cont...carte de sejour

So, this morning my French friend Monique came by and we took off for the office where I was instructed I could get the extension for my carte de sejour. We reached the place by subway in about 20 minutes and entered through the security check in. We felt lucky because there were only about 4 people waiting and a couple of employees taking care of us. When my number was called we went up to a desk where a woman looked at my card. Immediately, she pulled out a piece of paper and highlighted several numbers, my arrondissement and the actual place where I was to go for the extension...this wasn't it! So, off we went across the river to the 14th arrondissement. By then it was just after noon and guessing that most of the employees at the office would be at lunch we decided to have a bite to eat ourselves before going to the office. We chose an Italian place nearby since I could easily find something to eat vegetarian. I picked eggplant Parmesan after asking the waiter to verify there was no meat on it. After my salad the eggplant arrive and I lifted the cheese layer to discover a layer of ham...back to the kitchen it went and I ended up with a pizza margarita, no meat in sight! Monique and I got to the Prefecture's office around 1:45pm to find a mob of people waiting inside and only one attendant at a desk. I convinced Monique that I could manage on my own and to go home since it would likely be a long wait, as it indeed was. The reader board announcing the number of the next person to be served wasn't working so I had to really tune up my ears to understand who was getting called next. For those who don't know any French, the language doesn't have a particular word for numbers after 69 so they begin using a combination of numbers that add up to 70 (60+10=70, 60+11=71, 60+12=72, etc.). However, when you get to 80 it's even tougher because it becomes 4-20 (80), 4-20-10 (90), 4-20-15 (95), etc. Anyway, after 2 hours I finally got to see a person behind a desk who promptly informed me that because my carte de sejour was good through 25 May and I am not traveling outside the country until the 2 June I needed to come back after the 25 May!!! I asked, "I have to come back here and sit another couple of hours to get the paper I need?" Her responds was "mais oui" but of course....ah another day of French bureaucracy!

Carte de Sejour

This is the residence card that I have to go and renew every darn year. It takes forever to get the first one, which starts with an application for a visitors visa that has to be made in the US before coming here. For me, that meant a trip to Chicago, the office covering the midwestern region. Luckily my friend Neal drove me up since I had to carry a packet full of documents, including French translations of everything, that was about 5 inches thick. I received the visa about a month later, just in time for my flight to Paris. Once here I had to start the whole process over again on this side of the Atlantic, that was May 2008. Now, every May I have to get out all the documents again, update a few things, get a recent photo taken and head off to the Prefecture de Police, the government agency in charge of immigrants like myself. The appointments for these meetings have to be made months in advance so like a good little resident, I got online in February and went through the online registration for a meeting. After clicking the button to confirm my time/date I was taken to a blank page so I clicked the back button to see what happened. Again, I clicked the date but the time I had clicked before was not available so naturally I thought it was done. In the past I have received a confirmation in the mail so I waited about 3 weeks but got nothing so I phoned directly to the Prefecture's office. After a long wait with an annoying repeating message, I finally got a hold of a real person who informed me that if I registered online that I would not receive anything in the mail. I told her that I also had not received a confirmation on the website so wasn't sure if I had an appointment on May 17th or not. She kindly asked me all the info to check and found out I was not, in fact, registered. Rats! Fortunately, she gave me a date and time to go in but it's not until August so I asked her what I was supposed to do since my carte de sejour runs out in May and I need to leave the country in June. She told me, no problem, just go to the Prefecture's office in the 9th arrondissement, districts within Paris, and they will give me the paperwork I need to continue my residency in the meantime. Now this whole conversation was in French so my end of the phone was struggling at times but I did get all the info I needed. Today, I decided to go and get my extension taken care of and asked a French friend to go with me. When I got to her apartment she thought we should call just to make sure...and low and behold, we found out that it isn't in the 9th that I have to go to but in the 18th! And, I don't just need my passport, carte de sejour and paper stating my appointment date and time but I also need a photo, confirmation of where I live (document like a gas bill) and some other thing. Ah, you gotta love the French for their inventive powers when it comes to bureaucracy!

Le Vieux Belleville

There's a little bar/restaurant about a 10 minute walk from our apartment called Le Vieux Belleville, the old Belleville, the name of the neighborhood. The place is typical of a lot of small unknown places around Paris. The menu was pretty typical with lots of meat and potato dishes and daily plats de jours. They also regularly have musicians playing traditional French tunes so we had been wanting to go for quite a while. Finally, last Saturday night we called two friends to join us and we all walked up for dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to find a vegetarian main dish, unusual even in upscale restaurants! More surprising was how much fun we had singing along to the accordion music, well at least trying to sing along. The musician passed out sheet music for each song she played and we sang in between bits of food! For more about the place check out their website: http://www.le-vieux-belleville.com/fr/bar-restaurant-musette-le-vieux-belleville.html