paperasse part two

(another catchup session)

This is an ongoing theme here! Paperasse, or paperwork, is really stress-inducing in France and every time there is reason to change or update papers, just the thought is enough to create a knot in my stomach. SO! Second move in a year? No problem. I told myself I could do this.

carte grise

The carte grise is the car ownership paper that needs to be kept up-to-date in terms of current address. If you don’t do it after a month of moving and are caught, you can get fined and lose points off your licence (but for some reason, the licence doesn’t need to be updated!). Changing your address on your carte grise means a trip to the préfecture or sous-préfectures and proving your new address with a utility bill.

So we drove 15km into Avallon with our rental agreement in hand and went to the sous-préfecture to change our carte grise. Of course once we got there, we learned that a rental agreement is not proof enough of an address (ANYBODY could make up any old rental agreement) and since I had taken time off work to do this transaction, I drove back home to get the paperwork needed. They wanted an electricity bill (and those couldn’t be made up in photoshop?) but I was hesitant to use our electricity bill because we have three (yes, that’s 3) street names on our bill. Why? Good question! It has to do with the street changing names over the years and nobody being willing to accept the correct address. So I brought the bill, along with a stack of other papers showing the correct street name, back to the sous-préfecture and they were able to process the address change for both of us, although we did have to prove we were married – because the bill was in Jean-Marc’s name – and I needed to insist on keeping my own name for the new sticker. Sixty kilometres later, we were both done.

Back in Canada we don’t have anything like a carte grise, but it seems to me that when I moved I was able to change my driver’s licence online in a matter of minutes and that was that.

banks

Changing your address with a bank also requires sending by mail (not fax, not email) proof of address, along with an accompanying letter requesting the change. I sent off the request along with the rental agreement, but – you guessed it! – that was not the right thing to send off. The letter was returned and I was asked to send the valid proof and so I sent off the electricity bill with the three street names, explained the situation, and I threw in a few other bills, just for good measure.

The change was made, but just for one of the two accounts I had requested, so I had to call the bank and request the change for the second account. They gave me the song and dance about sending proof and I said that it had already been sent in. The decidedly unhelpful and unfriendly person at the other end of the line finally understood the situation and begrudgingly agreed to change the second account’s address. Just today I received the bank statement from this account through redirected mail, so the change didn’t actually get done. Somehow I'm not surprised. I’ve written yet another letter requesting the change again, and I’m sending it with a stack of justificatifs de domicile. Third time lucky?

I also needed to change my address with my Canadian banks. I called and spoke to cheery, helpful people who were willing to change my address and take my word for it (after I correctly answered the security questions, of course!). I did both Canadian banks in under 5 minutes.

carte de séjour

After being the proud owner of my carte de séjour for six months, it was time to put in a request for a new card. I went to the town hall and made my request and the secretary thought that the card should come sooner than last year’s, which took almost seven months to arrive. To my surprise, after only two months, I was summoned with Jean-Marc to the préfecture in the big city of Auxerre, which is 50 km away. I thought maybe we would have an interview to make sure that we are really married and together, but we just needed to sign a declaration together, stating that we are living together. We drove 100 km to do that? Couldn't we have done that in front of the mayor at the town hall? They said that the card should arrive in a month. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my card had arrived at the town hall just before Christmas! I was told to buy fiscal stamps to the tune of 104€ (their way of collecting the payment) in Avallon and present them at the mairie to get my card.

We went to the place where you buy fiscal stamps and when I told them the amounts (one for 85€ and one for 19€) they were confused. There are various sorts of stamps for various sorts of transactions (passport, citizenship cards, driving fines etc.) and they are all at specific prices. They didn’t want to sell me the wrong kind of stamps because getting a refund is a chore (oh really?) and the stamps were changing at the end of the year. I thought that it was a prudent suggestion and I decided to check in with the village secretary first thing Monday morning.

First thing Monday morning I called only to find that the town hall was closed between the 19^th and the 29^th! So this little new card had to wait until 2012 to be paid for and picked up. I went in yesterday with my stamps, but the person at the desk wasn't the regular secretary and she had no idea where my card might be. Call me crazy, but I think that a filing cabinet would be a handy thing to have in an office, as opposed to binders and files stacked in boxes! That way the cards could be found under 'C' for cartes. Filing cabinets are so not French.

Why do taxes, fees and fines need to be paid for with fiscal stamps in this day and age? Why couldn’t I just write a cheque, pay in cash or – and I know I’m going out on a limb here – pay by debit card? 

Sometimes I really miss simplicity.

old world / new world: storage

Jean-Marc and I gave our notice for November 1 and we are currently looking for a place to live that is a bit bigger than what we have and a little closer to where we both work. At the moment I drive 28 km each way to work and Jean-Marc drives 25 km each way - and with gas being 1.35€/litre, it adds up to a lot of money spent on commuting!

One thing I have noticed in our search thus far is the lack of storage in every apartment and house. The French do not build closets into their rooms; they would rather have wooden armoires, which I personally find to be cumbersome and imposing, especially in small rooms. This means that you can find places to live where there is not one single place to hang jackets, store linen or hide a vacuum cleaner!

Another shock is the lack of kitchen. There is a "kitchen" but more often than not it only includes a sink with a cabinet below. There are no fancy schmacy things like countertops, shelves, cabinets, stove and fridge; indeed, renters must move in with their own kitchen appliances and furniture. Only if you are lucky enough to spot the words cuisine américaine will you find a real kitchen. I find this to be ironic, considering how much the French place importance on good cooking.

Since there are no communal laundry rooms, you also have to travel with your own washing machine, which will usually end up in the bathroom or the kitchen. Bathrooms are also lacking in storage units and towel bars. To top it all off, none of the lights are ever "finished" and all light fixtures are just bare lightbulbs hanging from a wire. I don't understand why, in this modern world of cheap and neutral light fixtures, the landlords don't make an effort to present a more finished apartment. Haven't they seen the 5€ pendant lamps at IKEA? Surely they could get a little extra money for the effort, based on what everybody else is proposing!

I am finding it difficult to come across rentals that have everything I'm looking for. One big disappointment for me is the lack of charm in the majority of what I see. It could be that it is exaggerated in the area around Angers and not true for all of France. More often than not, owners opt for white ceramic tile EVERYWHERE for flooring material. What's wrong with hardwood? Well, I guess they think you can't wash it. Personally, white tile in living areas gives me the heebie-jeebies (almost as much as compact fluorescent lights) and I can't imagine putting it anywhere outside of a bathroom and maybe a kitchen. A bedroom? A living room? I can assure you that it is used everywhere.

So maybe it's a pie-in-the-sky dream to find an affordable, charming stone house in a village de caractère where the original materials speak for themselves, or maybe a tranquil city apartment with big windows and wood floors, but we're going to keep on searching until the right thing turns up.

old world / new world: identity photos

Sometimes getting motivated to write something on this blog feels similar to trying to find the motivation to exercise; I want to - and I have ideas about what I want to tackle - but somehow laziness and procrastination kick in and I end up putting it off. It's been a lovely summer and we just got back home from a 12-day trip to Holland and I'm slowly easing into a bit of work before September hits. A perfect time to start running and blogging!

This summer has been administration-heavy for me, with needing a new passport, a French driver's licence, a new health care card as well as a new visa de long séjour. When applying for various cards and visas, as well as jobs, an identity photo (or four!) is always required. Remember those photo booths where you took goofy photos with your friends? Well those are considered "official" photos here, according to the government, and I've already made four trips to my local photo booth for all my official photo needs!

New job: one photo
Driver's licence: four photos
Health care card: one photo per card (I'm already getting my second)
Visa de long séjour: four photos

Of course when I needed to renew my passport, I needed two photos taken to Canadian standards, so I had to search out a photographer who could do them for me.

I'm not sure what they do with all these photos, but they  obviously don't believe in in-house digital photography or scanners! I think that this is a bit of an old world/ new world thing, even though photos haven't been around all that long. In France, even when you send in a job application you need to attach a photo (I've scanned mine into my CV) but in Canada I've never had to do that, and it's probably discouraged so as to avoid discrimination. Not so here!

In addition to providing photos, they also require stamps or prepaid envelopes. Just for my driver's licence, I had to provide two BOOKS of stamps! That's a lot of mailing! Apparently before I can apply to take the theory test - a 40-question test filled with trick questions that requires hours and hours of studying to pass - the driving school had to send my application to foreign services to be approved. Once my application is approved, we can book a time for the test (they're group tests given in large rooms to a limited number of applicants). Once I pass my test, I can have driving lessons, at which point they will evaluate the number of lessons I will need before doing my practical test. If I fail my practical test I will need to wait at least 2 months before trying again. Did I mention that I've been driving in France for 10 years and have owned a car here with no problem for the last 7 years? I was allowed to drive here every summer for 3 months maximum at one time and then when I moved here they told me I was allowed to drive with my BC licence for one year and then I would need a French licence. I fail to see the consistency and it feels a bit like a money grab, but oh well. It's probably not a bad exercise to go through!

Once my passport, visa, licence and health care card are here I think I'll be done paperwork (until next year!).

old world / new world: church bells

I've been trying (trying!) to not rant on about all the frustrating things in France. The fact is, France is a country with a huge history and very strong culture and some things are the way they are because that's the way they've always been done. Coming from a young country where changes and improvements are made for the sake of efficiency, I sometimes find myself asking "why?" when I know a much simpler solution exists. Changing the minds of the French is difficult and they will always defend the old way, even if it's inconvenient. All that is to say that I've come up with a new category of posts, called old world / new world. It's not so much a rant topic as a comparison between the new world of my home country and the old world of my adopted country.

To start things off, I thought I'd mention a positive thing about the old world: church bells. Every village and city has at least one church and most, if not all, have church bells. On the hour and the half-hour, time is marked with the appropriate number of rings, with the half-hour getting one ring. This goes through the night, making sleeping with the windows open a bit of a challenge for light sleepers! On Sundays, Feast days, as well as for weddings and funerals, there is a longer ringing ceremony that lasts a good 10 minutes. In my village, there are two bells that are a tone apart and they ring independently, sometimes taking turns (ding dong, ding dong / dong ding, dong ding) and sometimes hitting the mark together (diong, diong). Whether I'm lying in bed, working in the garden or preparing a meal, I always enjoy this marking of time and events.