As I write this it has been almost five years to the day that our Journey began. Five years filled with twists and turns, a great amount of hard work, some fleeing and returning, and an enormous amount of waiting patiently, or not so patiently as the case may be.

I am Mark and my Husband is Phillip, the Goffengels, a combination of our two last names Goff/Engel. Or as a dear friend once told us… You know, the fifth house at Hogwarts... the Gay one! Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Gryffindor, Goffengel, and Ravenclaw. Makes me smile every time! We are from the Wine Country of Northern California in the United States

*Our Great Adventure started in late 2015,
and yet truly began in March of 2009. *

Stepping back for a moment, the end of 2008 found us living bi-coastal in our home in Studio City California (part of Los Angeles) and in an apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. An apartment we rented almost four years earlier when Phillip's work required his presence in New York City. I being West Coast born and raised could not imagine living in NYC full-time, so a deal was struck – two weeks in Manhattan followed by two weeks in Los Angeles. As they say ‘wash, rinse’ repeat!’, every other weekend on an airplane bound for the opposite coast. Phillip had spent years living in the city including his years spent at NYU, and loved it, I on the other hand… New York city and I tolerated each other, and I really came to learn the differences between the two cultures, Los Angeles and New York City, while living there.

In October 2008, two weeks at a time, we completed the work on our home in Los Angeles, and what do you do when a project is complete? Why sell it of course. It was the bottom of the financial crash of 2008 and we did not have great expectations, but the house really was fabulous; our real estate agent described it as – A Magnificent Mid Century Modern with Jetliner Views – Within two weeks the house was in contract with a twenty-day closing, and we were moving.

Read More ...

We had been looking all over the country for a new home base, Portland Oregon (too much man bun and beard), New Orleans Louisiana (too much crime and racism not to mention humidity), and Healdsburg California (up North in the wine country, just right). But finding a home that we liked in Healdsburg, one of the jewels of Sonoma Valley, proved to very difficult. In a city of only eleven thousand, home inventory was scarce and the financial crash had scared potential sellers off. We made a number of visits to view properties only to have them snatched away from us, quite often before we even arrived. But we kept looking.

In February of 2009 it happened, the proverbial straw was broke. Our apartment in NYC was on the top floor of a prewar building. Truthfully it was a wonderful space that had been renovated prior to us renting it. (I use that term “renovated” loosely as I spent 2 plus weeks re-renovating, painting and decorating the apartment). The apartments best feature was a massive wrap around terrace that allowed us to live indoors and out, a rare thing in the city.

Mid-February Phillip arrived home from the office and headed up in the elevator. In my crazy whirlwind of a mind, he almost didn’t make it! He phoned me from the elevator telling me the elevator had stopped after falling three feet, and he was trapped inside, stuck between floors. As he is telling me this, he proceeded to pry the doors open and was faced with a floor above and a floor below as he was literally stuck between. As he is climbing out onto the floor above, I am in a panic envisioning the elevator choosing that moment to start moving again, leaving two halves of Phillip still trapped between floors, one half above and one half below. First thing I did when he walked in the door was grab him and after checking to make sure he was in one piece I thanked the stars above and made a phone call to the landlord. After a very pointed verbal lashing about the ongoing issues with the elevator and giving only two weeks’ notice, we were moving again, back to the west where we belonged.

We arrived in Healdsburg on the first of March 2009, even though we did not have a place to call home yet. We stayed with friends for two weeks while we found a rental house where we could reside while the property hunt went into full force.

On one of our previous visits to Healdsburg we had asked our real estate agent to arrange a showing of a house that was way out of our price range. A very dilapidated four story, Victorian home in the Italianate style on North Street, just a few blocks off of the town plaza. The home was incredible and just the kind of thing we wanted, its decaying, creepy, and abandoned presence just begging for us to buy it and retore it to its former glory. Being virtually vacant for decades, time had not been kind to the old girl. But it simply was not possible for us to buy it at its current asking price of 1.7 million and we moved on.

Shortly after our arrival in Healdsburg we went to see a new listing that we really liked. It was fairly close to downtown and had been operating as a Bed and Breakfast for a number of years. Another amazing Victorian in really well-kept condition, it was a short sale, and I didn’t know how to play that game. Although we were amongst the highest bidders for the property, it was sold to another party for much less than we offered who did know how to play in all the right ways, and I turned my attention back to the big decrepit house on North Street. There are a lot of stories to tell about how that house had fallen out of escrow twice, Sotheby’s Realty firing the client, it going FSBO, ‘For Sale By Owner’, five months of literally CRAZY negotiations (example – “Would you be willing to pay in Japanese Yen? The dollar is going to tank” …), all of our friends desperately trying to talk us out of it, and the keys being handed to us on June 8th 2009.

Thus, began the first part of our Great Adventure. Quite a bit of our 8 plus year renovation of 227 North Street is written on my blog that I kept on the house 227NorthStreet.com. We had purchased and renovated 227 North Street to live in, to stay in, and although I never use the term ‘our forever home’, we never thought that we would move on and have to say goodbye. So, I shall blame it on my blog.

When you keep a blog quite often you are introduced to blogs of similar topics and content. As I was making a blog post in the early fall of 2015 a small thumbnail photo from another blog caught my eye, and I clicked on it. Chateau Gudanes... I poured over the Chateau website with incredible fascination. Ninety rooms of glorious ruined French Chateau to restore, what a grand idea! I was in love with the concept and before I could stop them my fingers typed ‘buy a chateau in France’ into the search bar, and I hit enter…

Forty-five minutes later I wiped the drool away from my mouth and looked up at Phillip who was on a conference call. We worked across from each other at a vintage partners desk, desk jobs by day, home restoration by night! I quickly chose an image of one of the Chateau’s for sale, got his attention, and turned my screen to him while saying ‘Would you like to buy a Chateau in the south of France and open a boutique hotel or event space?’ He looked at the picture on my screen for a moment, looked at the price, and then nodded his head yes. As I take head nods very seriously, I started looking at airline tickets.

Over the next year we spent a total of five weeks, on two separate trips, in France looking at properties with three different agents, each agent specializing in property in their own region. Anna in Carcassonne, Leslie in Gascony, and Pierre in Bordeaux. These were mostly exploratory expeditions as we still had a home in California to finish and sell, but we needed to see what we could buy in our projected price range and to discover if we would really want to be in France full time. In total we saw roughly twenty properties, some absolutely wonderful, and others that would just break your heart to see what had been done to them, or worse, left to rot in the French countryside.

There were two that just haunted us, Chateau St. Marc in the Aude, and Chateau de Marcellus sitting between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Chateau St. Marc had once been incredible but having been abandoned for many years it would be a monumental task to bring it back to life, but we loved it. Chateau de Marcellus on the other hand, had been maintained through the years, and although it needed hefty amounts of restoration and updating, it was possible. Marcellus has the grandest of Salons that we saw in any Chateau for sale, an enormous 18th century room with columns, paneling, and massive sets of doors leading out onto a terrace, and it was this room that kept driving us to finish and sell 227 North Street.

Not long after our return from France we were introduced to the Strawbridges' television show "Escape to the Château", Dick and Angel Strawbridge to be exact. Two incredibly charming people from England who had purchased a Chateau in the Loire region of north western France. Their experiences have been turned into a television adventure, and although virtually impossible for Americans to view until very recently, we would manage to find backdoor access to the show and were completely enthralled, and we worked even harder!

For the next two years we worked really hard on a daily basis to finish 227 North Street and make it the one of the most beautiful homes in Healdsburg. We were ready to go on the market in the fall of 2018. Property in town had become a hot commodity since the Tubbs fire the previous year. Healdsburg was spared and buyers were shying away from country properties. 227 North street went on the market with a big bang! A lot of interest and an offer on day one. That excitement proved to be short lived. The buyer backed out because he had seen and fallen in love with our house without his wife’s presence or approval. Big mistake! It was repeated to us that she had thrown the back of her hand to her forehead and exclaimed (perhaps I am being over dramatic here) ‘What will people say when they find out how much we have paid for this house?’. (Rich folks and the things they worry about!!!)…

Consequently, they backed out of the purchase. We had showings, and each seemed promising, but we learned a few lessons. It really takes a special kind of person to take on the responsibility of a 150-year-old, grand, four-story home. Stairs, stairs, stairs! We heard a lot of feedback regarding how many staircases there were in the house. It does seem to me that if you are shopping for a home and your agent takes you to visit a four-story home, you might find that the home has… a lot of stairs! Although the buyers loved our home and the attention to fine details, the main issue that our home became a tough sale was its size. We had never even thought about it being too large, and as we were only two people, we assumed that everyone would adore having that much space. At five thousand square feet most buyers came to the realization that they did not want such a big house, with so many stairs.

It took two years for the house to sell. Two years for that special buyer to walk onto the property and say yes. In essence it was due to the second fire in Sonoma county, the Kincade fire. The fire started on Wednesday October 23rd, 2019 and burned wildly out of control. The entire city of Healdsburg was evacuated on Saturday October 26th. The evacuation orders were lifted on Friday November first and Healdsburg was able to go home.

The following Saturday I was down under the back decks doing some cleanup, and I overheard people up on our parking pad peering into our backyard. This was a common occurrence at the house, people just walking onto the property to have a look around. I realize that people were very curious about the work we had done, and I was usually pretty good about it and would even on occasion strike up a conversation, but at this moment I was crabby and not feeling well. I pointedly marched up the gravel path leading to the parking area to give the interlopers a piece of my mind. Fortunately, this was one of those rare moments where my brain was faster than my tongue! I was faced with a man and a woman standing close to each other and a second woman with a sheaf of papers in her hand. I quickly rearranged the look on my face and walked up to them and introduced myself. I met a real estate agent that I had met once before but did not recall at that moment, and her clients. The home shoppers had lost their home in the fire. Their home had been in Alexander Valley just outside of Healdsburg, it burned to the ground. The Agent told me she was about to phone our agent to arrange a showing for the following day. Under normal circumstances that would have been great, but not this time. I was crabby because I was a bit overwhelmed by preparations for a reboot Halloween costume party that evening. A Halloween party that was supposed to have happened on Saturday October 26th, the day we evacuated. After such an affair the house would not exactly be at its best for a showing. I quickly explained what was happening and offered to show the house right then and there. After having looked at so many properties in France where the homeowner shows you around, I have always thought it a much better way to see a home. The owner knows everything about the property and can answer any questions as well as tell stories, whereas the agents have limited knowledge, especially with a home like ours. I like to think I performed well for the potential buyers, after two return visits we received an offer on Christmas Eve 2019.

We would close the sale on Valentine’s Day 2020. As part of the offer, we had asked for and received three weeks after the close to prepare and move our lives to Europe and had kicked our plan into high gear. At the end of February we filed all of the paperwork for Long stay Visas in France, had all of our personal belongings packed up and taken to long-term storage in preparation for an overseas journey, followed by a grand going away soiree on March seventh and left that night for San Francisco International airport.

Phillip had a conference in Washington DC on March 25th and 26th. Because of this we decided to travel the States to visit his family before the conference. With the majority of our 9 large pieces of luggage transferred to Los Angeles, the plan was as follows…

• New Orleans to visit Phillips brother and his wife.
• Onto Florida to visit his parents.
• Then to New York City where Phillip would be in the office with his boss for a week prior to the Conference.
• From New York to Washington DC for the Conference, and then back to Los Angeles.
• A fun three days at Disneyland awaited us to celebrate the 30th Birthday of the daughter of my college best friend.
• April first we were to board an airplane to Barcelona where we would pick up our leased car and drive into France.

***We made it to New Orleans, Sigh.***

As Covid 19 became a reality, we were marooned in New Orleans with all European Visa applications being cancelled and denied. We were really enjoying the time with Phillip's Brother Lee and his wife Astrid; the downside was they were working all the time. Lee is an infectious disease specialist and the head of the residency program at LSU medical center and Astrid is a research Biologist. After two and half weeks and realizing that we would not be going overseas any time soon, it dawned on me that Summer was coming! The long hot, sticky, humid summers of Louisiana!

At the end of March, we snuck back into Healdsburg having taken one of the most frightening and eerie flights of our lives – apocalyptic airports, not a soul to be found, with zombie like airline personnel. In Healdsburg dear friends had a furnished rental house just outside of town on a farm that we were able to rent until the world became normal again.

In August Visa centers began to reopen, but with very limited offerings and general long-stay visas were not, and still are not an accepted category for application. As fall came to Sonoma County, a new Visa category was added called “Passport Talent”, mostly for artists, writers, etc. However, there is a subcategory for those wishing to start a business in France. So, with nothing to lose we began to compile the documentation needed to apply. Mountains of paperwork, business plans, letters of recommendation, and copies of press materials on the two of us. Each of us was armed with a 209-page application when we presented ourselves for consideration on Monday November 16th at the French Consulate representative's office in San Francisco.

After a brief moment of confusion over the Visa type, it would appear that not very many people are applying for this type of Visa, we left the offices having been told that it would take 3-4 weeks for a reply. A reply that would be the return of our passports and either a denial or acceptance.

Thanksgiving was a little over a week away, and much to our insistence on not going anywhere and having to be extra cautious of the virus, my Mother really wanted us to drive up to see her in Oregon. She would be alone for Thanksgiving and had been in isolation for weeks. After Mother exclaimed "I will never see you again after you move to France!" we caved. We planned to leave the morning of Friday the 20th and drive straight through only stopping for gas once we reached Oregon, because they still pump it for you! And return the day after thanksgiving…

The best laid plans!

The Friday morning that we were supposed to make the drive north, November 20th, we received text messages from the Consulate in DC telling us that our applications had been processed and we would receive our Passports and the letter of denial or acceptance on Monday morning the 23rd of November. We did not know what happened to 3 - 4 weeks… we did not know what to think at all… why so fast? Was this another boiler plate denial?

To say the least we did not drive to Oregon that day but put it off until Tuesday the 24th so we could pace back and forth and back and forth all weekend waiting for Monday morning.

Monday morning November 23rd FedEx arrived at 9:30 am… we sort of stared at the envelopes for a few minutes before tearing into them. The only thing that was in each envelope was a passport, our passports, no letter, and no other documents at all. Phillip flipped open his passport and found a Visa for the country of France was affixed inside, and fortunately mine was the same.

…

FIREWORKS!

…

Due to a suggestion from a friend (“Get out while you can") we quickly rearranged everything! In order to apply for a Visa, you are required to have airline tickets. Our tickets were for December 15th. We have had many airline tickets in the last 8 months, only to cancel and reschedule at the last minute in hopes of reapplying for visas. Feeling the need to just go, I canceled the tickets for the 15th and purchased tickets for December 1st, two days after our rescheduled return from Oregon.

We spent the rest of Monday preparing as much as we possibly could, and Tuesday morning we drove to Oregon to spend time with Mother. We arranged three separate Covid tests in Oregon on Saturday the 28th, a negative Covid test result is required to board the plane and we figured if one is good, two is better, and three is great! We drove Sunday morning, November 29th, to Portland international Airport, there we met my cousin who purchased from us our very recently purchased used Mercedes convertible, and we boarded an airplane to Santa Rosa.

In Santa Rosa we rented an SUV and spent Sunday night and all-day Monday getting the rest of our lives together and drove to the Grand Hyatt at San Francisco International Airport Monday night. The next morning Tuesday December 1st we boarded American Airlines' last flight (until at least February) to Paris.

We began our search for the perfect property in Carcassonne France, a city in the south west with an incredible ancient walled city, La Cité. From Carcassonne we explored almost every Chateau that was for sale between Montpellier and Bordeaux. The Chateau that we loved so much, Chateau Marcellus, sadly had gone under offer at the same time that our home sale closed in February of 2020, so it was off of the table.

I invite you to explore our blog that goes into detail about our journey to Chateau ownership and our lives in France.

Read Less ...