One
of the first things we’d planned to do once we landed was to open a bank
account, which turned out to have been a good idea since you can’t get much
done around here without one. To buy a cell phone, rent an apartment, in fact,
most major transactions require you to produce your relevé d’identité bancaire, or R.I.B. – a little slip of paper that
proves you have a bank account. As near as I’ve been able to figure, the laws
of France tend to favor consumers, and not just a little, so this handy little
document gives creditors a leg up on where to start recouping their losses from
mauvais payeurs. (As far as I know,
this means deadbeat, but it might
not. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been really irritated by writers that
throw foreign words and phrases around without any translations. Fortunately,
my pathetic French will keep this to a minimum.)
The
Tuesday after we arrived in Bordeaux, we appeared at the local branch of
Barclay’s to arrange for our accounts. We'd chosen Barclay's for it's international
character (the one that doesn't lose billions of pounds) and because our
friends know one of it's regional kahunas. We were met by a very nice bank official who ushered us into
his office where he began to explain the various account options available.
Maybe any Americans he'd dealt with were well heeled or possibly he knew our
friend was the president of the local Aston-Martin club, but it was obvious
from what he was showing us that he figured we had a shitload of money. This
impression didn’t last long.
The
number of documents required to open this account approached what I needed to
get into the FBI. In fact Barclays might now know more about me financially
than the Bureau ever did, but at that initial meeting we came up short. We had
to have some proof that we had actually lived at our U.S. address. Why, I don’t
know. My bet is that France, like
the U.S., probably came up with a bunch of ideas to keep criminals from easily
laundering money but end up only make it more difficult for everybody else. Fortunately for us, French customs
officials wanted the same thing so we happened to have a copy of our latest
St.Pete water bill, conveniently sitting inside another folder of documents
back at the apartment.
So
it took two meetings to get our bank account and by the time we’d finished the
only thing I hadn’t done was turn my head and cough. We still had to wait a
week before we were notified that Barclay’s was now ready to accept our euros,
which brings up another point. All of our income has to be converted to euros.
Not surprisingly, having our account set up to let Barclay’s convert our
dollars (which, after gaining or holding against the euro all year, began to
sink almost as soon as we got here) royally screws us. Well, maybe not royally
but going through a currency broker gives us a better exchange rate. Now we’ll
see if all the figuring Cynthia did before we decided this little adventure can
keep us from ending up in the streets, which brings me to the subject of dogs.
Last
time I mentioned I was going to go off about dog shit, however, I’ve decided
maybe I should do a whole post on the subject of dogs in France, or at least my
observations, anyway. Sorry if you were really looking forward to hearing about
it. In fact, if that’s the case, I recommend counseling. À bientot, TTFN.
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