3 days to go

Well, I started packing today. I leave on Thursday.

I’m going to catch the Eurostar to Paris in the morning and should be at the apartment block by 4:00pm French time. I just hope all the documents arrived in time…

On Saturday I finally managed to get all the necessary documents ready to send. Having only just received the form for my Dad to act as guarantor for the apartment, it was a bit of a rush to get it filled in. The letter accompanying the form said that it had to be countersigned at either a “Mairie” or a police station. So, off we went down to the local police station with the apparently silly assumption that it would be simple to countersign a document to verify that it was in fact my Dad’s signature on the form. We were told however that they “don’t usually do that” but that they could if we knew one of the policemen there…and had done so for over 2 years. Right. Luckily we do know a policeman so we paid him a visit and he obliged. I’m curious as to what I should have done had I not known a policeman (or a mayor). With everything filled in I sent it off and then went and annoyed my friend by arriving at her birthday party on time…instead of 2 hours early as I’d told her (I blame the forms).

I’m also beginning to wonder whether I should have been so cheerful about buying my insurance from MAAF. I asked for the documents to be sent straight to the apartment as there wouldn’t be time for them to get to England and then for me to post them on. I did however ask for email confirmation so I could at least prove that I had insured the place in case the documents didn’t arrive. I’m going to have to give them a ring because I haven’t had it yet. Maybe they have to fill out forms before they send me emails. They seem to have forms for everything else after all.

Anyhow, as I said, I started packing today. This is actually quite early for me; I have a habit of packing at the very last minute. In fact I seem to do a lot of important things at the last minute. Maybe this trip to France will change that, especially if there’s as much bureaucracy as they say there is.