Putting Down Roots

This kir came from a bouchon in Lyon called Le Petit Flore, recommended by the New York Times in a Travel-section article about eating in Lyon. A bouchon is a bistro serving traditional fare of Lyon and the area, and we had a tasty, well priced meal at this one.

It's been a long time since I set up a life somewhere. Given that I've lived in the same country--even on the same coast--my whole adult life as I did growing up, you could pretty much say that I've never done this before. I remember going into Chase Manhattan Bank on 3rd Avenue on the Middle East Side (East Midtown? We never knew what to call it.) with both my parents in October of 2000 to open my first checking account, which now, going on nine years later, bears Nick's and my names jointly. The school year I spent in Brittany at age 15 involved no independent establishment-of-self in the two-forms-of-identification sense; School Year Abroad worked out with our parents to get us a weekly allowance in francs (quaint!), and as this was before the era of cell phones, little else seemed necessary.

So here we are in France, and we thought that, as long as we were in Lyon with not much to do and American iPhones that are best used as paperweights now that we've torn through our international data plan, we would get the French version and become just as tech-nerdy in Paris as we were in New York. In the U.S., although it's been a while since I started from scratch with no cell phone or contract of any kind, I think that if you have a credit card, then Verizon or AT&T (interesting aside, as I am currently typing on aforementioned American iPhone, brought back to useful life by the wifi in our apartment: the iPhone does not automatically capitalize Verizon, whereas if you simply type in "att," it is magically transformed into AT&T--also known as the iPhone's sole U.S. service provider...what, you mean there are other wireless companies? asks the innocent little device...) or whoever will be more than happy to take your money and put you on the road to telecommunications. In France, on the other hand, you need a bank account. Not only do you need a bank account, but you also may need proof of residence, depending on which service provider you select. Like a gas or electric bill, for example. As we are renting someone else's apartment for the year, we are never going to receive a gas or electric bill; they are all going to the owner, and we will pay him. Incidentally, the setup is the same for our home in New York, which we are renting out during the months that we are overseas. How about a ConEd bill from a duplex in Brooklyn, buddy? Can that get me l'iPhone français? By the way, in case you're over here shopping for one yourself, "iPhone" is pronounced "aye-phone" in French, same as it is in English--not the more French-seeming "ee-phone."

So, then, a bank account. We were in the Bellecour area of Lyon, a veritable banktopia, if you will, and so, armed with a sense of which ones had branches near our apartment in Paris, we went a-callin'. The first one, LCL (formerly Crédit Lyonnais), didn't have Internet at that office, and so couldn't print out the apartment rental contract that Nick had on his e-mail. They also informed us that we wouldn't be able to get something called a RIB ("reeb"--acronyms are often pronounced in French)--which proved we had a bank account and was required by the phone people--for at least a couple days. So LCL, or at least the Iron-Age branch, was a no-go. Next up, HSBC, where the lady at the front desk said that she really thought it would be better if we waited until we got to Paris to open an account, but didn't say why. Actually, she suggested we leave for Paris a day early--that very day, to be exact--so that we could open the account immediately. Nothing like down-home hospitality. Finally, when I asked the guy at Crédit Agricole why it mattered where I opened the account, he told me that, in Bankworld, France is divided into regions (Paris and Lyon being in two different ones), and that they're not linked to one another, so that if I opened an account in Lyon, I wouldn't have access to it in Paris. At least, that's what I understood. Odd and backwards to me, but at least now I knew what the deal was. And boy, were we ever glad that we hadn't taken the lady at LCL up on her offer to have their scribes copy out our rental contract by hand.

So no phone, no bank account, but I do believe we got a little smarter as far as what is required of us in order to set up shop.