Things to do in Paris when you're homeless
Some of you may remember reading this before; I wrote it as an e-mail back when we first moved here in December 2004. Somehow it seemed appropriate to post it here again.
Most people know Paris as the City of Lights, one of the most romantic and beautiful cities the world over. It's renowned across the globe for its wide boulevards, sumptuous cuisine, breathtaking monuments and unparalleled panoply of sights, sounds, smells and tastes certain to entice the average visitor to return. Having spent just over three weeks here now, I would like to add another attribute to Paris' ever-growing list of charms: it's a great place to be when you're homeless.
Panagiota and I arrived in Paris safe and sound in the wee hours of Tuesday, November 30, each armed with a refreshing five minutes of sleep on the plane, and immediately took the first suicidal cab we could find to the hotel. Aside from the morning congestion and a driver whose idea of stop and go traffic boiled down to arrhythmic and incessant pumping of the gas pedal, our trip overseas was mercifully quick and relatively painless. After lugging our suitcases up to our fourth floor shoebox hotel room (complete with such luxuries as a bed, a window and a toilet), Pegs won the coin toss and took a shower while I went out to confirm our appointments for the day.
Most people know Paris as the City of Lights, one of the most romantic and beautiful cities the world over. It's renowned across the globe for its wide boulevards, sumptuous cuisine, breathtaking monuments and unparalleled panoply of sights, sounds, smells and tastes certain to entice the average visitor to return. Having spent just over three weeks here now, I would like to add another attribute to Paris' ever-growing list of charms: it's a great place to be when you're homeless.
Panagiota and I arrived in Paris safe and sound in the wee hours of Tuesday, November 30, each armed with a refreshing five minutes of sleep on the plane, and immediately took the first suicidal cab we could find to the hotel. Aside from the morning congestion and a driver whose idea of stop and go traffic boiled down to arrhythmic and incessant pumping of the gas pedal, our trip overseas was mercifully quick and relatively painless. After lugging our suitcases up to our fourth floor shoebox hotel room (complete with such luxuries as a bed, a window and a toilet), Pegs won the coin toss and took a shower while I went out to confirm our appointments for the day.
Our first meeting was with our bank, as we were both aware that nothing (and I mean nothing) can be done without proof of an account here in France. As could be expected, opening our accounts was complicated by the fact that we didn't have an address to give our young, fresh-faced banker, whose director was conveniently out of town for the remainder of the week. Needless to say, it is impossible to rent an apartment without a bank account, but it apparently is equally difficult to open an account without an address, which created quite a poulet before the oeuf problem for yours truly. Eventually, I was able to convince our kind but completely impotent young banker that perhaps it would be acceptable for me to temporarily use my firm's address here in Paris, and as soon as we were able to find an apartment I would give him the address. He agreed that my suggestion was the best course of action, but before he could implement our strategy he needed to get prior approval from another director (who was conveniently on vacation until Friday). French administration: 1, Lee and Panagiota: 0.
Following a restless night's sleep, we spent the next day divided in interviews (Pegs) or doing apartment/cell phone research (Lee). Pegs' interviews were stressful but successful; she was told that if she could improve her French through intensive language courses in January, she would have a job with at least one firm. I was noticeably less successful in my research, but we still had hope that our broker would pull through with a great apartment for us.
The following day (Thursday), we had appointments with our firm-recommended broker, who has since come to be known in local circles as "Medusa". My first phone conversation with Medusa, back when we were still in the US, should have tipped me off from the start that our situation was hopeless: after she spent an hour on the phone telling me what she either would not or could not do for us (show us more than 7 apartments per day, show us around Paris for more than 1 day, etc.), I finally broke down and asked her exactly what I was paying her to do. When she couldn't think of anything after a couple of minutes, I got a little worried.
Following a restless night's sleep, we spent the next day divided in interviews (Pegs) or doing apartment/cell phone research (Lee). Pegs' interviews were stressful but successful; she was told that if she could improve her French through intensive language courses in January, she would have a job with at least one firm. I was noticeably less successful in my research, but we still had hope that our broker would pull through with a great apartment for us.
The following day (Thursday), we had appointments with our firm-recommended broker, who has since come to be known in local circles as "Medusa". My first phone conversation with Medusa, back when we were still in the US, should have tipped me off from the start that our situation was hopeless: after she spent an hour on the phone telling me what she either would not or could not do for us (show us more than 7 apartments per day, show us around Paris for more than 1 day, etc.), I finally broke down and asked her exactly what I was paying her to do. When she couldn't think of anything after a couple of minutes, I got a little worried.
We were heading out the door on our way to our Thursday morning rendezvous when we received a phone call. It was none other than Medusa herself, calling to inform us that she had made a "slight" error in the address of our first appointment. Instead of 1 Rue de Rivoli, which would have been in the heart of the Marais district (one of the areas we requested to see), she informed us that we were actually meeting at 147 Rue de Rivoli, which is directly across from the Louvre. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Cry me a river, Lee. There aren't many people who would turn up their noses at an apartment across the street from the Louvre, right?" Wrong. For you New Yorkers, this is the equivalent of telling your agent that you want to see apartments in the East Village, only to be shown a place on the Upper East Side. Sure, you might be along First Avenue either way, but you're nowhere near where you wanted to be. For you non-New Yorkers, let me explain it in a different way: living near the Louvre would be sort of like living right next to the White House. In both instances you would have a prestigious address in a central location, but when was the last time you saw a restaurant you could actually afford within walking distance of the White House? Also, for the purposes of this comparison, the White House would be visited daily by a Disney World-sized crowd dressed in short shorts, fanny packs and bad socks asking you the second you walked out the door for directions to the "Lurve". Needless to say, we were not happy.
Immediately after we saw the Louvre apartment, Panagiota and I asked (with what I can only describe as a surprising degree of restraint) to see the remaining appointments Medusa had scheduled for that day. In short order we had cancelled her entire list for either being out of our price range, out of our requested neighborhoods, or out of the question. We kept one appointment for an apartment that was the right size and toward the upper end of our price scale but was in the Latin Quarter (read: tons of tourists and long commute), if for nothing else than our unwillingness to pay this woman over $1900 for nothing. In the end, we dragged Medusa into a small cafe, pulled out the research I had done here and in the US, and forced her at croissant-point to start making phone calls. She seemed humbled enough by my ability to find quality apartments on the internet that she was willing to play by my rules, and within an hour we had made appointments all over Paris for the remainder of the day, with even more scheduled the next.
As dumb luck would have it, the apartment we liked the best was the one in the Latin Quarter that Medusa had somehow managed to find for us, although we told the real estate agent that the landlord would need to knock the rent down a bit before we would be willing to take it. When they reduced the rent by 200 euros (i.e., about $250) without flinching, I got a little suspicious. In the end, we decided that the apartment was not really what we were after, and that (despite Pegs' imminent return to the US to finish up her work in New York and my start date on Monday several days later) we would be best served by looking some more.
Now, this might not seem like such a big deal to a normal person. After all, a normal person would think to themselves, "Not to worry. It's only Thursday evening, and I've still got Friday, Saturday and Sunday to find a place. After all, those are the busiest and best times of the week for apartment-hunting, right?" Ah, but you forget that this is Paris. Agents certainly do not work during the weekend in Paris, which makes it that much harder to understand how they can justify doing so little work during the week. There weren't even any open-houses available on Saturday morning, and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the busiest days for the rental market are Monday-Wednesday. Medusa could have warned us about this, but that would have required the exercise of abstract thinking.
Early Sunday afternoon Pegs boarded her flight back to NY, and the next day I showed up for work at the administration building down the road from the firm's main office. After sitting in the waiting room for about an hour, all the while making phone calls to agents in a continued search for an apartment, I got word from someone in HR that I was to hustle back to the main office. "But my contract says that I'm supposed to report here," I said ineffectively. "Ah, yes, but no one eez ready for you ere for to give you zee training," was the heavily accented response. "Go to zee office and Tony will take care of you." Well, I happened to know for a fact that Tony (my new partner) was in Libya, having seen him that weekend as he was packing his briefcase, so I figured that the odds that he would be able to take care of me from Tripoli were remarkably slim. Also, I guess it was a bit presumptuous of me to expect that HR would be ready for me, considering they'd only had three months' notice of my arrival. At this point, French administration: 237, Lee and Panagiota: 0.
Frustrated but resolute, I called my secretary-to-be and informed her that if anyone asked where I was, which was not likely, they could reach me on the company cell phone that a colleague had been kind enough to get for me. That day and the next were spent walking around a specific area of Paris known as the St. Germain des Pres, a beautiful neighborhood Pegs and I had decided would be ideal. Ah, but with perfection comes a price, in this case elevated by a noticeably low supply for a highly demanded product. Also complicating my search was the fact that most apartments for rent in that particular neighborhood come furnished, thanks to a peculiar quirk in the French legal system.
As it turns out, leases in France are enforceable by law for a minimum period of three years, at which point they can be renegotiated or extended for another three years. In the meantime, the tenant can break the lease with three months' notice, but it is virtually impossible for the landlord to evict, all of which means that one must endure an excruciatingly arcane and complex screening process before one can get within spitting distance of a signed lease. The twist is that furnished apartments circumvent this three-year rule, meaning that it is much easier for landlords to get rid of unwanted tenants. Furnished rentals are also more expensive, which means that they are a win-win for landlords, especially in an area in high demand like the St. Germain.
Immediately after we saw the Louvre apartment, Panagiota and I asked (with what I can only describe as a surprising degree of restraint) to see the remaining appointments Medusa had scheduled for that day. In short order we had cancelled her entire list for either being out of our price range, out of our requested neighborhoods, or out of the question. We kept one appointment for an apartment that was the right size and toward the upper end of our price scale but was in the Latin Quarter (read: tons of tourists and long commute), if for nothing else than our unwillingness to pay this woman over $1900 for nothing. In the end, we dragged Medusa into a small cafe, pulled out the research I had done here and in the US, and forced her at croissant-point to start making phone calls. She seemed humbled enough by my ability to find quality apartments on the internet that she was willing to play by my rules, and within an hour we had made appointments all over Paris for the remainder of the day, with even more scheduled the next.
As dumb luck would have it, the apartment we liked the best was the one in the Latin Quarter that Medusa had somehow managed to find for us, although we told the real estate agent that the landlord would need to knock the rent down a bit before we would be willing to take it. When they reduced the rent by 200 euros (i.e., about $250) without flinching, I got a little suspicious. In the end, we decided that the apartment was not really what we were after, and that (despite Pegs' imminent return to the US to finish up her work in New York and my start date on Monday several days later) we would be best served by looking some more.
Now, this might not seem like such a big deal to a normal person. After all, a normal person would think to themselves, "Not to worry. It's only Thursday evening, and I've still got Friday, Saturday and Sunday to find a place. After all, those are the busiest and best times of the week for apartment-hunting, right?" Ah, but you forget that this is Paris. Agents certainly do not work during the weekend in Paris, which makes it that much harder to understand how they can justify doing so little work during the week. There weren't even any open-houses available on Saturday morning, and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the busiest days for the rental market are Monday-Wednesday. Medusa could have warned us about this, but that would have required the exercise of abstract thinking.
Early Sunday afternoon Pegs boarded her flight back to NY, and the next day I showed up for work at the administration building down the road from the firm's main office. After sitting in the waiting room for about an hour, all the while making phone calls to agents in a continued search for an apartment, I got word from someone in HR that I was to hustle back to the main office. "But my contract says that I'm supposed to report here," I said ineffectively. "Ah, yes, but no one eez ready for you ere for to give you zee training," was the heavily accented response. "Go to zee office and Tony will take care of you." Well, I happened to know for a fact that Tony (my new partner) was in Libya, having seen him that weekend as he was packing his briefcase, so I figured that the odds that he would be able to take care of me from Tripoli were remarkably slim. Also, I guess it was a bit presumptuous of me to expect that HR would be ready for me, considering they'd only had three months' notice of my arrival. At this point, French administration: 237, Lee and Panagiota: 0.
Frustrated but resolute, I called my secretary-to-be and informed her that if anyone asked where I was, which was not likely, they could reach me on the company cell phone that a colleague had been kind enough to get for me. That day and the next were spent walking around a specific area of Paris known as the St. Germain des Pres, a beautiful neighborhood Pegs and I had decided would be ideal. Ah, but with perfection comes a price, in this case elevated by a noticeably low supply for a highly demanded product. Also complicating my search was the fact that most apartments for rent in that particular neighborhood come furnished, thanks to a peculiar quirk in the French legal system.
As it turns out, leases in France are enforceable by law for a minimum period of three years, at which point they can be renegotiated or extended for another three years. In the meantime, the tenant can break the lease with three months' notice, but it is virtually impossible for the landlord to evict, all of which means that one must endure an excruciatingly arcane and complex screening process before one can get within spitting distance of a signed lease. The twist is that furnished apartments circumvent this three-year rule, meaning that it is much easier for landlords to get rid of unwanted tenants. Furnished rentals are also more expensive, which means that they are a win-win for landlords, especially in an area in high demand like the St. Germain.
Undaunted, I proceeded in my quest to find the perfect apartment alone, shivering, in the cold streets of Paris. I eventually found an apartment of the right size just down the street from the metro, a few blocks away from the Luxembourg Gardens, two blocks away from one of the best markets in Paris, and in the heart of the St. Germain. On top of that, I was able to talk the landlord into reducing the rent to a level lower than that of the Latin Quarter apartment (even though the St. Germain apartment is slightly larger) and conducting a number of renovations to the bathroom and the kitchen. The apartment has some definite...how could I phrase it delicately...quirks, but that's to be expected when one moves into a building that was constructed 165 years ago. All in all, though, the location is ideal, the size is fantastic, and the numerous other benefits are too good to pass up. We held out for a better place, and in the end we were able to find one.
There's just one little catch: because of the nature of the work that needs to be done (mostly in the bathroom and the kitchen), the landlord doesn't want us to move in until the renovations are completed. To complicate matters further, it would be extremely beneficial (in order to help avoid future administrative hassles) for Panagiota to be a signatory to the lease. The problem is that for some inexplicable reason she has to sign in person (faxes aren't the rage here yet, apparently), which is somewhat difficult to do when one is in New York and the lease is in Paris. Therefore, to the chagrin of every lawyerly instinct in my body that says to get everything in writing, we found an apartment but have yet to sign the lease, and we won't be able to sign anything until next Wednesday. Everyone having fun yet? Good.
That being said, I don't have an updated personal address to give you yet, which is also going to make getting my mail forwarded that much more fun. I also don't have a cell phone number, since in order to get a cell phone one needs a bank card, and my banker conveniently sent my authorization code to my old US address. However, I hope that after a couple of weeks I will be able to give you all of that information and more, and I have no doubt that I will continue to have interesting adventures certain to entertain those of you living in the comfort of US efficiencies. Until then, wish me luck, happy holidays, and I hope to talk to you soon!
There's just one little catch: because of the nature of the work that needs to be done (mostly in the bathroom and the kitchen), the landlord doesn't want us to move in until the renovations are completed. To complicate matters further, it would be extremely beneficial (in order to help avoid future administrative hassles) for Panagiota to be a signatory to the lease. The problem is that for some inexplicable reason she has to sign in person (faxes aren't the rage here yet, apparently), which is somewhat difficult to do when one is in New York and the lease is in Paris. Therefore, to the chagrin of every lawyerly instinct in my body that says to get everything in writing, we found an apartment but have yet to sign the lease, and we won't be able to sign anything until next Wednesday. Everyone having fun yet? Good.
That being said, I don't have an updated personal address to give you yet, which is also going to make getting my mail forwarded that much more fun. I also don't have a cell phone number, since in order to get a cell phone one needs a bank card, and my banker conveniently sent my authorization code to my old US address. However, I hope that after a couple of weeks I will be able to give you all of that information and more, and I have no doubt that I will continue to have interesting adventures certain to entertain those of you living in the comfort of US efficiencies. Until then, wish me luck, happy holidays, and I hope to talk to you soon!
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