Talbert Pipes Life in France Adventures Driving Emily poses next to one of France's liliputian cars Driven to Distraction It's been a while since we've had to deal with France's towering iron citadel of bureacracy, but we're still officially foreigners here and there are still some things that need handling, and we all know what that means - papers and stamps and ribbons! Some of the states in the US have agreements with France for direct transfers of driving licenses, but unfortunately North Carolina is not one of them (South Carolina is, go figure...). What this means is that we both need to get our driver's licenses all over again, the French way. I'm not worried about mine just yet, because my French is in no way equal to going through French driver's ed and taking a driving test in French. There are bilingual courses available but you have to hunt them down yourself and they cost money, and time and cash are things we don't have to spare just now so my license replacement is going to be delayed for a bit. Emily chose to go ahead and get hers, though, and about 3 months ago she began The Epic of the License. I should take a moment here to comment on France's driving instruction. It is uniformly good and extremely comprehensive, unlike the US's system of watching bloody road carnage films for a week and then driving around a parking lot to get your permit. However, this seems to have made no difference at all in the driving skills apparent, as France has a much higher highway death rate and people here flatly drive like loons. Drunken driving is a serious problem in a society where it's common to drink a whole bottle of wine with dinner, yet drunk driving control remains only half-heartedly enforced. In the US, if your friend is tipsy it's the responsibility of everyone present to help get him home alive via shared driving or a taxi, whereas here I have seen people proudly proclaim that they were fine to drive when they were so drunk they were walking into walls. So... we tend to stay home on Friday and Saturday nights! The overall driving style in France is much more aggressive - if you're an aggressive driver in the US and frequently curse the bovine nature of US highway traffic, where minivans and sport utes filled with soccer brats routinely drift idly across 3 lanes while mom swats an offending sprog, you would love it here. Traffic flows faster and MUCH more alertly on the highways, and everyone needs to be sharper and more observant because you never know when some madman will try to pass you on a country road in a curve. If, however, you find US traffic intimidating or demanding of attention, my strongest suggestion is to only travel in Europe by train or taxi - driving here is a hair-trigger game of reflexes and fearless willingness not to be the one who swerves first! We entered the license game on a confidence high, because we'd just managed to renew our yearly work visas with only ONE trip to Nantes - we called the lady (very nice and very sharp, I must add) who runs the "etrangers" office in Nantes and she had all our papers ready to go, so we managed to get everything done in one afternoon and one trip. This means we're fine for another year and we were frankly astounded it went so easily, since last summer we started this process in August and didn't get our actual cards until December! So, we went into the license-getting process with a fair measure of confidence and positive outlook. In all fairness, it wasn't a bad experience either, though we did run into the usual bit of stereotypical Frenchness in the form of picky paper-stamping. Emily started taking night classes in basic driver's ed. To get a license here requires one to first take hourly night classes for "as long as needed" until one can pass the written exam. You pay each time you take the exam, so it's in your best interest to study hard and minimize the bad tries. Once the written test has been passed, it's on to the driving part. A normal French teen would need at least 20 logged hours of driving instruction (with teacher in the car) before being allowed to take the driving exam, but Emily's instructor was kind enough to void this requirement on her part since she's had around 20 years of experience now. It was during the latter stages that things began to get sticky. It goes without saying that having Emily busy in classes for a couple of months took a bite out of our working time here - as with most things bureaucratic in France, little concern is given towards such flighty concepts as lost income time, so we just got by as best we could. She passed her written test in two tries, which says a lot for her French I think! At this point, Mr. Official entered the picture - the fellow who headed the license department. Since our instructor had voided the need to do 20 hours of road driving, he wanted a guarantee of some sort that Emily really did have driving experience. This was understandable, so we offered to copy her NC driver's license and translate it. Not good enough!! Why? Who could conceivably expect a French official to accept any old translation when he could demand one that was certified. At this point, readers in the states should have a quick look at their licenses to see just what we're talking about... there isn't a lot there. "Name" becomes "Nom" but most of it is just dates. Unfortunately, there was another glaring problem in the official's eyes - Emily's license was a standard NC Class C license, meaning she could drive any ordinary passenger car. In France, a Class C license limits one to mopeds, and the regular passenger car license is a Class B. Attempts to point out that the vehicle types allowed were actually spelled out on the back of the license were to no avail, and of course the suggestion that, "Hey, this is a system from another country" were meaningless - to Mr. Official, the French definition of a Class C license must surely apply to all countries on earth and that was the end of it unless she could obtain an official translation and certification saying otherwise. Where on earth would we get such a thing that would be acceptable? Mr. Official takes on the now-familiar air of all French bureacrats who have no idea how to get the papers they're demanding, and replies, "The US Consulate". AUGH!! We are NOT driving or taking a train all the way to Paris and wrestling our way through Consulate security to try and get someone to spend the 5 minutes with us needed to translate 1 line of license text explaining that Emily can drive any normal passenger car. Again, NC residents, look on the back of your license and imagine being asked to drive 5 hours into Paris to the US Embassy in order to find an official who can deliver a stamped translation of that little line of fine print. There has to be another way... One thing I can rejoice in - after living here for a year, we've gotten cagey to stuff like this and have learned that there is ALWAYS another answer. (As a sidebar, this is a French conversational tic that sometimes will drive me near bonkers. Repetition. FREQUENT repetition. Customers will visit the shop and ask simple questions, like, "Can this pipe be fitted with a filter?" In cases where the answer is no, such as with morta minis (too small and without shanks to fit a filter into), they will often nod an OK and then ask the exact same question a few minutes later. I've had people ask me the same question 5 or 6 times during a prolonged conversation, leaving me to wonder what it was about, "No, this is not physically possible" that wasn't understood the first 4 times. It often seems as though they're convinced that, not receiving the answer they wanted the first time, they can keep asking until the answer will change. After living with the French bureacracy for a year, I can now begin to understand this reasoning... there's no such thing as a solid answer, and if you keep trying from different angles, you will likely get different answers until you get one that you want.) We decide to try going at this sideways, and during our visa visit to Nantes, we ask the lady at the office of etrangers (literally, "strangers' department") if they have certified translators who can do this for us. She sends us down the hall to another fellow, who smiles and in very clear French explains the entire French driving license process to us, from start to finish. We already knew all this and that wasn't our question, but that's OK... in fact, we quickly discover that ANY question like, "Where can we find someone who can translate and certify that Emily's license class covers conventional vehicles?" will produce the 10 minute answer, "In France, one obtains a driving license in these basic steps - etcetcetc". Somehow our question just isn't getting through, so we decide to try another angle and just ask if there are certified translators working for the Nantes government. "Yes, of course, just go downstairs and ask a receptionist for the list." !!!!! We smile, breathe deeply, and head back downstairs to find a happy receptionist who has no idea about any list but who happily waves us on to another happy receptionist who DOES have the list. In fact, she has copies to freely distribute, which just about floors both of us. We kiss her passionately and leave. Now, we have made a special 1 hour drive to Nantes to find out the answer to this question, but in an example of how much we have learned about France, we don't even think about the idea of trying to call a Nantes translator and hop over there while we're in town - we already know this would be pointless and that an appointment will have to be made, in an official way, to get our line of text translated by a government-certified translator who can apply an impressive-looking stamp to convince Mr. Official that Emily can, indeed, drive something bigger than a scooter. So we spend the afternoon playing in Nantes. Back at home, we inspect our list to find a variety of official English translators and call every one - knowing now that you have to cast a broad net here to get any answer at all. Indeed, out of all the ones we call, only one ever returns our call, and Emily fixes an appointment with the woman to apply the magic stamp. We can't fax or mail a copy to her as she must work from the original, and there is no way we are mailing Emily's original driver's license by post. So, another trip to Nantes, 5 minutes of official translation, one printed paper, and one LOVELY stamp later, we have an "official document from the French government certifying that Emily's Class C NC license allows her to operate a full-sized (indeed, American-sized) automobile equivalent to that allowed under the French Class B license". And there was much rejoicing. This paper is actually not what Mr. Official was demanding, but since he did not in fact really know what he was wanting anyway, he is impressed when we deliver it, especially with the big stamp saying "Certified". He gives his approval that Emily may indeed take a real test to drive a real car, we clutch our new papers to our chests and run, and after 3 months of haggling, several hundred dollars of classes and test fees, and several lost afternoons of paper-chasing, Emily finally gets to take her driving test. Her instructor has her drive around the block and pronounces her OK. That was it - no parking, no emergency-brake skids, no highway top-ending, zip. Back at the office, we have a chance to chat with an official of the French police. Curious about how they deal with foreigners when they stop one, we ask what happens when they pull someone with a US license instead of a French one. He shrugs, rolls his eyes, and replies, "Too much trouble to bother with - we just wave them on." Insert laugh track here...