For those of you back home or otherwise who have been waiting for me to start letting you know how my journey is becoming, here is a little something. As with all things, I am a bit slow in the offing.
And so it was with the actual beginning of my journey. A few of you were privy to the unfortunate nature of my final days in the States, spurred by the last-minute discovery that I had completely neglected to secure a visa necessary to enact a full one half of my extant travel plans. During the long months of preparing to leave San Francisco, my precise sister had been kind enough to inquire whether or not I needed a visa for my trip to India, and whether or not I had secured such visa. I'm not sure, was my response to this query, I'll look into it. After "looking into it", I discovered that I did indeed need a visa to get into India (which, though I have not travelled much, as an American, I was completely unaccustomed to...usually I show up at whatever airport, proffer my blessed/cursed American passport, and am immediately given entry to the country, with or without a smile being a sidenote of complete irrelevance.) Well, I hate paperwork, bureaucracy, lines, offices, dealing with people sitting behind desks, and so this made me a bit nervous. However, I fell into line, followed the necessary steps, and obtained a TEN YEAR VISA to India. Crazy, eh? 10 YEARS! Course, I can only stay 6 months every year, but still. Crazy.
Anyway, I diverge. The point is, I got the visa I needed to get into India. No one, including my own avoidant, head-in-the-mud mind, however, had bothered to ask the same question about France. That is, do you need a visa for France, and do you have said visa? Most of you probably know that according to "the plan", I was going to start my travels in Paris, and after some stops in Europe and a short trip to India, I was going to return to France, this time ending up in the south for the full summer, where I would be a cook at an idyllic Buddhist meditation center. Sounds like a dream, right? Well, for those among us who don't mind a fair amount of (obligatory) silence, tirelessly vegetarian meals, an uncouth lack of wine considering the location, and sitting cross-legged with other people who don't mind all the aforementioned attributes of the place, then it's the stuff of dreams, perhaps. Did I mention there's a small babbling brook on the property? And a bamboo grove?
Anyway, to me, it has been a dream I have been conjuring for at least half a year. Furthermore, it was "the plan." I was to jump on a plane to Paris January 4th, arrive January 5th, and then the timeline would unfurl itself. Before the unfurling could begin, first there was New Year's Eve. While watching a hideous period romance with my folks, I began to casually peruse my guidebook for France. Et alors, I found myself at the visa section, et alors, I found out I needed to obtain a long-stay visa for stays of more than 90 consecutive days in France, et alors, this visa could not be obtained in a third country, but needed, in fact, to be obtained in the U.S., and in one's district of residence, no less, before arriving in country. Since I was planning on leaving the U.S. 3 days later, not to return for at least a year, and certainly not before my trip to the south of France, this discovery unsurprisingly led to a massive panic. And out of the panic came sleeplessness, tears, familial bonding, exacerbated bouts of self-flagellation, questioning of values, plans, desires, and attachments, and more concretely, hours on the phone to outsourced Travelocity customer service representatives in India, a rushed and discombobulating trip back to San Francisco for a nerve-fraying run-in with French bureaucracy (a word I did not know how to spell reliably before this incident), almost 1000 dollars of depleted savings, and in the end, thankfully and graciously, the long-stay visa necessary for me to stay 4 months in the south of France at the meditation center.
Et voila, one week later than planned, I arrived in Paris. That was one week and one day ago. And now here I am. In Paris. It is a marvelously beautiful city. I meant to blog tonight about being in a bar more crowed than the one I was in on election night in San Francisco to watch Obama's inauguration with a gaggle of French enthusiasts and fellow travelers. The world is excited. The French are in love. And I know we are all waiting, and hoping. But I will write more about that, belatedly.
Let me just tell you all that I am in Paris, marveling at the architecture above all. And perhaps, secondly, at the extraordinarily long periods of time you can sit in a cafe or restaurant without being "bothered" by the waitstaff. I will never test it, but my suspicion is that you could sit at a table literally all day and all night long (during open hours) without having the waiter or waitress give you your check, unless of course, you asked for it. Politesse, perhaps, and a bit of Parisian indifference, also? But, where do I need to be in a rush?
I am happy to find myself here, and marvel at the good graces which have allowed me to live a month of my life in this place filled with free classical music, stones older than my country, and the best baguettes I've ever tasted, for only $1!
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