We Didn't Really Want To Be In France, Anyway

We were just trying to enter the country that we live in for nearly half of every year.

We have done this dozens of times at CDG, showing passports to the police officer in the plexiglass cage, then rushing off to pick up our suitcases, find Joseph (the driver) who then takes us home.

Today was different.

We have tried to play by the rules, even though it is hard to find the rules and even harder to find two "fonctionnaires" (civil servants) who define these rules the same way.

Our "Carte de Sejour" (long term visas) are up-to-date, we don't stay in France longer than is recommended for tax reasons and we certainly have tried to stimulate the economy over the years. Why don't they want us anymore?

Today, we were among the first off the plane, so we sprinted toward the immigration line. Passports and carte de sejours were passed to the policeman who was sharing the plexi kiosk with another policeman. The other guy waived through about 5 sets of people without even looking at their papers or their faces. Our guy held up my passport to compare the photo with my face.

Luckily, the photo was taken in one of those terrible passport photo places that are normally in the Metro station. The one we used was on blvd. Raspail near the flower shops. My picture is awful, so I hoped it matched my face, weary after traveling for at least 24 hours to get to this point. He typed into his computer, compared some more and then told us to step aside so that he could pass more people through the line as we were holding everyone else up.

WE were holding everyone up?

So, we waited (he had our passports and Cartes locked in the kiosk so we didn't have much choice). About every five minutes we put up a little barrage of verbal assaults at the guy, who just continued to ignore us. We paced around, everyone was looking at us, of course. We waited for about 15 minutes when the guy finally said he would take us to meet his "responsable", his supervisor.

For a moment, still holding onto the American concept that we're innocent until proven guilty, I thought that we would just go in, shake hands, laugh about the misunderstanding and we'd be on our way. We're law-abiding people, citizens of a free country and are in France legally.

Of course, this is France and it didn't work quite this way.

We enter a room with a few other cops. The supervisor starts to type something into the computer and at the same time rattles off a slew of immigration rules that seem contradictory to everything we've ever heard. They make no sense at all to us and our situation. This is crazy. Let us go!

They don't. The supervisor then stands up, puts on his coat and leaves. Oh great, we're left in the room with the original lunatic cop.

Terry asks to use the bathroom. But, they have to escort him since we're basically prisoners. They spend a lot of time discussing how this can be done properly and finally another cop escorts Terry away.

I'm left with the cop, who's still on the computer and all our coats and luggage.

Again I wait, now alone. Finally, they move me to another room so that the original cop can call the Prefecture of Police to check us out in privacy.

Terry doesn't come back. So, I decide to leave all our stuff (they are cops, so it should be safe) and walk around the corner and see where he went. At this moment, it seems that enlightenment has somehow occurred. We are not criminals and are in the country legally, according to the person on the phone from the Prefecture.

That's what we've been trying to tell you folks all along but you wouldn't listen!

Let's hope the rest of the trip is less eventful than today.