With my passport application underway, I set out to tackle a far more painful process: recovering my carte de sejour, or residence card.
The day before setting out on this administration adventure I had paid a visit to our local police station. I had heard from others with previous experience that I needed a French version of my Spanish police report because of course a police report in a foreign language isn't going to do anything for me.
I brought David along to help with any language problems, and we walked to the station together. Since it was a Sunday there wasn't a receptionist, but an officer on duty met me in the waiting room. We explained the situation and he scanned over the Spanish report.
"This report is fine," he said.
"But it's in Spanish," I insisted.
"No no. It's ok. You can use the Spanish one."
Fine with me.
So the next day after I had secured the temporary passport, I was off to Nanterre.
My absent carte de sejour had been issued from Nanterre, even though my current prefecture is in Versailles. I figured I should go to the birthplace of my carte and took the train from the American Embassy outside the city limits to Nanterre. I wound up La Defense - which is the city next to Nanterre - around lunchtime, and knowing full well that I shouldn't bother with any administration office during lunch break I decided to feed myself while I waited for the second half of the day.
Remembering a sushi bar somewhere in my memory, I surfaced from the train station and maneuvered my way around the professionals on lunch break into the mall. There I found the sushi bar, completely full and with a line of people waiting for tables. Good news is that single diners are easy to squeeze into a bar, and soon I was seated in front of the conveyor belt, eying the fish and rice as it rolled by.
Best French sushi lunch ever.
Anyway, that's not the point.
After filling up on lunch, I psyched myself up for the prefecture. But not before a quick stroll through the bustling Christmas market that had been set up in the square in front of the mall. I'm a sucker for Christmas markets.
French Christmas markets are not as charming as German markets in my opinion, but maybe that's because I'm desensitized to French culture now. What did impress me was a giant cast iron skillet - maybe two meters in diameter - filled with potatoes, ham, and reblochon cheese, cooked by a guy with a long wooden stick. If you're not familiar with the smell of reblochon cheese, it's a rather pungent scent. The taste is far less offensive, however, and this delicious concoction is called a tartiflette (I had to provide a link to the French Wikipedia because the English version doesn't do it justice).
Anyway, I'm digressing again. But isn't French cuisine make a more interesting story than my continued misadventures in administration?
Finally at the prefecture, I walked into the newly redesigned foreigners' department, which was lovely enough but didn't mean that the lines were any shorter. I queued for a good thirty minutes before I could explain my predicament to a girl behind a window who promptly handed me a ticket. I don't suppose I could have pushed a button on a machine and done that myself 30 minutes ago?
I planted myself in a seat - at least the the redecoration efforts had added chairs - and continued along in my book until my number was called again nearly an hour and a half later. I rose, shook the blood back into my legs, and shuffled to my appointed window.
Surprisingly, the girl behind the window was smiling and pleasant. Maybe they improved the employees along with the remodeling. I told her what had happened and slid my papers under her bulletproof glass (France might not believe in the guns like Americans do, but if anyone is going to go nuts and start shooting, I'd wager they'd start with the prefecture).
She nodded and began filling in papers, and I felt a surge of progress. She reviewed the photocopy of my old card and tut tutted in sympathy: "Oooh, it was a new card, too!" like I'd just suffered the death of a kitten.
I began filling in forms on my side of the counter and paused at the field for my address. Do I use my current address, or my old address?
At this point I knew I was a goner. If I used my old address they would send the card completion notification to our old apartment in Levallois. If I used my current address she would tell me I was in the wrong prefecture. Nothing to do but face the music.
"Umm....I've moved..."
And there you have it. I was in the wrong prefecture. She frowned at me in sympathy again and promptly returned my papers. Go to Versailles. Bring all this stuff, and a copy of the police report. A French police report.
Having wasted half my day for nothing but not the least bit surprised, I collected my possessions and trudged out of the prefecture, vowing once again to never come back.
I mean it this time.
On the train home I finished my book. The same book I'd started that morning.
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