French Bureaucracy in Action

The first bit of merde I encountered upon my arrival in France was the innate catch-22 nature of much of French bureaucracy. Once in Montpellier, all English language assistants set out to complete the essential administrative tasks at hand, namely finding housing and opening a bank account. Here’s where the merde comes in: to get a bank account, you need proof that you have a permanent residence, but in order to obtain a permanent residence, you need to have proof of a bank account. This left us wondering for some time how to tackle this minor dilemma, until we took it upon ourselves to tell the banks we were currently living at our schools and were searching for other accommodations. Yes, we may have defrauded the banking system. This let us get the two week process of opening a bank account rolling, so that we could focus on moving out of our imaginary current residences and into real apartments. The catch there was that we all arrived after every student in Montpellier, which thrives largely on the several universities around town.

Fast forward a week and a half of living in a hotel and various reports about this year’s housing situation being the most dire in years, and most of us have found places to our liking. For me, I am living in the centre historique (historic district) about an 8 minute walk from the train station I travel from every day. Rent is affordable and there are enough boulangeries and patisseries on my street to keep my mouth watering all day. My colocataire (person I share the apartment with) is a man who lived in Africa for 25 years doing humanitarian work, was a professional photographer, and is a handyman. That being said, I noticed a photo he had in the apartment one day of a cottage in the Alps, which he proceeded to tell me he built and goes to each year. No electricity, no heating, no roads in or out during the winter. Needless to say, he’s quite an interesting person to chat with.

All in all, the first dose of merde made for a character building experience, to say the least. Luckily, we all made it out alive, and can now move onto the “living” part of our year here.