Bureaucracy reigns supreme....

April 10th, 2009

Today it finally rained, alight misty sort of rain that refused to really fall straight down by floated in somewhat sideways to dampen everything. Today I spent four hours standing in line at the Prefecture de Montpellier learning what it is like to operate within the bureaucracy of France. It is essentially a glorified DMV but I have never seen line ups like this. We drew number 659 when we entered. The number being served was 523 and then there were numbers and lines for other things like licenses, registrations, foreign persons registrations, and of course an information line up to get information on which line you should be standing in. Thankfully I had Christian with me. He knows his way around French bureaucracy, although the simple challenge of registering the car in my name had proved a challenge which had used up the entire six months of validity of our “Controle Technic”, that form that says the used car meets road safety standards. This was the last day of its validity. We stood in line with our fingers crossed.

But no worries! Once we had waited our allotted time (hatching plans to come in and take numbers and then sell them to later arrives), we whisked through the registration simply relieved to be done and out of there.

I spent Friday afternoon picking up materials and preparing the upstairs bathroom for the final installations of shower, sink and flooring. It will be a comfortable place when I am finished I think.

I made a great dinner of pork chops cooked with some flowers of rosemary that I picked out side the farmhouse in the Place du Vieux Chateau, fresh mushrooms and cream and poured myself a glass of wine before settling down to read Travels with Charlie and get an early start on sleep for the night.