Returning to Paris

After I left Korea, I gave myself a week in New York to get things sorted before I left for Paris. This turned out to be a big mistake.

I thought that I would have more than enough time to pick up a student visa, which the French consulate website said could be processed in a day. I was in for a rude introduction to the shitshow that is French bureaucracy. First of all, when I got to the French consulate, I found that it was only open in the mornings, and I had to wait on line all day just to get an appointment for the next day. When I got there with all my paper work, I found out that I didn't qualify for a student visa because I wasn't attending an accredited university. Instead, I had to apply for a long stay visitor visa, which would take two months to process. Which meant I would have to come back to pick up my visa in a couple of months.

One thing that did go smoothly was finding an apartment. One of my French friends recommended using www.pap.fr, on which I found an apartment on Ile St. Louis, where I had stayed the last time I was in Paris. It's such a beautiful neighborhood, although one of the more expensive areas in Paris.

my street

my building

the courtyard

Apartments in Paris are pretty small but this one was tiny. You can see more pictures of the apt here on my landlord's website: http://avcv.free.fr/photo.htm

It took forever to get my landlord to help me get the internet running, and I discovered that this was a trend. It took a lot of effort to get anything to happen in Paris, like setting up a bank account or anything involving paperwork and the government.