Carol & David's Excellent Adventure Part V - Toto, This Ain't Jersey - David Braun - Copyright 1998 When I was a little kid, my dad would take me out with him to run errands on Saturdays. Like most kids, I didn't get to spend much time with my dad, so these were days I looked forward to. One day, as we were driving along, he saw an attractive woman. He said, mostly to himself, "Mmm... what they put in THAT cat's milk?" I thought that this was hilarious. And of course, I thought it was so funny that when we got home I told my mom. For some reason (which I didn't understand until MUCH later), SHE didn't think it was nearly as funny as I did. Thirty-some odd years or so have passed since that day and I still think it's funny, but for entirely different reasons. One of the other things my dad said on these jaunts to the hardware store, the toy store, the drug store, and sometimes to his work (where I am sure I was a huge pain-in-the-ass and kept him distracted enough to keep from accomplishing anything constructive), was something he said often. When some bonehead made some bonehead maneuver in their car in traffic, he would say (sometimes under his breath, sometimes out loud, and sometimes even shout it out the window), "Jersey driver!" Of course I didn't understand what that was all about, so he explained... (We lived in the suburbs outside Philadelphia.) Philadelphia is on the Delaware River, separating Pennsylvania from New Jersey. It was (and may still be for all I know) a popularly held opinion that the New Jersey state driver's examination was way too easy. It was said that, "Jersey drivers get their licenses from gumball machines." Being a little kid, I immediately wanted to cross the river and get a driver's license. (My dad told me you had to put too much money in the slot. So we didn't go.) With all this in mind, I now know that from the perspective brought about by living on this side of the pond, the epithet should be "AMERICAN DRIVER!" How To Get a French Drivers License: Option A: Learn to speak French. Go to a French driving school, which is very expensive and takes a long time. Take the written test in French, which is very expensive and you will probably fail at least once. Take the practical test, which you might fail, just because almost nobody ever passes the first time. (Collusion is suspected between the examiners and the many driving schools.) And finally, obtain a license, issued for life. Note: Repeat the process with an even more difficult and expensive school and tests for your motorcycle license. Option B: Have a valid license from somewhere with which France has a reciprocal agreement. Obtain a Carte Sejour. Hand over your valid license along with all the other stuff on the form and a check. Wait a few weeks. Receive your license. Looking at these options, B looks like the better one. Now let's break that down a bit... "Have a valid license from somewhere with which France has a reciprocal agreement." Such a place is any western European country, any one of three of the Canadian Provinces, or any one of the following United States: Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, or Illinois. OK... well my employer, with their wisdom, insight, and experience, recognized that if option B is to BE an option, then our relocation package must include the trip to somewhere to accomplish this, since Colorado, where our current licenses were valid, is absent from the list. Thinking to save my employer some dough, I thought, "We can just travel to France via Chicago (a United Airlines hub) when we move. We'll allow an extra day there and do it then." One phone call to the IL DMV in Chicago kaiboshed that idea faster that starving hound dog sucks down a bowl of boiled okra. They wanted all sorts of proof of stuff and wanted to give a temporary license and mail the real thing later. Note that California is NOT on the list either. Too bad, because we know we have to go there to get the cartes sejour. OK... we moved to Colorado from Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is about thirty-five miles south of Kentucky. About thirty miles north of the Tennessee line is a municipality called Bowling Green. This seemed to be just the right size town. Not so big that they have butt-head bureaucraps like in Chicago. And not so small that the person behind the counter knows everybody and who said what in whose backyard. Saturday night stays make for cheaper plane tickets; cheaper enough to more than pay for an extra night in a hotel and an extra day for the rental car, particularly for two people together. So, Carol and I got a free trip to Nashville. While there, we spent about a gazillion dollars on books, written in the English language because we figured (rightly so) that these might be hard to find in France. We also visited with some old friends. Sunday evening, we checked into the Holiday Inn just off I65. We spent several minutes memorizing the address of our new "house," 3240 Scottsville Road, #130, BG, KY 42104. Monday morning, we found our way to the courthouse. Unfortunately, the room where they handle the drivers' stuff is in the same area of the Warren County Criminal Court as the actual Criminal Court itself (with actual criminals). This meant that we had to empty our pockets and purse and check my Swiss Army knife in the lockup as we filed into the courthouse along with all the juvenile delinquents and their folks. I guess it was kiddie-court day. We presented our valid Colorado licenses and our Social Security cards to the nice ladies behind the counter. The woman I had spoken with on the phone was adamant about only two things... the outta state license MUST be a valid one, "Because they WILL check." and we had to have PROOF of our social security numbers. The operator part was $8 and the motorcycle endorsement another $10. Unfair if you ask me. But I'm not registered to vote in Warren County, Kentucky, so I don't get much say there. We filled out the forms, handed over the cash and had our pictures taken. Just before the lady handed my license to me she asked, "Now you DO live in Warren County, don't you?" I thought to myself, "Well... I AM in Warren County, and I am certainly NOT dead. Therefore, I must live here." "Yes, Ma'am." They never even asked Carol. On our walk back to the rental car, Carol noticed that her address was number 13 instead of the number 130 on mine. We looked at each other... "Naaah." We cancelled the lease on our ole Kentucky home (checked out of the Holiday Inn) on our way to the freeway to the Nashville airport back to Colorado. We never did have any problems those last few months in Fort Fun with merchants refusing to accept checks imprinted with a Fort Collins address and a Kentucky license for ID. "Hand over your valid license along with all the other stuff on the form and a check." The "other stuff" is the hard part. Of course, you must have the form (in French) filled out to start. You must have two identical photos, a check for 330F, a copy of your Carte Sejour which has been stamped as certified by the Mairie (town hall), your original valid exchangeable license, a French translation of your original valid exchangeable license (translated by an official, expensive, state-approved translator), proof of your address such as an electric bill, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Knowing ahead of time that we would need a cubic pantload of photos, we took a roll of film of all the individuals in the family from varying distances, selected the ones which were the right size and not too funny looking, and had a couple dozen of each made. For under twenty bucks, total, we got a couple dozen of each of us. That sure beats Kinko's "deal" of two passport photos for $12. The Carte Sejour applications alone required six photos each. We still have a few left. So another two for the license apps were no problem. Getting the certified copy of the Cartes Sejour was the hard part. Not for the CERTIFIED part, that was easy. But the Cartes Sejour themselves required all sorts of gyrations. Part I of "Carol and David's Excellent Adventure" describes (in there somewhere) the machinations required to get the stamps in our passports required in order to *start* us on our quest for the Cartes Sejour upon our arrival here in France. Having arrived in France, we went with a facilitator to the Hotel de Prefecture (a sort of a state office building, definitely NOT a hotel), armed with copies of every document we had. Because our facilitator has had considerable experience, we managed to leave that day with a big piece of paper, a photocopy of something called an Attestation. This paper said, in essence, "This certifies that a carte sejour has been applied for. This certificate is good for sixty days. Don't leave France." After some weeks and some phone calls, we took our Attestations back to the Prefecture and turned them over in exchange for a Recipisse. A Recipisse is a smaller, official looking document which, says in essense, "This certifies that a carte sejour has been applied for. This certificate is good for sixty days. It's OK to leave France if you carry this with your passport." And after some more weeks and another phone call, we went back to the Prefecture to get our Cartes Sejour. "But," we were told, "you'll need to buy a fiscal stamp." We were told that this was normally easy. But (of course there's a but), the amount had recently been changed from 200F to 220F and they refused to say on the phone what would be required. You can get them at any Tabac. Except of course, there are no Tabacs within sight of the Hotel de Prefecture. But... they do sell them IN the Prefecture. One theory goes that the 220F stamps were mandated, but not available. If you can't get them, they can't make you buy them. So, at the window to pick up the Cartes Sejour, we were asked for two 200F stamps. The caisse window was about ten meters away and sold 200F stamps. Done. Sort of. All we got was a "temporary" sticker in our passports. We gotta go through this again in a year. Except the year is up December 15th, when we STARTED the process, not March 20th, when we finished it. The next day, I took our passports and a handful of photocopies of the pages with the Cartes Sejour to the Hotel de Ville (also NOT a hotel, but a city office building). While I was there, I picked up another couple of Fiche de Famille Civil Etat. I forked over the passports and the xeroxes and the nice lady stamped all the copies "Copie Certifie" and handed them back. A Fiche de Famille Civil Etat is an official form that says that you and your family are you and your family. To get one, you need original birth certificates for the whole fam damnly, along with a marriage certificate and Official French Translations for each and every one. You fill out a form with the names, places and dates of birth, and so forth on it and fork it over to some official. In my case, my first pass went down in flames because I had only brought photocopies of the USA documents and translations. I had to run home and get the originals. They tried to tell me, when I returned about twenty minutes later, that I needed the *originals* of the *translations*, too. I pointed out that the original certificates themselves (in English) had Official Seals from other Officials and the translations only had a signature of someone who was only a translator and not an Official official, like their august selves. They seemed to think this made a lot of sense and smacked each copy of the Fiche de Famille three or four times with a little round stamp and purple ink. (You need these for other stuff like social security and school lunches, which I don't want to go into here.) Then I gave my employer's relocation manager our Kentucky licenses because he manages the translations faster and cheaper than we could. A co-worker of mine from New Zealand told me that he had to pay to get his birth certificate translated... five words were actually translated and it cost him 250F. And they'd gotten two of the words wrong at that. And then when he got around to needed it, the translation was over a year old and they required him to get it done again. (As if the language had changed in a year and a few months.) An agent from HP's third party Assistance Transferts Regional (ATR), who facilitate issues associated with transferrng people to the region, picked up the translations, original licenses, some stamped self addressed envelopes, a couple of checks for about $50 each, the application forms, four photogrphs, (fiiive golden riiings, and a partridge in a pear tree...) from HP Human Resources (HR). They took the stuff down to the Hotel de Prefecture for processing. Some time went by, several weeks actually, when finally one of the SASE's arrived. The next morning, gleeful as a kid at Christmas, I picked up our French licenses and our uncancelled Kentucky licenses (along with the unused SASE for Carol's). Yippee! ... Almost... Upon closer inspection, I realized that we had official stamps authorizing us to drive vehicles with less than ten seats and "Tricycles et quadricycles a moteur." However, the spaces next to "Motocyclettes legeres" and "Motocyclettes" were BLANK. I had a conversation with ATR. I had a conversation with HR. Both of them had a conversation with the Prefecture. The consensus seemed to be, "You must begin again." (Go back to "GO." And pay 330 Franc.) BZZT! Wrong answer. This is France. There may be Rules and Procedures; however, this is France. Everything is negotiable. I had yet another conversation (a bit more heated this time) with both ATR and with HR and explained that I had given our Kentucky licenses to HP-HR who gave them to their official translator for translation. The translator officially translated them, returned the stuff to HR, who gave the packets to ATR, who submitted them with the applications to the Prefecture. The fact that no one seemed to bother to read the translations nor care that the translator had not translated the fact that Carol and I have motorcycle licenses was in no way our fault. We had done our part in good faith and we were certainly not prepared to wait another three or four weeks for our licenses. My level of ire at the (unstated) incompetence of everyone associated with the fiasco was apparently well communicated. Within an hour I was told that I could deliver our French licenses to HR tomorrow morning and by the end of the day, the matter would be corrected. And so it was. (A representative of ATR picked them up, took them to the Prefecture, whom the Official Translator had called previously, and the folks at the Prefecture had processed them while "we" waited (even throwing in an apology) and then ATR brought them back to HP.) Carol's license was issued to "BRAUN, Carole." (There should be no "e" in her entire name.) But we are at the point of seriously diminishing returns here, and opted to find that a minor, acceptable, error. One footnote: the back of each of our French Permis de Conduire is a note: E.P.E. permis americain delivere le 17/11/97, titre restant en possession de l'interesse; sa seule presentation n'autorise pas la conduite en France. Now if you speak fluent French, maybe this makes sense to you right off. But I showed it to three of my French coworkers and they each took more than a minute to make the translation. My FEAR was that it said, in effect, "This license is only valid when accompanied by a valid American license." What it says is, "The American license in this person's possession is not valid; this (the French one) is the only license valid license in France." When I asked why that was on there, no one could say. What they told me was that if I were to show the Kentucky license to a cop and then the French one, he should only pay attention to the French one. The only reason that I can figure that they wrote this on the French license instead of marking the Kentucky license INVALID is because, well... this is France.