Tag Archives: paperwork

Permis De Conduire? (Driving License) French Bureaucracy Stuck in 19th Century!

It’s all so straightforward, everyone assured me. You simply take your old driving license into the Prefecture in Foix before the expiration date and turn it in and they’ll replace it with a French one. Right???

No — not in a million years is it straightforward! Perhaps if you are one of the million-plus Brits living here, but if you are Australian? Then it is not so easy, reliable, and speedy.

We took a day off in November to go to Foix, a lovely day out in a beautiful and historic town with the bonus of a delicious lunch. The man at the driving license desk was charming and he handled all of my paperwork pleasantly and told me that I would be receiving my new French license in the post very shortly. Days went by — then weeks. I was checking our mailbox daily and at this point my Australian license was about to expire.

But today — only today — did some bureaucratic twit woman in Foix write to me AFTER I sent a polite request for information about why the license had not arrived yet. And what she told me simply sent me over the edge into white-hot rage.

Nothing in France is digital — nothing. They are still firmly entrenched in a 19th Century brain-set about how to operate in a 21st Century world, so things never go quite right. Everything is awash in paperwork and every single government office requires photocopy after photocopy of your documents. They must have to build vast warehouses just to store all of the damned paperwork!!!

When you need to renew your license in Australia, it’s a 21st Century DIGITAL world. You walk into the VicRoads office, have them take a new digital photo right there on the spot, (no — they don’t make you bring in a 4 photos the way they do here!) hand over your payment, and out you walk with a new laminated license — period. They DO NOT ISSUE a file full of paperwork each time showing when your original license was and so forth. But apparently they do here in France — and PAPERWORK is what they want before they will issue my new license.

They could have told me that in November and it would have been here by now. Now I have to fill out online forms from VicRoads, have them signed and witnessed, and send them BACK to Australia so they can send the completed dossier BACK to France. Then and only then will the uppity woman in Foix decide that I am ‘worthy’ of a f**king French driving license.

My love affair with France is, quite justifiably, wearing off. The shopkeepers are charming, the French people are invariably polite, the everyday man and woman we deal with are very straightforward. But the nightmarish and antiquated government systems here are doing my head in and I am the one who has to deal with this over and over and over just to be able to live here. Every single month there is some sort of paperwork dragon to fight and I shouldn’t have to be doing this at my age. That’s why after 10 months of fighting with another bureaucratic office and submitting the same paperwork again and again, we still do not have a Carte Vitale for each of us (national health card) because you never talk to the same person twice.

As of now, I am unable to get a French driving license before my old one expires because bureaucrats who are paid to do a very simple job simply occupy a desk, get paid their comfortable little guaranteed government salary, don’t care one bit about the people they are supposed to be helping, don’t tell the poor suckers at the counter any information in a timely manner, and then they collect a comfortable pension at the end of their working life.

Are you thinking of moving to France? A piece of advice — unless you have some personal body slave who can go and run errands for you and do all of your paperwork for you and you never have to buy a car, drive a car, earn a living, or negotiate through the health care system — just DON’T DO IT!

It will save you a lot of gray hair and stomach aches. The way the French bureaucrats treat the foreign residents who pay their taxes and prop up this crumbling country is simply appalling.

Finding Housing Means Beating My Head Against A Wall

No — haven’t dropped off the face of the planet, but I have been firmly beating my head against a wall whilst trying to find us a place to live for a minimum of a year or so when we will qualify for a French mortgage or we find some cheap-as-chips property to buy for cash and subsequently renovate (while living in construction rubble — again!.

It’s a VERY good thing that I am feeling all bright and perky and healthy right now because I think I would have gone back to bed this morning and pulled the covers over my head otherwise. And I’m trying to deal with this 90% on my own since the darling Mark is off at work every day and it wouldn’t help him one little bit to cope with that PLUS this.

We didn’t get the house we interviewed for on Saturday. The owner rented to another French woman and in case you mistakenly think that I am feeling persecuted or discriminated against — no, I am not. It’s just one of those things and I’m not feeling dramatic about it.

This picture below is the view through each of the three French doors onto the balcony, the scene that would have been presented to us each day. It was a perfectly splendid large house and it even had the lock-up garage Mark needed and a separate office-library for me in addition to the 2 bedrooms, large kitchen, and large living and dining room. We had already begun to mentally envision where we would place the furniture and hang the artwork that is on the way from Australia. Now THAT was certainly a mistake we won’t make again!

View from the balcony of the house we did NOT get in St. Girons, Midi-Pyrenees, France

We are having a nightmare trying to find someone who will rent to us here. We don’t have French tax returns for the past year and even with sparkling references, they want a guarantor who will declare that they will be responsible for our rent for three flipping years!

Our friend Becky (whose husband Matt my husband subcontracts for) went with me to make the rounds of all the agencies in St. Girons on Friday and I saw her face when the agent told her that and then she turned and translated it to me. I immediately told her that there was no way I would ever place them in that situation and she said, “We just couldn’t!”

Even the private owners here are asking for the same things —
1. Proof of income (we have that)
2. Proof of local bank (we have that)
3. Bank statements to show solvency (we have that)
4. References from past landlords (we have that)
5. Copies of passports and French residency (we have that)
6. Tax returns from France for a minimum of one year (we do NOT have that!)
OR
7. A guarantor who will promise to pay our rent for up to THREE years (we certainly do NOT have that!)

Understandably, people who are landlords need to protect their interests and the housing market here is quite protective of the rights of tenants. So it is nigh onto impossible to get a renter OUT once you have them in. For those reasons, property owners are very, very conservative. Having owned a small portfolio of property when we lived in the USA, I can see it from both sides of the fence and am completely sympathetic to the position of the landlord as well as our own. But this is, at the moment, very difficult.

I was all chipper this morning and I thought that perhaps the Universe was trying to tell me that it wasn’t that particular house that would be right for us. But the rental apartments or houses are disappearing as fast as they are online and they have that full list of requirements that we can’t meet. I have been on the phone since 9:30 this morning calling property owners who had listed their mobile numbers on the listings. I’ve even had Becks and our other friend Caty calling around for me since they’ve lived here for years and their French is better than mine. The results thus far are a firm brick wall!

I’ll figure it out even if we have to go and rent some caravan for a year. Ah well — back to the online listings since the agencies are now a solid no-go zone. It certainly is NOT as straightforward as England, Australia, or the USA by any stretch of the imagination! Who knew??? (sigh!)

Moving Overseas Means Even MORE Paperwork!

Just when I thought I had completed the last of the paperwork, just when I thought I had no more PDF documents or blank forms to fill out, along comes the insurance forms this morning. I have had to print out our 16 page inventory and I have to place a value on EVERY single thing that I want to insure! And we have somewhere between 750-850 books in those cartons, and I have to give a specific count.

Creating an insurance inventory and assigning a value for EVERY item we own!

Not only that, I have to list how MANY pair of trousers Mark has, how many dresses and shoes and cardigans I have, how many dishes and pots and pans — well, you get the drift. And if I fail to list them, then they aren’t insured!

In another period of my life when I was in my 20s, I was a military wife and I learned how to pack according to military standards. That meant that every box had to be numbered and every single item in every box had to be listed on the master inventory forms. In this post 9-11 world, that has proven to be handy as we moved around the world a few times and our goods sailed through Customs quite easily because I had such a detailed list. The customs agents in Australia had a friendly laugh at just how many books there were in our household goods.

But I have to say that this is the most detailed inventory I have ever had to fill out for an insurance policy. And I have to determine what is the value for each item if I had to purchase them again on this side of the world.

If you don’t hear from me for several days, you’ll know why!

When In France, Patience Pays

Deciding to stop travelling, pick one country out of several options, and settle in the south of France has been an interesting proposition on a variety of levels — so I thought I would share a bit of that with you. The Midi-Pyrenees is a stunning part of this beautiful country and after much consideration, we believe that we have made a good choice. So we’re taking that leap of faith and staying!

St. Girons from the Avenue Francois Camel bridge

If you read the previous post, you will know that I have some additional freedom again now that I have my own little Peugeot to zip around in. However, it took TWO DAYS of hanging on the phone, leaving the car firmly parked because it was uninsured, and then wading through my kinda-sorta ok-ish French to get a new insurance policy. But as of Saturday afternoon, that’s all sorted and I’ve been out and about already doing essential errands and tracking down the correct government offices for each task.

A bit of freedom courtesy of a new-old Peugeot for Deborah

Yes, the updates on the site have been a bit thin for the last couple of weeks, but we’re fine and still doing the settling-in thing. That means lots and lots of paperwork from government departments that never seems to end. Mark’s life is a bit more straightforward than mine is right now — he gets up in the morning and goes off to work at various astonishingly scenic places as he renovates French houses. I am here in my home office, making endless copies, sourcing more government information, sending flurries of emails, and then waiting, waiting, waiting for things to get done by whatever French government department I am currently dealing with.

Getting registered in the health care system is still ongoing and that has, I must admit, been ridiculously time consuming. But I feel confident that my own paperwork will be completed this week. And I’ll be very happy once I see two copies of the laminated Carte Vitale, the essential item that gives us full access to all of the French healthcare system.

Things came to a grinding halt recently when I had to get an official French form to then obtain an official French translation of our birth certificates from English into French — and then the official French translation form had to be stamped and signed by an official French Civil Authority in a government office. That finally happened yesterday, but not easily!

After getting the translation completed last week, I took all of the correct paperwork to the Marie (the mayor’s office) in St. Girons yesterday and was directed to the office for Civil Registry. There I found a woman behind a desk with rather a lot of stamps and pens on her desk. Good — I must be at the correct place — right? Perhaps not since she looked rather alarmed when she realised that I wanted her to put her stamp on the official translation of (shock-gasp!) a British birth certificate and an American birth certificate. Seriously, she looked at me like the sky was falling!

Shaking her head and repeating, “Non, non, non!” several times, she pulled out an instruction sheet for what she could sign off on and waved one finger at it saying that her office was for people from France, not “etrangers” — strangers (which is what they actually do call anyone who isn’t French). I just stood there and waited with a calm expression. She went off in a huff to talk to the woman in the office next door, her supervisor, and came back with a very thin smile on her face. She had just been corrected by the supervisor (lovely woman!) who told her that since we were registered to live and work in France, she was required to copy and stamp all of our documents.

Kachink-kachink went the stamps, 2 on each form plus a date and signature, and finally I was handed 8 “official French” forms. I kept a pleasant look on my face, thanked her very sincerely, and suppressed the urge to dance down the hall outside her office and whoop out loud once I reached the parking lot!

I have no idea why, but for some reason I have rather a lot of patience with this unfolding process. Maybe it’s because this place feels so right. And for a change, Mark isn’t neutral, he really LOVES it (in all capital letters!) here in this part of France! That’s an important change because he’s always liked the places where we lived in the past two decades in Australia, England, and even those brief few years in the USA — but he hasn’t LOVED them. Nice, eh?

Getting new passwords for our online account required a trip to the bank to meet with our account manager — and as I was walking through St. Girons yesterday, I was smiling. It was interesting to see how many people turned and smiled back because I was walking around feeling like a lightbulb was on inside my face. St. Girons is just lovely in that picturesque faded-French-beauty way that makes my heart happy. The photo below is of Rue Gambetta and my bank is underneath those arches at the end of the curve, just before the parking lot in the square beyond. Now seriously, if you looked at your local business district each day and saw this kind of charming view, wouldn’t it make your own heart sing?

In the larger view, we are both quite happy that we waited, that we had patience about making a decision about where to stop and where to settle down again. We enjoyed our time over the last 18 months immensely as we travelled and worked in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. And we met lovely people in each and every place that would have introduced us to the right people, helped us with our language issues in the non-English countries, and generally assisted us in negotiating through the ever-present paperwork in the EU.

The place that we have finally chosen, France, seems to be particularly attached to ‘les papiers’ and, in direct contrast to the way things are done in the UK or Australia, online processing of forms is practically non-existent. So everything moves at a snail’s pace. If you do choose France, you must know that ahead of time and accommodate yourself to their pace

Time to stop for today and get back to work. My next challenge is getting quotes to have our household goods delivered to us here in France. We had the very happy news from our shipping company in Australia that they had mistakenly quoted us for a larger amount than we actually had in storage. Once they picked it up last Friday from our storage unit, compacted it, and measured it on Monday, they sent us the actual figure which was approximately one third less than what the quote was based on. So we are saving a little bit of money off the sticker-shock prices that we were dealing with up until yesterday. Our boxes will arrive in the UK in a few months and then be trucked down here to France, a process that is (rather oddly!) cheaper than having them sent directly to France or even to Spain which is only one hour south of us.

Ah well — c’est la vie!

The Peugeot Paperwork Pause

Waiting, waiting, waiting. (sigh!)

So I bought a new-old little Peugeot 306 today from a friend of a friend here in the Midi-Pyrenees. Yes, it has a few dings in the doors from encounters in the local parking lots, but it’s an appropriately inexpensive option for our frugal lifestyle — a very basic little getting-around vehicle that I hope will serve me well over the next few months as we get sorted out here and I begin to look for a more permanent place to live.

The front of the new-old Peugeot 306

The back of the new-old Peugeot 306

That should all be quite straightforward — right? Trust me, there is never, ever, ever anything straightforward in France if it involves paperwork. I have been on the phone and online for over 5 hours at this point just trying to get insurance for it that doesn’t cost half of the total value of the car per year in premiums!!!

Our insurance agency that has our previous policy is headquartered in the outskirts of Paris and they take a lunchtime break on Friday that lasts from noon until — wait for it — four in the afternoon. And THEN they re-open for business. It took me ever so long to get anyone to even answer the phone, then I hung online for almost half an hour, and then they gave me a list of documents to scan and attch to emails. I had to send 6 different emails with one piddly attachment (at a greatly reduced pixel size, I might add) on each one.

So here I am now now — waiting, waiting, waiting to hear back.

If it goes smoothly, I will be driving the new wee beastie this weekend. If not (mustn’t even think that!), it will be Monday before I can get on the road. Let’s see, how many really rude French expletives can I think of to mutter as I walk around the house? (sigh!)

P.S. It’s 7 hours later and after 6 PM now — so I guess I won’t be out and about this weekend. And did I fail to mention the mini-heatwave? That certainly wasn’t helpful today either!

Piles of Paper For A New Life In The South Of France

In a previous post — Giving France A Chance — I discussed the small mountain of paperwork required for me, the non EU citizen of the two of us, to get residency in France. That all went swimmingly and I am now in possession of my Carte de Sejour — the French residency card (with all registry numbers removed) that you see below.

French residency card

That was so smooth that I was positive and upbeat about the speed of all other French paperwork requirements. Ahem! (cough-cough!) I now have to downgrade that optimism quite a bit.

I am quite pleased that Mark has happily settled into his new work routine and he happily buzzes off down the road with a smile on his face to work each day in one stunning mountain location or another (photos of those in posts in the coming week!!), but I do get stuck with the drudge work of ‘les papiers’ and that isn’t exactly thrilling.

The next bit of plastic that you are meant to have with you here in France is the Carte Vitale — another credit card style card with your photo on it that gives you access to the French health care system. This is one of the big pluses for people who want to change their lifestyle and move to a very civilised and amenity-abundant country in Europe — the quality of the health care system which always ranks either #1 or #2 in the world. For a very tiny co-payment of about €24, you can see the doctor of your choice who will then refer you on to specialists as needed. And there is an income-tiered system in place that also means that in some cases, you pay nothing whatsoever for doctors, medicines, or hospital stays.

The first stage is receiving your Attestation which shows that you are actively registered in the health system and have the right to use the subsidised French medical care. Mark qualified on the very first day that he registered as an Auto Entrepreneur in the building trades — a freelance, self-employed building tradesman who either sub-contracts his skills to other builders or works independently on individual commissions.

Part of that registration included selecting your mandatory insurance agency — the people you pay your quarterly contributions to and they, in turn, maintain all of your records and assure that you get the full French social benefits including health care. We chose RAM which is under the umbrella of the RSI — the insurance branch for people who work as Auto Entrepreneurs or Artisans.

Having Mark instantly covered was all well and good, but getting me covered has been another kettle of fish altogether! We’ve frankly been agog at how complicated it is and we still haven’t resolved everything.

We had a time delay in receiving some of our mail from Normandy, but once everything arrived we went promptly to the office in St. Girons where everyone had told us to go and register. And from doing my research online about the paperwork required, we went armed with originals of everything from Mark’s work registry to my residency card, our original birth certificates, our marriage license, our proof of solvency, copies of our lease and mobile phone bills to show where we lived, and other assorted documents with photocopies galore of all of that.

The French just love paper copies! They do not reside in the digital world yet (I am quite serious about that statement!) and you go up a notch or three in their eyes if you arrive for an appointment with your own photocopies so they don’t have to be bothered walking to the machine.

Into the office we went, down we sat, and Madame behind the desk immediately began shaking her head back and forth saying, “Non, non, non! RSI! RSI!” as she pointed to the header on one of our documents. What she was referring to was the name of the umbrella agency that covers Mark’s particular employment subset and we had mistakenly gone to the office that oversaw people who received regular salaries (not the self-employed) or who were on government subsidies.

That was certainly a wasted afternoon off of work for Mark! And we were just beginning to understand how many different offices of government there are in France for every single aspect of life.

NONE of it is centralised and, in our opinion, it makes for rather a lot of chaos. Trust me, it isn’t just ex-pats who move here who think this either. We’ve met French people who think that it all needs to be sorted out, centralised, and made a bit more uniform instead of having changeable and varying requirements according to what region of France you are living in or even what district of a region you reside in.

The rules and regulations are not uniformly applied from area to area and things can either go as smooth as silk like they did in Normandy, or they can be a quagmire like the situations that several online friends I have in Paris have revealed. We seem to be a bit in-between those two extremes here in the Midi-Pyrenees.

Our next trip was an hour drive in each direction to the large and traffic-clogged city of Toulouse for an appointment at our insurance coverage company RAM. Did I mention that outside of Paris, people do not routinely speak any English at all? Thus we are not only climbing mountains, we are dragging our French speaking skills up by our fingernails as we maneuver through government offices!

The lovely woman at the RAM office was soothing and gently (but all in French!) gave us the shocker that I had to get our birth certificates translated into an official French document which then had to be notarised or stamped as official by some government agency BEFORE we could submit them, along with a list of other paperwork, to a SECOND French government office to get the ball rolling for our French health care cards. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!

That is my task this week while Mark goes off to work every day. I have to get translations on an official government form and then find someone at the local Marie (mayor’s office) or the Sub-Prefecture (local branch of government for this section of the Midi-Pyrenees) to stamp it as a genuine and acceptable translation. Then and only then can we send another wad of paperwork off by courier to at least get the paper Attestation for me. And then and only then will we be allowed to have the form in our hot little hands to attach our passport sized photos to, send them off to yet another government agency, and wait for an average of 3-4 months for their return.

Do I sound like I’m having fun right now? (sigh!)

Note to self — it’s a learning curve in every new country. Patience, patience, patience…

Giving France A Chance

We did it! Mark’s paperwork is complete and he is now registered to work in France. And today I finally got the last of my own paperwork done and as of 3 PM this afternoon, I am legally a resident of France!

Carte Du Sejour application for French residency approved and number assigned!

I’ve intentionally kept the photo of my official paperwork small and unreadable for security’s sake. Within a week or so I’ll have a little laminated photo ID card to carry in my wallet instead of this larger piece of paper. But the happy news is that it’s done and we can move forward.

We’ve decided to give France a chance. So I’ll be posting some articles in the future that vary a bit from the travel writing because they will describe our efforts to settle in for awhile.

I think we’re about to be on a large learning curve!

A Wanderful Life

The Neverending Journey