France-tastic

One of the biggest gripes of foreigners living in France, and indeed the French themselves, is the infinitely frustrating, painfully complicated, amazingly convoluted, and nightmare inducing french beaurocracy.

Being the lucky owner of a (brand-spanking shiny new) Swedish passport, I haven't had to deal with the half of it (Alex hasn't been quite so lucky...), but on the rare occasions that I have had a run in with a 10-page-form-in-triplicate beaurocrat, I have inevitably limped away bleeding and cursing the system that actually gives these pen-and-paper-pushing little people real power over innocents like me! In a normal world, when one runs against an administrator who is determined to wreck your day to demonstrate their own feeble power over form X, one is safe in the knowledge that they really can't hurt you too much, at the end of the day they are still obliged to do their job (albeit sometimes begrudgingly), and stamp your form, sign your request, file your document, and send you on your merry way.

Not the case here. The people controlling the forms actually have real solid power over whether you can live a nice quiet life or not. If they are having a bad day, they will reject your request, and there is nothing you can do about it, other than come back tomorrow and queue for another hour and hope to find someone behind the desk having a good day. otherwise, it may be that they're too tired (after all the hard work they've been doing no doubt) to actually look up the answer to your question, in which case they'll look you straight in they eyes, and lie point-blank, in the hope that you will just go away and leave them to their coffee break.

A case study (not at all related to this particular rant of course):
I supposedly need to get a french driver's licence in order to drive here. After having looked long and hard on the internet for information on what I need to do, I find that:
     (a) European people can keep driving on their european driving licence (which I don't have), and
     (b) non-european people need to change their non-european licences within the first year of their residency permit (which I, being european, don't have).
So finding myself between these two options, I decided to give them a call. The first woman told me it was impossible to do anything other than re-sit the driving exam in order to be allowed to legally drive in France. The second woman, after I called back after checking that this was definitely not what the website said, said, no problem at all, just come on in, bring your licence and some ID, and we can give you a french one straight away. So this morning, I went to the Prefecture, queued for some time, and was told that obviously that sort of thing can't be done without an appointment, but luckily they have a slot free IN TWO MONTHS, and by the way, don't forget to bring the official translation of my drivers licence, as well as about ten other papers, which I realised later, includes my french passport, and a justification for any time I've spent away from France, and a justification for what I've been doing since my return to France. Ummm...?

I think I'll just stick to the bus. I have a feeling I won't be winning this one...