J'habite a Paris!

By Cass

As of 11 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time today, the Hagans have a new address…IN PARIS!! Luckily for me, that’s happy hour here in France, so I celebrated the occasion with a glass of champagne with my relocation agent, Veronique. I mean hell, it's not everyday you sign a lease for an apartment in Paris.

After an unusually trying week, it has certainly ended on a very high note. I was notified this morning that my work visa/residency permit is ready to be picked up at the French Embassy in Washington D.C. I finally received the package of signed bank documents from Sid that he overnighted to me on Wednesday, and dropped them off at my new bank in Paris to start our account. And the piece de resistance: I signed the lease on our new apartment this afternoon. If you plug 44 Rue Nicolo, Paris, France into Google maps, you can get a nice shot of the building and our street using the street view. We're on the 3rd floor (ground floor counts as zero here, so it'd be the 4th floor in the U.S.).

In the movies, it’s girl finds Paris, girl falls in love with Paris, girl moves to Paris and lives happily ever after in a zany, fun-filled romantic comedy. Well, here’s the part that’s not in the movie. When I say “signed a lease,” I don’t mean the form your last landlord got from Staples that he’s photocopied so many times that your signature is the most legible thing on the page. While purchasing a home in the U.S. requires about an acre of trees’ worth of paper you to sign, renting an apartment is an almost negligible formality. In France, the process of renting a flat is based on centuries of contentious landlord-tenant history and procedure that has resulted in a portfolio of documents -- every single page of which has to be initialed, except where an actual signature is called for. There’s the colorful rental folder itself (three initials and one signature); a study that shows the property is safe and environmentally sound (four initials); another study that proves the property is as low-emission and energy efficient as possible (four more initials); a brown form for something (it’s in French – two initials); a blue form for something else (two more initials); a natural disaster form with a map showing that I’m in the 100-year flood zone (I swear I’m not kidding, and that’s three more initials). Turns out this is the century milestone since the last time the Seine flooded in 1910, so it’s a new legal requirement for new residents in 2010.

Veronique kept a watchful eye over the proceedings, making sure no one was pulling any fast ones on the American rube. After 90 minutes, the deed was done. She took me to a nearby furniture store to begin the search for a bed to replace the small one in what was a child’s bedroom (chamber). Then I took us both for the celebratory bubbly. After she left, I had about an hour before meeting my good friend Sabine for dinner, so I slipped into a bar for a Leffe (beer) and to capture the moment in words.

Now, your next question will be if I’m staying in my new home tonight. That would be a logical assumption, except that signing a lease doesn’t mean one is given the keys to the abode in question. That’s a story for NEXT Friday, when the grand Check-in Inspection and Handing-Over-of-the-Keys takes place. What the heck? It’ll be another occasion to celebrate that I live in Paris, or “J’habite a Paris,” Part Deux.

A final thought for today: while walking the few blocks from the metro station to the rental office, on this chilly, wet winter day, I realized – no I felt – myself changing. This experience will change me in ways I can’t even imagine, and today, walking on the sidewalks of Paris just like 12 million others, I was keenly aware of that very moment and the one afterward, that I am not the same as the moment before.