day 3, got an apartment

after spending all day yesterday pounding the pavement in our apartment search, i feel that maynard’s staying behind, was a good thing. we are a heavy enough presence in our friend’s apartment, and with the running around we need to do to get everything set up: apartment, cell phones, bank accounts, official documents , it would have been an extra complication to take care of a dog. maynard is doing fine. he got transported to the country house and that evening played with his new dog friend, PLUS got to chase a rabbit. he is staying close to his new foster mom, literally leaning on her for encouragement.

we were a bit nervous at our prospects and in reflecting on the first apt, felt it really had all the right elements. not our dream house, but we’re only here for a year, theoretically. so we called to see if it was still available and to make an appt to see it again in the afternoon implying we would take it. then p spent all morning phoning apartment leads. he made more than 20 calls and got through to only one person to make an appointment who then called back to cancel, because the apt was already rented. the one other appointment we had, also was cancelled. so we decided we should take the first apt. j still wanted a crepe, so after going to the bank again (to shift money so we could write a deposit check), we searched out a crepe guy on one corner of the bastille. crepe craving was satisfied.

the landlord for the apt is a bit of a mellow guy who lives the rest of the year in a resort town in india. he doesn’t like the crazy pace of the west and luckily, didn’t seem to need the hundreds of documents normally asked of prospective tenants. he accepted us and we left a first rent check. we then walked around the neighborhood and found a beautiful park with impeccably kept grass and flowers and bourgeois families of small children lounging and sun bathing. it was the “noe valley” of paris. we were very excited to have such a nice spot nearby.

day 2

slow start, went to visit our first apartment in the afternoon. it was 5 mins from j’s school on a great little shopping street, near 3 different metro lines. a perfect location. a bit small at 72 square meters (750 sq feet) but with 2 bedrooms and not one bathroom but two! it’s furnished (with reasonable taste), which would save us the money of buying furniture plus the hassle of carting it up the four floors without an elevator. downstairs, there is a cute little planted courtyard and a communications company office, (p and i are both fantasizing of working for it). the price is reasonable, plus there is no agency fee, which saves us a months rent. this apt is a definite possibility.

in the area we were looking , there were a limited number of apartments listed on the internet and p didn’t seem to be getting email responses. some things in france are so high tech and others are so old fashioned. there seemed to be listings in the windows of “immobilier” – real estate offices, so thinking that things were more localized we decided to walk around the area and speak directly to the agents. so we walked into 20 or so real estate offices but only got to see one other apartment. through our search, we learned that apartments are in such demand that as soon as a listing comes on, it is rented out. marie and her daughter, chloe told us that right now everyone is going on vacation, but starting in the middle of august all the students come back and there is a mad scramble to snap up apartments. we were concerned about being a weird case to the french. we have no official papers yet, we were foreigners and p’s job was out of the country. we didn’t know if we could compete with normal french people with all their papers. i now remember the scramble i went through trying to find an apartment the first time i moved here. back then, the only thing i could say in french was “i don’t have a job”. it’s amazing that i was able to find a place at all. luckily there are a few rare landlords/ladies who actually LIKE foreigners. they know that they are sometimes more dependable in paying the rent and that eventually they will leave. then they can raise the rent slightly and find another tenant. the french tenants know the power of the tenant laws and sometimes will move in, pay the rent for the first month and never pay rent again. it takes a long legal battle to get them out. anyway, we decided that tomorrow, we will continue the internet search but that p will use an old fashioned technology and PHONE them.

after visiting the apartment, we went looking for a crepe for j. unfortunately when we did find a place, it was 2:30 and it was closing. lunch hours are very precise here. i remember on my first trip to paris how i kept getting up late and missing lunch because i never got to restaurants in time.

day 1

our good friend, marie picked us up at the airport and fit all of us, plus our mass of luggage into her smart little european minivan. it was tight, and maynard and crate would never have fit. marie lives near our old neighborhood. she is near the bastille, in the 11th arrondissement. we were on the other side of the bastille, in the 12th. it always feels familiar to be at her apartment.

we had our requisite nap and then started researching apartments and trying to make appointments. we went to the bank to get some money. luckily, i had not closed my account 12 years ago, when we left for san francisco, and had left some money there too. i did it because i knew how hard it was to open an account if you were not normal and french and i had the idea that i would come back someday. many things in france are very complicated. another thing i learned back then about the french banking system is that it's best to go to your home branch to do anything that would involve a teller. there are plenty of basic things you cannot do unless you go to the actual branch where you opened the account. it’s a weird system where each branch is like an independent duchy that has distant relations with the other branches. plus, always allocate plenty of time. i just went to make a withdrawal (i don't have a bank machine card- need to order one), but there were 2 people in front of me, so i waited 25 minutes. this is normal. when i first came to france, another ex-pat told me, “don’t try to do 3 things in a day. be happy if you accomplish one thing”. that’s the way things work here.

afterwards, we came back to the apt to meet joel and leslie and s, who were wrapping up their paris vacation and were leaving the next day. joel and leslie had been living in paris when we were here last, and when we moved to boston, we got a house that was 5 mins from them. we went to eat at the “cafe de l’industrie”, a hip soho style restaurant that had very reasonably priced meals. (maybe we will be able to eat out once in a while, after all). we were pleased with the food. this particular restaurant was also special, because it is on the same courtyard as the apartment of our friends mary and roy, where we have memories of wonderful parties with the old gang of ex-pats. we sat with a view to their old front door.

unplugging

p and i were living in paris when we met and then we were married there. j was born there and when she was 8 months old, we moved to san francisco, where we lived for 8 years and then moved to boston. several years ago, i was reminiscing on my old life in paris and wondered if i would ever get to live there again. j was in a private elementary/middle school. would we have to wait for her to head to college before p and i could return to paris for a long term stay? then i had the idea that perhaps when she finished 8th grade and graduated from her school, and all the kids scattered to different schools that we could take a sabbatical. we could bring her back to paris and put her in school to work on her french. (she had gone to a french school in san francisco from ages 3-6). i told p and j this idea and started referring to it as the “evil plan”. as time passed, it grew as a possibility and the whole family was for it.

so here i sit on a plane about a half hour from landing in paris. it’s been a whirlwind craze for the last few months in preparation for our year here. we started packing 2 months ago, to make the house tidy to show to potential renters. we were going to rent the house furnished, but we had to store all of our “stuff”. then we began “culling” so that our possessions could reduce in volume and weight to be stored in the attic (and not collapse it). suburban life had made us heavy with things. it was a difficult task that was at the same time a cleansing experience. it's something we should all probably do every few years! we threw away and threw away. we had a garage sale, advertised on craigslist, which only sold a few items. after it was done, the driveway was still full of all the things that we had psychologically let go of. i stared at the pile of junk that i did not want to bring back into the house. then i went and wrote another craigslist ad: "post-garage-sale event - all items free” and i moved them to the bottom of the driveway . within 10 minutes the people started coming. like little ants, they took away the breadcrumbs and by the end of the afternoon, it was ALL gone.

we decided not to ship anything. so we did a couple of “dress rehearsals” where we tried to actually pack what we would bring into the allotted volume of the “2 check-in’s and 1 carry-on”. things seemed to be falling into place, piece by piece. j had gotten into both schools in paris that she liked. we were able to use our frequent flyer miles to get tickets. p told his boss that he was going to france in july and it was a one way ticket. they would try to work something out to let him continue his job remotely. (there is the possibility that this will not happen, but we are willing to risk it, use our savings and be poor for the experience of this year. a little scary since paris is so expensive.) then, we were able to rent the house to a nice family who will be renovating their own home for a year. they have a daughter the same age as j, who loved j's choice of purple for her room (so we didn’t have to repaint!) our friend in paris said she would house us for a month at our arrival. eddie bunny was adopted at the last minute by a family that is head over heels in love with him. one car sold, the other one’s lease finished the day after our flight. we cleaned and polished the house to sparkling to pass on to the renters. it will never look so good again! meanwhile, we detached ourselves, little by little, from our bills, our mail, and the east coast “grid”. we moved out and became homeless, staying for 5 days with my sister and mother, then 5 days on cape cod with my aunt and the last night with friends in cambridge. we were down to the last days with the task of fitting everything into the suitcases and making each one weigh less than 50 lbs.

the last hurdle in the US, was that maynard, the dog, could not fly if the temperature at either end was over 85 degrees. well, you may have heard that the east coast has had a very long heat wave. i was hoping that 3 or 4 weeks into the high heat, it would break. we watched the forecast every day. finally, on the day of the flight, it was still hard to call. depending on what website you looked at, the temperature was between 84 and 89. the check-in lady said it was 90. we checked our bags and then sat and waited to see if the temperature would go down 1 hour before take-off. unfortunately, it did not and we had to execute plan B for maynard– which was that a friend took him to stay with other friends in their house in the countryside. we were very disappointed, but thankful to our friends. i had felt that everything was encouraging us to go to france. all the little signs were pointing that way, so i didn’t understand why this would happen.

thank you again, to all our friends and family who were so helpful and supportive and who really took care of us. we are very grateful.