(I missed this one while going through all the old dispatches. It's about when I finally got my work visa and was able to leave for Paris. -- BHC)
Chicago (March 10) -- The mechanical stamp hit my work visa paperwork at the French consulate in Chicago on Thrusday and the ridiculously long wait for that slip of paper came to an end.
The sound of that stamp was a sound I won't soon forget. "Merci Beaucoup," I said to the lady who handed it to me. Then I walked out the door and onto Michigan Avenue.
The joy I felt after finally getting that very elusive work visa would have led me to kiss her, in the native style, if not for the glass partition seperating her from me.
The glass also seperated her from irate Americans who can't understand why it might take, oh, I don't know, four months to approve a work visa. I only saw one irate American during my wait. The American woman lost her cool after the French bureacrat told her that she would have to get a new set of passport photos because the ones she brought with her, which she showed me later, looked like they were taken at Glamour Shots.
The French lady told her that the pictures had to have a white background, not grey like the ones she had. "Do you enjoy this?" the American sterly asked. "Do you know how ridiculous this is? It's like jumping through hoops of fire!"
Her tantrum didn't work and the American left to go to CVS to see if they could take the needed pictures. I know all this because she and I walked out together, each other in very different moods.
Once the paper was in my possession it was off to celebrate with a lunch washed down with wine followed by a dinner washed down with Sake and a little sightseeing in between.
My road trip companion as Chas Kuhn. Hs research on Chicago while I was waiting on the work visa resulted in us finding the chic and trendy spots frequented by the locals.
We've got multiple pictures of every single one of them.
I have to praise the French on their choice of cities; celebrating would not have been as much fun if the consulate would have been in Detroit. The next step is packing my clothes, CDs and books and some reminders of home. I need to buy a plane ticket tomorrow and find a ride to the airport.
I'm thinking I will fly out on Thursday and start at the paper on the following Monday. The paper is putting me up in a hotel for as long as two weeks so I can find a place to live. I have hired a relocation company to help me navigate the rental process. I think this is a good investment since most French, even if they aren't official beuracrats, can do a mean impression of one.
I hope this email finds all of you well. If you got this email then please consider yourself invited to pay me a visit. I'm going to try to find a place with a guest room since I'm expecting more visitors than when I was working in northern Indiana, no offense Marion, Ind.
And I've got around seven weeks of vacation a year (mandated by the same French labor department that took so long in approving my work visa), so I'll have plenty of time to join visitors on short trips to other European locals. So I guess this means the next dispatch will be> written on French soil.
Until then, au revoir,
Brett
