I... am about to embark on perhaps the greatest written language output journey I've undertaken to date, and I'm counting my personal statement for school in that lineup: I'm about to write a letter to the President of France. Not joking here - I'm actually going to do it.
Let me be clear in that this isn't
at all meant to be a political statement, nor is it intended as a dig at France/the French as a whole - I genuinely love this country. However, for a government that currently seems to be very interested in attracting foreigners to "contribute to the creation of national wealth", they've gotta move a little quicker on building up the attractiveness part. Foreign languages - and scripts! - came up in the most unexpected way over these past 48 hours, so I figured I'd share this story here. In short:
1. Can't rent an apartment without a French bank account.
2. Can't open a French bank account without a French address.
3. I thought I'd game the system by going through Airbnb, which isn't actually ideal at all, as it drives up rent for everyone, and affordable lodging is a major problem here, but I had no other choice.
4. I lucked out in that my Airbnb is managed by an agency, and the agency happened to have lovely people on staff, and those lovely people wrote me an "attestation de domicile". So far, so good. They also told me the bank would need to see an assurance habitation locataire as secondary confirmation of my address (this is incorrect), so I tried seven different agencies, all of which require IBANs to process your payment. US bank accounts don't have IBANs. If this is relevant for you, keep this in mind.
5. I show up at the bank anyway. Shockingly, the
attestation de domicile works just fine, as does the
attestation from my school indicating my enrollment. EXCEPT.
6. IF you weren't born a US citizen, your US passport will only list your
country of birth, but not your
city of birth (not sure if the same goes for natural-born US citizens who were born abroad).
7. Your
city of birth is, for reasons unknown, somehow absolutely crucial to the process of opening a French bank account.
8. The associate tells me everything's fine, but they need a translation of my
Soviet birth certificate indicating my
city of birth. Disregarding the fact that said city has already been submitted to the French authorities through the French Consulate-General, and that I have a piece of paper validated by the Consulate confirming the same. With a stamp! They love stamps. And yet.
9. Realizing that it would simply be easier for me to pack up and move to China than to procure this, I offer to bring her my Russian passport. No worries, she says, that should work.
10. I get home and check. Under "place of birth", Russia wrote "Ленинград/USSR" in my Russian passport. Of course.
11. I figure I'd outsmart the system once again and get a quickie translation of it online, since they didn't specify which kind of translation they needed. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE. SAVE YOUR MONEY and read on.
12. I show up the next day. The translation I had done online is fine for this particular branch, but not for the bank's HQ. The branch manager happens to speak/read Russian and signs off on the validity of the translation. Still, no dice. HQ wants a
traducteur assermenté to convert Ленинград into Léningrad. We're now in full-on Kafka mode.
13. A list of
traducteurs assermentés can be found here:
https://www.annuaire-traducteur-assermente.fr/ If you ever need to use them, and I recommend going straight to them for any and all translations,
disregard their form and email them directly, attaching whatever documents you need translated. You don't even need to find a specific one in your
département, just email the main office.
14. They email me back fairly quickly and quote me a very fair price. Cheaper than the weirdo online translation I got earlier. BUT! "It'll take two days." I don't have two days, since I need to initiate a transfer ASAP in order to pay for school on time (or so I thought... read on...).
15. My country of birth notwithstanding, I'm an AmeriCAN, not an AmeriCAN'T, as the meme goes, so I plead with them over email to get it via literally any available means by the following day. "I'm willing to pay double! Anything you need! Just let me know!" (Aside: the concept of throwing money at a problem to make it go away is entirely foreign to the French people.)
16. I get a response. "Well, the only thing I can offer you by tomorrow is a scanned copy over email." Ding-ding-ding! That's the only thing I need! JOY! (An official paper copy is, again, for reasons unknown, supposed to be arriving via snail mail. We have robots on Mars and you're sending me a translation by snail mail.)
17. I get a scanned copy over email. It works. Everything's great, except I'm now somehow registered with the bank as a Russian citizen with an American passport, despite having entered on a French visa in a US passport. "Oh, we don't even care about the visa." - But... but... but you care about my city of birth? However, that's still 48 hours and at least 3 full hours of a French bank employee's time that could've been saved by clear instructions for people wishing to bring you the capital you say you want to attract, France! All because of a few Cyrillic letters.
18. So now I'm all happy and I write to my school, since paying for school on time was the whole reason I drove everyone crazy for two days straight. "Hi, School! So excited to get started next week! How should I pay you?" - "Oh hey! Yeah, no worries, we can figure that out later, I'll let you know after classes start."
All of this to say, if you're planning the same (or a similar) move: 1) If your passport doesn't list your city of birth, have a clear idea of where your birth certificate is and get it translated in advance by a
traducteur assermenté. You can pay them via Paypal and they only need a scan of your document to begin the translation process. 2) You'll read online that you need utility bills and rental contracts and all sorts of other nonsense to open a bank account. This is not entirely true. An
attestation de domicile on official-looking letterhead will work. 3) Though everyone in France seems reluctant to accept money, showing up with foreign bank statements indicating you do, in fact, have some usually encourages them to look for creative solutions. This appears to be universal
So, uh, anyone ever written to a president before? In a foreign language? I aspire to be the change I wish to see in the world