so can leave the windows open instead of relying on air-conditioning (which can be expensive since Panama has one of the highest electricity costs in the world). A lot of families live in the city centre. Most of the 30-storey buildings in this area, Marbella, have a social area where you can have kids' birthday parties, a playground, a swimming pool and a rancho area with bar, fridge, and barbecue for entertaining, so it's great for the children and very easy for us. We often get together with our neighbours, a mix of Panamanians and foreigners - Israelis, Mexicans and North Americans.
The line of boats waiting to enter the Canal is an amazing daily show.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/55294b78-5823-11dc-8c65-0000779fd2ac.html
Ice cream by the Canal
By Sorrel Downer
Published: September 1 2007 03:00 Last updated: September 1 2007 03:00
Parisian Alex de Beaulieu, 35, is - with his wife, Aude - the proprietor of a gourmet French-style ice cream parlour, Granclement, in Panama City. The couple left France in 2001 and spent four years in Costa Rica (where daughters Louise, five, and Charlotte, three, were born), before moving to Panama, where their youngest child, Inès, was born in 2005. What we have done here in Panama would have been impossible in France.
The French social laws and tax system are difficult to overcome when trying to set up a business. First you have to work 35 hours. You can't open on Sundays without special authorisation and you need a lot of money. We wanted to leave France and believed Costa Rica would give us more opportunities and open our minds to other ways of life. We weren't disappointed. We loved it but we felt that a major city like Panama City would be the better place to start our ice cream business. There is still room here and lots of opportunities. All around us we can see evidence the economy is booming. We'd look out of the window when we first came, see all the buildings being built everywhere and wonder how they were ever going to fill them. Now we look out at night and see lights on in all the apartments.
During carnival everyone in Panama is drunk like hell.
The annual carnival before Ash Wednesday is like Mardi Gras. You can't use a car in the streets, nobody works for four days, life stops. We didn't realise it was such a big deal until we arrived in Panama with the girls and Aude five months pregnant just days before it started. We had to improvise and use old newspapers for curtains in our apartment but it was a lot of fun. The idea is that each town is divided in two - rio arriba and rio abaja (where there's no river, the dividing line can be a street) - and each chooses a queen, the nicest-looking girl in the area. They spend a lot of money on her dress, parade her through the streets on a decorated float and people vote for their favourite of two. It can be hard. It's a bit of a scrum. The girls insult each other: "your hair's a mess", "you look like an old witch". Everyone's shouting, dancing, drinking.
We live ina high-rise apartment in the centre of Panama City. It has wonderful views towards the bay. Panama is very hot but up here it's less humid, there are no mosquitoes and we don't have to worry about security so can leave the windows open instead of relying on air-conditioning (which can be expensive since Panama has one of the highest electricity costs in the world). A lot of families live in the city centre. Most of the 30-storey buildings in this area, Marbella, have a social area where you can have kids' birthday parties, a playground, a swimming pool and a rancho area with bar, fridge, and barbecue for entertaining, so it's great for the children and very easy for us. We often get together with our neighbours, a mix of Panamanians and foreigners - Israelis, Mexicans and North Americans.
The line of boats waiting to enter the Canal is an amazing daily show.
The view of Casco Viejo [the old city] from Balboa Avenue - the contrast of colonial beauty with modern-world skyscrapers - is also really wonderful, even more so at 5pm when the sun starts to go down.
Setting up a new business in a country you don't know is extremely time-consuming and exhausting.
Granclement is a small ice cream parlour, well located, in a charming French colonial building in the Casco Viejo. We bought the premises from the company that restored it. It has typical tiles and tables made in the 1950s by a local artisan but also a large mirror and other family furniture sent over from France. It took about a year to set it up.
We never felt we had made a mistake but we had some tough times. Not so much when the baby was born.
That was kind of difficult but it was worse figuring out the laws, getting the permits, finding all the ingredients and reliable suppliers who'd always have what we wanted. But we always believed it would be a success and being so proud of what we were doing helped us keep going.
We have exotic local flavours: mango, lime, banana, guanábana, maracuyá.
We offer around 10 sorbets and 30 ice creams, ranging from the classics to the more surprising: spearmint, basil, rosemary, speculoos [Belgian spice biscuits], espresso, lavender, cinnamon stick and Earl Grey. The fruits for the sorbets come from the highly colourful local wholesale fruit market and we use them and naranjilla, saril [also known as hibiscus] and tamarind to make juices and fruit salads for ourselves, although we've never got used to the bitter taste and strong smell of nance - orange balls the size of cherries. Panamanians love them.
The buses are called'los diablos rojos' - red devils. They have a reputation for being driven dangerously but they look great - all different, covered in colourful paintings. We take a lot of taxis because they are cheap and easily found, although they're all in very poor condition and the drivers are crazy. We really wondered how we would ever cope driving in Panama City.
My wife sometimes dreams in Spanish, as does one of our daughters.
Aude studied Spanish for five years but I didn't understand a word when we arrived in Central America and learnt by listening. Now we all speak it very well. The girls started to speak Spanish before French and talk in Spanish when they are together, which is funny, and they sometimes mix all three languages - French, English and Spanish - together at the dinner table. There is a wide range of schools, although most of the expat schools are designed for people whose companies cover the fees and can be extremely expensive. The French school only goes up to primary level so we have our kids in the British school, as hopefully we'll stay here for a while. We try to teach them the French culture and traditions, so I don't think they'll miss out.
Cultural activities are very affordable.
Obviously the choice is bigger in Paris but work schedules, high prices and the fact you have to book the tickets way in advance means people go very little. Tickets here are easy to find, there are more and more productions and, another good thing about Panama, help is very affordable. We have a very good nanny who the children love. We are members of the National Concerts Association, which organises classical music concerts, and go to the National Theatre and art galleries - some of which are very good - and sometimes go to cocktail and embassy parties. There are a lot of good restaurants, ranging from the most sophisticated to the local fonda, and we often organise dinners with friends at home. On Saturdays we go to the beach or roller-skating and cycling along the Amador Causeway.
We planned to live abroad for five years. Now it's been six and we really don't want to go back. We feel very good here. Our daughters are learning three languages, discovering two cultures and two countries. It's making them much more open-minded than most French kids of their age, giving them a rich experience of life.
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