In a Dear Green Place

Have you ever read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle? For those who have not had the pleasure it is about the hilarious adventures of an English couple who become expats and move to Provence. I never fail to laugh at these stories no matter how many times I’ve read the book or its sequels. It’s funny ‘cause it’s true! I lived in France for a year and a half and it is all true.

One of my lasting impressions of Europe is the never-ending need for documentation. Once I arrived in my first city the first order of business was to obtain a carte de sejour before my temporary three-month visa expired. The carte would be good for one year and would look pretty in my passport so I was keen to get one. First, register at the prefecture with stack of papers proving existence and residence and get a récépissé verifying that the process has been started. In theory I should have eventually received an appointment for an official medical exam but it always seemed kind of pointless to me because it took weeks and weeks to get an appointment and by that time I could have infected half the city with TB. (I take things like that seriously. I’ve read The Hot Zone and seen those infectious monkey movies.) I never did get examined and x-rayed before I was transferred to another city which meant that I had to start the whole thing over again at another prefecture.

In Nimes the process was extra tedious with the bonus of being expensive as well. I went to the prefecture with my passport and electricity bills and all the other priceless pieces of paper in order to find out that I couldn’t proceed without my birth certificate being translated into French. No problem right? I can do that. I speak French and I can certainly translate things like Gender and Place of Birth. This isn’t Shakespeare folks. But no. This can’t be just any translation. It must be done by an official translator and embossed with a fancy official seal. Another appointment to set up and something like 30 Euros to pay in order to translate something that would have taken 5 minutes to type up. I, however, was not official and didn’t have a fancy stamp so I took the time and paid the money and then got transferred again and started all over in Marseille where they didn’t care about my shiny new French birth certificate. Still, it is kind of cool to have an official birth certificate from another country. It makes my existence feel even more real somehow.

Ever since my time in France I have become insanely attached to copies of any kind of paper that looks official just in case I have to prove that I do exist. I have piles of all kinds of paper that I will probably never need. Still, now that I am applying for a student visa in the UK I feel good about all my paper saving. It’s like a comfy security blanket, the knowledge that I probably have whatever obscure pieces of documentation this European power might require. The online application was fairly easy, probably easy enough for that bobbing bird toy Homer Simpson used to operate his computer while working from home.

So I’m feeling pretty good about this. I can answer questions about any possible involvement with terrorist groups with a resounding no. (Like anyone would answer any differently. Sometimes I want to laugh at these questions but I restrain myself because one must never take government processes lightly. These people have a huge amount of power over my future because I can’t study in Glasgow if they won’t let me into their country so I will be very serious as I fill out this form just in case they can smell frivolity over my internet connection.) I’ve checked off everything on my list and my application is ready to go. I just hope that I included enough of the right kinds of papers with official looking stamps and signatures on them, that my old French visa will demonstrate my trustworthy track record, things like that. I am trustworthy, non-violent, flush with loan money and really nice. Really. Please let me into your country. I think I’ll go throw some more paper in the envelope before I send it away to the consulate in Chicago. It couldn’t hurt.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Preparations. 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.