Friday, December 8, 2017

Through Rolling Feces and Flowing Urine...

*bing* went our cell phones.  A quick look confirmed that our Cartes de Sejour were ready to be picked up.

We made the metro ride to Cite to retrieve the newly minted Cartes.  We carry these as proof we can live here.  They are our residency permits.  They are also useful for getting our internet service, TV, and telephone systems updated and mail delivered.  The Cartes are important, required, and practical for living here in France.

At Cite we were through the metal detectors at la prefecture and up to the accueille to see where we needed to go.  A young lady pointed down the hall and said salle 5.  She also said something about a line outside the door, but we didn't quite believe her, but, oh, we should have.

Jude and I marched to the front of the long long line thinking the queue was for the a different salle.  The nice young man standing guard at la porte directing people directed us to kindly join the line at back at the other end.  Ugh.  We thought this would take just a few moments and we'd be out the door, but no, not this time.

It took probably 30 minutes before we could pass through to a second accueille and take a seat in the salle d'attente.

There's a great word that opens Zazie dans le metro: Doukipudonktan.  It's a question that asks who the [blank] stinks to high holy hell?

No.  It couldn't be the old couple sitting in front of us, could it?  Oh merde!  Literally.  As the old man stands up to shuffle over to a window to do his business with the French State, a little crotte of his very own business rolls down a pant leg and deposits itself *plop* on the floor.

One of the fonctionnaires asks very loudly "do they not have any respect?"

Good question.  Everyone is covering their noses.  The salle stinks to high holy hell.  All we want is our cartes so we can get the [blank] out of there.  No one is coming to clean up the mess.  Not just yet, at least.

Fortunately the numbers are being called quickly and after 10 minutes of stinky waiting Jude and I go to each our own windows to do our own business.  With much respect, of course.  No stink.  No mess.  No muss.  Checking this, signing that, scanning another thing we have our Cartes and tip-toe around the old couple's private business that still sullies the floor and out of the salle.

Yuck!

Back into the Metro we jump la ligne 4 bound for Montparnasse and, what the [blank] is this?  Arghhh... it's a drunk passed out on a row of seats and he's pissed a veritable lac in the aisle.  What the [blank] is with people today?  Can't some people keep their bodily functions to themselves until they find a proper toilet?  What?

We find seats a Good Long Car away, but this is one of the metro lines that has open cars and the drunk has just showered the floor with yet another gush of urine.  As the train leaves the station several thin rivers of the liquid are rolling our direction.  Fortunately it never reaches us, but still.  Come on, now!  This is ridiculous.

Without further stench and over a celebratory dejeuner we inspect our new Cartes.  Indeed, there they are.  We've successfully negotiated feces and urine and followed the French bureaucracy into areas where the law is not defined.  Requests were made to certain cabinets and our requests were reviewed, considered, stamped, folded, spindled, mutilated, and *shock* fulfilled.  Jude and I just received our Cartes de Séjour de longue durée.

With luck we won't have to skirt such volumes of openly shared feces and urine ever again.  Not for our Cartes de Sejour at least.  Perhaps our visit to la prefecture was just one last test of the strength of our desire to stay here?  Nah.  Likely not.  Couldn't be, could it?

Salons des Vins ~ 2017