The French Banking System

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 Day 35
We got mail! Today when we checked our mailbox, there was something in it for us! A rarity. Alas, it was a package slip, and we have to wait until tomorrow to get the package. C’est la vie! This morning, after doing some laundry, we set out for Office Depot, the post office and a walking tour. When we exited our apartment building, it was raining, so we turned right back around and went back in for a bit. We ate an early lunch then set out again, avoiding the rain all afternoon. First, Office Depot to print a form required by our bank.
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French banking – we keep trying to get it right. Sigh. We funded our account before we left the States in two separate deposits. We were told that the bank could not mail us any statements or provide us internet banking information until we had an address in France. Before we left, we knew the address but we weren’t sure but what there might be an apartment number (there isn’t), so we waited until we got here to provide the bank with the address. Once we got settled in, we contacted the bank and gave them our address by mailing them a copy of our rent receipt. We thought they would send us internet banking information, so we waited. And waited. And waited. (Part of the delay was that I spent a week in Austria and I am Roger’s go-to gal for French.) On July 26, after we inquired, we got an email from our bank contact saying she would send a code, and we received it two days later by mail. When Roger logged on, the internet site called for a 15-digit user ID. We thought this would be the account number (also 15 digits), but that didn’t work. We contacted the bank by phone the same day and got someone who spoke English – not an easy task. The gentleman indicated that we should have been sent the ID by one mailing and the code by another, but we assured him we never got the ID. He arranged to send Roger’s ID, and my ID and code. (We will probably never use more than one, but they insist on setting up two separate IDs and codes.) He did inform us of our balance when asked, as we had no way to check it. Fortunately it was not in the red. Roger’s bank ID came two days later, and he logged on, checked the balance and prepared to pay our Montpellier landlord a deposit we owe him. But in order to set up a payee, we have to have another code! Sigh. And they can only do the codes in a certain way: we had to print out a form that the bank emailed to us, fill in our contact info including telephone number, sign it, and send it to a particular address in the Paris suburbs. They will send us our code by cell phone text!!!! We sent the letter today – hence the trip to Office Depot (to have it printed) and the post office. In the meantime, on July 13, we deposited a check for $6,000 and we are still waiting for it to clear some three weeks later. Sigh. The good thing is that we do have access to money – we can get all the cash we need, up to the balance in our account. Even that is running lower than we like because the next deposit has not cleared yet. But we have to pay our landlords via the internet (or check, and we haven’t bothered to get checks – have no need for them except to pay the landlords). So far, we have sent signed faxes to the bank and they have paid our landlords, but we would much rather set this up to do ourselves. Lots of sighing going on here, huh?

After lunch, we set off on a walking tour of the Marais section of Paris, which is an old, historical section of town that was spared Haussmann’s 19th century modernization of Paris. Indeed, some of the Marais area did not even have running water as late as the 1970s. We saw a part of the old wall of Paris, along with the remnants of a couple of towers in the wall. Roger had come to this area while I was in Austria to see the Carnavalet Museum. It is a museum of the history of Paris and is full of miniature mock-ups of how Paris streets looked before Haussmann got his hands on them, among other things. When Roger was here, he was unable to find one part of the museum. So we went into the museum, availed ourselves of the rest rooms, then set out to find the ancient area which includes a couple of old canoes excavated east of Paris during building work there, and which date back to the Neolithic era (4800- 1800 B.C). The museum is made up of two mansions which have been cobbled together, and getting to the prehistoric are involved going up some stairs, down a long hall, turning a corner, going down another hall, going downstairs again, then down yet another hall or two to the far corner of the museum. When we arrived there, the room was roped off and a female museum official told us we would have to wait 10 minutes before we could go in, so we sat down on a lovely padded bench to wait. Ten minutes passed, then 20. The female museum official was still hanging around, but not letting anyone in. After almost 30 minutes, a male museum official came through, and someone approached him and asked him what was going on. He confronted the female museum official and they had words for a couple of minutes (none of which I could understand), but the upshot of it was that the gentleman opened the room for some 10 or 15 of us waiting to get in. I don’t know what the deal was. But finally we got in and spent a bit of time viewing the ancient artifacts, then set out on our way again for the final leg of the walking tour. This led us to the Jewish quarter, where we went into a restaurant and had our first taste of falafel. Not bad – pretty good actually, but I do try to avoid fried foods as much as possible. Ah, well . . . .

We returned to our apartment and rested for a bit, then decided just before 8:00 to go eat. There is a crepe restaurant near our house and we decided we would eat there. Upon our arrival, we found it closed. On the way there, Roger pointed out Non Stop Pizza which he had deduced must be pretty good because a lot of our neighbors had pizza boxes out in their trash from that establishment. So we walked there and ordered a pizza with chicken, peppers, onions, cheese, tomatoes to take out, and we returned to our apartment to eat it. It was quite good. While we were waiting for our pizza to cook, we engaged in a conversation with the only other patron of the pizza shop. She inquired where we were from and what we were doing in Paris. She spoke quite good English, not just tourist English, which she spoke with a lovely British accent. She said she is from Paris and lives not too far away, has two children both of whom are young adults. I admired and petted her dog, then her order came. She wished us good luck and took her leave. She is the first Parisian who has actually carried on a conversation with us. The rest of our interactions with Parisians have been strictly of the tourist variety – buying food, asking for directions, etc. How nice to have a civilized conversation with someone other than ourselves (and family, when they have been here)!

In France, almost everyone gets five weeks of paid vacation. Many of them take it in July or August. In fact, it is absolutely astonishing to me that many of the bakeries (two of the three closest to us) close down entirely for about a month while the employees go on vacation. Many other places close as well – we walked past a dry cleaning establishment the other day and I noticed a sign touting “Ouvert Tout Été,” meaning open all summer. Others are closed for anywhere from 2-5 weeks. This is also the case with many restaurants such as the Creperie mentioned above.