So I went to Copenhagen like two weeks ago and ever since I’ve come back I’ve been meaning to write this long long post about my trip but it just keeps getting pushed back. Rather than have you wonder if I’ve gone AWOL again, and until I can actually sit down and write the Very Long Copenhagen Post, I wanted to upload this video of the Bottle Boys which I filmed in the streets of Copenhagen. Dare you not to be happy after watching.
You may have heard, it’s the French elections right now. My dad sent me this article about a week ago in reference to the difference between political candidates in the US and those in France: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/five-things-heard-in-frances-election-that-youd-never-hear-in-the-us/2012/04/23/gIQArd22bT_blog.html.
It’s just right on the nose. Not only does it explain the elections, it also explains why I am called a left-wing radical in the US and a right-leaning moderate in France. I said that I was a moderate to this French person over here and he was like “Non, il faut choisir!” (“No, you must choose!”) and I thought, “Funny, I’m usually on the other side of this conversation.”
When Baptiste and I moved in together one of the very first things I wanted to do was get on his health insurance plan. French health insurance is called social security and it covers approximately 50-75% of your health insurance costs for a mere 200 euros every 1.5 years. Most people have an additional insurance plan, “mutuelle”, which covers the rest. Mine costs 22 euros a month. Already that sounds ridiculously low to any American but when you take into consideration that no one is subsidizing part of it (like my employer), it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Thank you socialism!
However my mutuelle totally blows. It took them over a year and umpteen phone calls/visits to their offices to even get them to register the number of my bank account to use for reimbursement of my medical expenses. Even now that they have it I still don’t get reimbursed, I just get told I’ve been reimbursed but no money goes into my account. Typical French bureaucracy. I don’t mind TOO much because when I go see a doctor the visit, sans health insurance, costs about 20 euros. Side note: I once had a second’s worth of mental freak out because I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and they told me in a very concerned way that it wasn’t covered by my insurance. I asked how much it costs and the pharmacist said “78…” and in my head I’m like “What the fuck??? 75 euros??? That’s outrageous!! What happened to socialism? Can I afford this thing? How am I going to say I can’t afford it without looking infinitely poor/stupid??” and then the pharmacist finished her sentence “…cents”. That’s right it cost 78 cents. Which is why I’m not sooo concerned my health insurance doesn’t reimburse me a whole lot. Even more so because twice when I’ve called it’s ended in tears and B has to listen to me sobbing about how I’m going home and then he gets scared that I’m actually going to go home…Basically they’ve beat me down which is just un-French of me, I know, but I’d rather be a happy expatriate than an unhappy local.
Long story short (ha!), I wanted to be on B’s amazing corporate L’Oreal sponsored health insurance which allows for amorous roommates. He talked to his company and they just said we needed to go down to our Arrondissement’s Mairie (District Town Hall sounds less pretty so I’m leaving it in French) and file for Concubine status. “What’s that?” you say? You’re a concubine? Yes, yes I am. And before you have my mother’s reaction (“What does that mean, exactly?” which roughly translated for those of you who don’t speak My Mother is “Are you getting married without telling me?”), it turns out it’s just a declaration on our honor that we live together. But oh how much I giggled thinking about being a high-class Venetian hooker!
I explained the literal translation to B, making him giggle as well, and so for the next few days we addressed each other as Concubines:
“Concubine would you like some more ice cream?”
“How is your day going, oh lovely concubine?”
We’re hilarious like that.
Here’s to you my Concubine! And yes, I would like some more ice cream.
Yesterday, after four weeks of waiting , about two dozen phone calls at $0.10 per minute and an afternoon taken off of work to wait around for an ISP technician, the internet worked. FINALLY. We danced a little jig and relished the opportunity to check our email on something other than the 3″ by 5″ screen of our iPhones.
I woke up this morning and it was dead again. Yet another phone call to our ISP and I am told that I have to wait two weeks for another appointment with the government phone company to get my line working again. Where you see government, read “inefficient.” While on the phone, I tell them they double charged me for my (nonexisting) internet service. I am told that no they didn’t, turns out I am also paying for my old apartment. Not the last old apartment, the second to last, the one I MOVED AWAY FROM A YEAR AGO. Yes, in sending back the internet box with the signed letter requesting cancellation (registered mail) a year ago, I made a mistake you see, because the letter should have been sent to an ever so slightly different address because the department that handles reception of returned equipment does not handle cancellation of service nor do either of these departments communicate one with the other. Obviously. Also, obviously, just because you send back the equipment allowing you internet access does not mean that you are cancelling said internet access. You might just be doing it for shits and giggles, how are they supposed to know? In sum, they owe me over 400 euros in refunds which I will receive in two to six weeks. I am told that it will probably be closer to six weeks.
I also receive the lights I ordered for the apartment a month ago. FINALLY. We’ve been moving these two tiny little lamps from room to room as we move. It’s almost worse than using a candle because at least then you still have light as you move from one room to the other. The only reason I did receive them was because I happened to be leaving the apartment as a delivery guy, staring dumbfoundedly at the mailboxes, stopped me to ask how to figure out which apartment corresponded to which mailbox. I ask him who he’s looking for and he says Ms. Janson. That’s me! So I go to sign and I see in black and white on his delivery paper, my address with the notation “4th floor, door to the left”, an instruction I had given when placing my order to avoid this exact situation. I point this out to the man and he says “Yes but how do I get there?” Now my turn to look dumbfounded. “You see these stairs we’re standing at the bottom of?” The fog in his brain seems to clear as he nods.
I walk back up to my apartment to deposit the package and I open it to check and make sure my order was correct. It wasn’t. I ordered white Christmas lights to string around the perimeter of the rooms because there is no overhead lighting and I didn’t want to have wires hanging down from the ceiling. I specifically asked the company if their lights interconnected before I ordered and they said yes they all do but somehow these do not. They each need to be plugged into an individual electrical socket which means that I would have wires hanging from the ceiling, the one thing I was trying to avoid. I check back my email message with the response and it turns out all EXTERIOR lights are interconnectable and I mistakenly ordered interior lights.
Then the bus I was taking to the library to work with internet access stopped in the middle of its route even though I checked the front to make sure it was going all the way to the end.
