Paris in the early days

I have a backlog of ideas for blog posts…I have a half-written post about Yaka, plus one about interesting CS research. But today I will talk about my carte de séjour. The pic is me with all my fancy IDs – an ID for ENS, one for the Sorbonne, and, of course, my carte. (The first two are among the most famous universities in France.) For those who don’t know, to be legally in France you need a carte de séjour that you renew annually. It’s pretty expensive too, 300 euros the first time and 70 to renew, though my employer reimburses me. My wonderful secretary handled all the administrative details, though I did need to get my birth certificate translated into French and get my mom to scan my college diploma.

This speaks to my first beef with French bureaucracy, which is this: they require an enormous amount of documents, but each of these is very easily faked. How are they going to verify my college diploma? My birth certificate? The translation wasn’t very official looking at all, though it did have stamps on it. It’s as though stamps make everything completely kosher. They also make you sign things in blue ink, as though that somehow prevents forgery (color printers, anyone?) I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on the documents required to bring the cats, including overnight shipping of veterinarian’s certificates to the USDA in Olympia, and they didn’t even look at them. They told me at customs that it was enough that I had them.

In any case, documents in order, I awaited the call from the prefecture. The day finally arrived. I went to ANAEM to get my medical exam and carte. The medical exam went off without a hitch, though I found the process quite strange. They require an X-ray of your lungs, so I was ushered into a closet with two doors. I locked the first and was instructed to strip to my waist. The second door opened and I entered a large room with two women and an X-ray machine. It was really strange to be hanging out with them with no top on. X-ray taken, I got dressed and exited from the door I came in. Then there was an interview with another woman, who took my blood pressure, asked about my medical history, and reviewed my X-ray. And then they gave me the X-ray. “Yours to keep!”

Thus far, things were going swimmingly. This all changed when I came to the main desk. I was lacking in a document, and I was lacking in payment. You have to pay in stamps that you buy from a tobacco store. Why not pay there? Why pay in stamps? Why a tobacco store? What is the logic??? I have no answers. French people don’t think it’s weird, though.

So I went to work (Bastille – Place d’Italie, direct metro ride). At lunch, I got a sandwich and went home, picked up my document, and bought 300 euros worth of stamps from the tobacco store next door. I chose to bike to Bastille this time – hot day, and I was in a dress, but the metro is hot too and costs more than Velib. I show up in the office, dripping sweat, and they inform me I’ve bought the wrong stamps. And “everyone knows this”. Apparently, it’s not enough to buy 300 euros worth of stamps in 30s, 20s, and 10s – NO, you must buy 3 stamps of 55 euros and 9 stamps of 15 euros. Why? Why? I almost cried, but they were unmoved. Wrong stamps. Come back tomorrow.

I tried to exchange the stamps at a nearby tobacco store, but no dice. Somehow, although they are equivalent to a kind of tax cash, they are not exchangeable. I rode my bike back to my original tobacco store next to my apartment. He luckily was willing to exchange them – otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done. Not only would I be out 300 euros, but I’m pretty sure my bank doesn’t allow me to take out more than 500 euros a week (security for the carte bleue). Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough 15 euro stamps.

Back to work. The next morning, I get up early to go to the tobacco store and Bastille, but at the store, they still don’t have the stamps. Come back in an hour, they say. Instead I go to work and come back in the afternoon. The stamps are ready for me so I go to Bastille, arriving Friday afternoon at 4:30. I’m told that it was way too late to do anything administrative, so I smile and say “je ne comprends pas”. She mutters something unpleasant about me not understanding, and it then takes her all of two seconds to take my documents and give me my carte. Which I have now, and it’s good until January 31, and I really hope I don’t have to deal with the French government till then.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.