Consumating a thirty-year love affair with Ireland

Lifestyle –  Judy Murphy meets a couple who have brought a flavour of the South of France to Galway

Catherine Schreiber first visited Ireland as a teenager with her mother more than 30 years ago. After three weeks travelling around the country on holidays, the French teenager announced “one day, I will live here”.

Separately, and unbeknownst to her, the man who would much later become her husband, had decided the same thing in 1979. That was the year 18-year-old Thierry Schreiber had come to Galway with his friends, “to play music”.

At the time, Irish traditional music was enjoying a huge revival at home and abroad with the likes of the Bothy Band and Planxty blazing a trail on the international folk scene.

“We played their music in France, or tried to,” says Thierry with a laugh. So, it was natural to visit Galway where he and his friends gigged in pubs and on the streets.

Like Catherine, who was 14 when she first visited, he fell in love with the music scene, the countryside and the overall atmosphere on that occasion.

But it’s a long way from visiting regularly to moving here, lock, stock and barrel. Yet, that’s what Catherine and Thierry did just a year ago, selling off their home in the sunny South of France and relocating to Salthill, which may be scenic but isn’t exactly renowned for its sunshine.

Since then, they have drawn on their extensive experience in the hospitality industry to open Taste of France, a quirky and colourful shop on the city’s Cross Street, where they sell everything from boar terrine to chocolate, from olive oil soaps and creams to beautiful linen products from the Basque region of France.

Chatting to them about their business and their relationship with each other and this country, it’s easy to see why they loved Ireland from the get-go. Despite the fact that English is not their first language, they have a wicked sense of humour and laid-back approach to life. Both are really friendly, a trait that they point out is not always associated with their country-people.

Catherine, who has a son from a previous relationship, met Thierry when they were working in Alsace, on the German border.

Having trained in hotel management, she had yearned to work in one of Ireland’s “beautiful hotels and castles”, but hadn’t got around to it. Instead, she worked in various four-star establishments in France and ran the catering for a folk museum complex in Alsace, “something like the Bunratty Folk Park”, except with several restaurants.

It was there, in the early 1990s, that she met Thierry who was a director in the museum, specialising in marketing.

“I was the food and beverage boss, but he was the big, big boss – he had one big more than me,” she says with a laugh.

Love took its time blossoming – at least for Thierry!

“It was nearly six months before he noticed me, but then he opened his eyes,” she recalls as he laughs.

When he did, Catherine told him straight up that they could have no prospects unless he was prepared to live in Ireland in the future.

He recounted his experience in Galway and their romance progressed. They married some years later and have a teenage son, Lucien – Catherine also has a son from a previous relationship.

After Alsace, they settled in the South of France in a city called Millau, on the confluence of the Tarn and Dourbie Rivers. There, they had a successful business running a B&B and five self-catering houses. Thierry worked in a print factory and Catherine, who qualified as a holistic therapist in the early 2000s, had a busy clinic where she practised reflexology and reiki.

It was warm, it was sunny and they were doing nicely but their yearning for Ireland had not abated.

So they sold their house and her clinic while Thierry left his job: “all we had built up in a life,” observes Catherine. But they did it willingly to fulfil their dream.

Lucien moved with them, and while he was initially apprehensive about leaving his French friends behind, he has settled in well.

“He’s a first-year engineering student in NUIG and is on the national Irish team for kayaking freestyle,” says his mother.

Lucien had been on the national team in France, but felt it was sensible to change allegiance when he moved here. So, he competed in the necessary heats, winning his place on the national team.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.