Vive le Prefecture

Two weeks ago I started a week long process of waiting in line at the Prefecture of Police in order to submit my papers for my 1 year carte du sejour and receive the temporary "recepice" that will allow me to travel in and out of France until I receive the permanent "carte du sejour". I had an appointment set for Monday morning, the day I returned from my good friend's Rajko and Colleen's wedding in Boston, and I expected to walk right, hand over the papers, sign my name and head back to the office..... wow was I wrong!

I arrived and saw a line that was about 2 hours long stringing outside the door. I had heard that I should expect to spend a good part of my day at the Prefecture, but this was ridiculous. I had an appointment, and as far as I could see they had greatly overbooked this appointment time. It was after about 45 minutes that I got far enough forward to start seeing separate doors with no lines and numbers above. I checked my papers and sure enough I wasn't supposed to be in line. Much to my relief I walked passed everyone, knocked on the door, and was ushered in to an office with no one else waiting in line. I started talking with the man behind the desk and providing the information that he needed. Then we got to the confirmation of living address and things fell apart real fast.. Apparently the prefecture I was at was only for the area that I used to live in. Because I had moved to Paris I had to go to the Paris prefecture, which didn't sound so bad. But then I was told that they don't take appointments. That became the start of a long couple of days.

I showed up several days in a row to find huge lines. The first day I figured I would just come back when the line was shorter. The second day I arrived at 9:30, half an hour after they opened, only to find the same line. I waited about 2 hours at the back of the line and noticed that it only moved forward because people were squeezing tighter together, and not because anyone was entering the building. Then I started asking around and found out that folks start lining up the night before and that the lines were so long because of some new law that will change who is eligible for citizenship in France sometime in September. Because of this there were a lot of very motivated people waiting for days on end. I left, set on getting an early star the next day.

I arrived at 7 am and found that the line was about half of what it had been the day before. Still, there were roughly 300 people in front of me based on numbers that some guy was handing out. I had a good book and some work with me and figured I'd be out by lunch. From about 9 am to 11:30 we seemed to be moving forward steadily and the police were passing out water. At this point I was about half way to the entrance from where I started. Suddenly, there was a surge of people in front and the people behind me and we all squeezed together like an accordion. I was tired of being pushed forward, so I just stopped, got in a low stance and just held the group of people behind me from moving forward. The guy right behind me complained that I was squeezing him and people behind him were saying the same. The problem was that if I moved forward at all, everyone was going to just crush each other, including me. It was hot, people had been waiting for 5 or 6 hours in line and people started getting frustrated, including the Police. That's when the shit hit the fan.

The police started asking people to move back, but people near the police moved back it created space that people from behind me were pushing into. So, of course the people being asked to move back were protesting the fact that they were being asked to move back while others stayed put and essentially cut them in line. So, no one would move, and in fact people were still pushing forward. The asking became yelling and eventually physically moving. One of the policemen jumped into the crowd and just started pushing people back, grabbing those that wouldn't move, or tried to sneak forward and pushing them back. He was just in front of me and I didn't know exactly what he was saying, but when he started to raise his Billy club above his head and yell at people, I understood perfectly well. It was time to move back.

Eventually the tried to make this mass of people into 2 single file lines and succeeded in getting a space between the two lines that was large enough for a 3rd line. Where did the people come from for this third line you ask? Well, unfortunately I was one of the tallest and the police officer looked directly at me, pointing to the space and saying "sil-vous-plait", obviously asking me to please move into that space and move to the back of the third line. By this time I was twice as far from the entrance as i was when I started the day.... I waited around until about 3:30 and then realized there was no way I would get in today despite my optimistic outlook at the beginning of the day.

So, the bad news was that I still didn't have my papers. The good news was that I refused to return to that line and the company lawyer was able to get a "special" appointment with me at the prefecture just 2 blocks from my apartment and all is now taken care of. As I can attest to by the fact that I'm now in Athens and about to head up stairs for dinner at the roof top restaurant with a view of the Akropolis.