The house drama continues....

Now going back even further into time.... we have been on holiday (as is the norm here) in Tuscany for the past week or so. Nothing fancy - just a quick trip for good food and some warmer weather.

So as of September 2 we agreed to purchase the house - exactly two months later on November 2. We had a seven day window to back out of the agreement - so September 9 was the last day to back out of the deal. At this point we still didn't have confirmation on whether we could legally live in France so it was off to see our friend Didier in Geneva - Didier is the visa guy at the French consulate. A few weeks earlier we had scheduled an appointment for September 3 so it was all planned carefully. With the house agreement we had an address...the key to a French visa.

So off to Geneva...this may not seem like much but Geneva and Basel aren't exactly next to each other. It would be like driving to New York to get your visa if you lived in Boston or DC. Or maybe from San Diego to LA (in very bad traffic). Three hour drive... Why so far you ask when we live 10 minutes from France? All we got in response is - Didier is in charge of all French visas in Switzerland. OK.

So off to Geneva.. Aimee and I had to appear in person, together. Dropped the kids off at school and set off on a drive south... GPS said 2 hours 30 minutes. Easy enough for a 12.30 appointment. The drive was fine until we hit Geneva. Crunch - not a city to drive in...add in an extra hour. We finally made our way to the French consulate - even arrived a few minutes early and voila. We were in. Very low security - doors propped open while the receptionist was smoking outside...

We walked in and told the smokey, yet very kind, receptionist we had a 12.30 appointment with Didier the visa guy... Hmmm.. not on the list. What? Not on the list! OK - we just drove over 3 hours to get these visas...day off from work, buying a house. Panic. Didier walks out and looks at us. Sorry - you are not on the list. I must leave now. We plead. He shakes his head, shrugs and walks out of the consulate... We turn to the receptionist for help... Thank goodness he was a kind man. He called in another consulate-type worker and they agreed to let us come back at 1PM to try to work things out...

Unpleasant lunch.....won't go into the details...

So at 1PM we returned to the consulate. I decided that if we didn't get the visas that day we would call the notaire and tell her to cancel the deal. So we went into the consulate and Didier was happy to welcome us back! (maybe he had some wine at lunch - he was in much better spirits) It turns out that the French government decided to hire a new scheduling contractor during the summer (always a bad move to undertake things like that in the summer....) and any appointment made at any French consulate before July 14 had been removed from the system. An appointment revolution. Aimee made the appointment in early July.... Didier had people showing up randomly at all hours claiming to have appointments. He would schedule things on his own, the new company would schedule things and then phantom appointments (like us) would show up. Just imagine how pissed you would be if that happened in your line of work...then imagine you were an administrator for the French government. Not fun.

So after presenting the 78 forms and photos in triplicate we were good to go - on the road to a visa. But not on that day...it had to be approved. Somewhere else. By someone else. He said that we were 99 percent approved since he gave his OK and we weren't 'Libyan or Iranian' - but nothing was 100 percent. 

Didier also explained that he was now the only visa person in Switzerland. They took the function out of the embassy in Bern and the visa guy at the French consulate in Zurich was a bit bi-polar and would reject people for crazy reasons...maybe like being Libyan or Iranian. So he was let go during the appointment purge of summer 2009. It does make sense because most people looking for visas want to work in Switzerland and live in France. As Geneva is right on the border it is the obvious place for visa issuing... Basel has less of an international crowd (most non-EU people tend to stay in Basel) and Basel is German speaking. Who knows. This is the way it is. 

Of course he added the disclaimer - I can give you the visa but I can't guarantee you will be able to live in France. What? Well it turns out the French really want us there - they are happy to have anyone who is well employed and won't burden the system living in their country. It is the Swiss who might have a problem. In Canton (state) Geneva you can work in Switzerland and live in France, provided you have spent six months in Geneva. But in Canton Vaud you can't live in France and work in Switzerland.... so if you work in Lausanne forget it - you are stuck. This only applies to non-EU people - for the most part if you have a passport from an EU country you can live and work where you like. But as an American it isn't so easy. He wasn't so sure about Basel. Aimee has checked with her company (one of the largest in the country and the largest in Basel) and they say it is just fine - we are approved for the cross border permit. But that is still one final hurdle that will be dealt with after we move....

Our time with Didier was up . We walked back out into the waiting room of the French consulate and there were about half a dozen angry looking people....all with 1.30/1.45/2.00 PM appointments...

At this point things started to look good - everything was in place. Money, visas, mayor, etc....So we contacted the bank and told Vinny we had signed for the house and wanted to meet with him regarding the mortgage. Oh la la. Once again Vinny was off for two weeks. Either things are really good for Vinny or really bad.... So we waited a couple of weeks and then he sent us some forms. We called the scheduling company (please work! please work!) to make an appointment and set it for the last day of September - just a few days before our holiday.

More papers from the bank - one asking for a medical exam. This came just a day before our meeting with Vinny. In France there is a regulation that the primary earner (Aimee) must have insurance so that in the event of her death the mortgage is paid off. So she set an appointment with her doctor here in Switzerland (as you do in the US) for October 15. Plenty of time to meet the November 2 deadline. No problem.

Moving on....

Last day of September comes - we walk into the bank with all the paperwork filled out, new bank accounts arranged in France... Time to sign and have Vinny send it off to the Notaire in plenty of time for the legally required 11 day period that we are given to back out of the mortgage. The French sure do give you lots of cooling off time.

Sign, initial, sign, initial, fill in this line, fill in that line.

Then a tense look from Vinny. 'Your medical exam?'

Aimee: It is scheduled for when we get back from Italy.

Vinny: 'No - that is not possible. You must do it before you go.'

Aimee: Um - but our doctor in Switzerland has a three week waiting list.

Vinny: 'You must do it now'

Aimee: Why?

You see the mortgage rate depends on the price of the insurance which depends on your health. So - no check up, no insurance, no mortgage. It takes one week from the date of the exam to process the insurance and get a price to the bank. Then there is that funny 11 day cooling off requirement. So the mortgage would not be approved until 18 days after the exam and would then have to be processed by the Notaire. This would leave us with a closing date in the middle of November if Aimee waited until the 15th of October for the check up.

Oh - and I forgot - we gave notice on our place and have to be out by November 15.... That leads to another great story...

We call to give our three month notice in September:

us: Hi we are moving out in three months.

landlord: Ha. No you aren't. Didn't you see in the contract you can't move out in December or January?

us: oh. But we sign for a new house on November 2nd.

landlord: That is fine. You can move.

us: Thanks.

landlord: You can just pay until the end of January. But let us know when you are out. 

Thankfully we have friends moving back to Basel and want to move into our place...so we were able to get their relocation people in touch with our rental company and things came together so that we can leave in mid-November and our friends can move in soon after...no extra rent paid.

But I am off topic...back to the medical exam. How sad that it has all come down to the timing of a medical exam. Vinny says - no problem! I'll call some people you can see a French doctor today.

What? No appointment? No waiting? Imagine this in the US.

Vinny picks up the phone...dials a few people...pokes around on the Internet... Voila! Dr. Charon will see you now. OK.

Everything is signed and we are ready to go - Vinny walks us out to the anti-terrorist/bank robber trap doors at the bank and points to a small building down the street. Dr. Charon's office. Just go - you don't have to pay and he will send back the papers. OK dude.

We walked down the street to the brick building and all we saw were computer consultants working away... So we backtracked up the street and finally found a 100 year old building with Dr. Charon's name on it. Good stuff. Aimee had never been to a doctor in France before - I have been once and also to a dentist. In this older sort of practice you just walk into the living room of a house and sit down with the other patients. Everyone gives you a bonjour and you wait. No receptionist. No sign in. No line. Just a bunch of sick people in a lounge waiting for the doc.

We opened the door and walked in. I had a quick look around. The most prominent thing in the room was a hand written sign that says 'do not believe the rumors. the doctor is not retiring.' Oh dear. What are we in for? A minute later an old man pops his head into the room. Looks around - and calls a woman. 15 minutes later he is back - pulls in a dad and his sick kid.

Then it is us... Bonjour. And we are in. No questions. He doesn't know us from Adam and all the sudden we are in his office. Quickly he realizes that we might have a language problem.... My French is passable but Aimee is the subject and she doesn't speak French at all. So we go into the German/English/ French mix.

After a few questions it is time for the exam. This consisted of asking Aimee how much she weighs, how tall she is and how much wine she drinks. Then - no joke - he measured her boobs. He gave some weight distribution story but I think he just wanted to touch her boobs. He did go on to her hips and waist too.... It was like The Pink Panther. Really. We can't talk about the exam without laughing until we cry.

So that was it. He sent Aimee off to a lab down the street for bloodwork and within 24 hours it was all taken care of. Plenty of time for the mortgage to be finalized. If we tried to pull off an appointment that quick in the US I am pretty sure we would still be on hold listening to The Girl from Ipanema - on October 15.

That pretty much brings us to the present on the move...the movers are set for November 10 - boxes arrive tomorrow. Right now it all seems like it could actually happen. Of course we still have to buy a new car and yet again transfer our life to another country.... There are a number of new forms that we will have to take care of once we get there. More medical exams. New insurance. Cross-border stuff... I am sure that some day we will feel settled again. Of course then we will move again.

Comments

[Neil & Sue OLeary]

Finally, I have been waiting for the next installment! I must say it was worth the wait! I go from being appalled at the hoops you have to jump threw, to laughing so hard at the delivery of your ordeal to paper. looking forward to the continuing saga of "The Move".