On December 20, 2012, I received a slew of unexpected emails from Dropbox.

The first said “Welcome to Dropbox!” which was odd because I’ve been using Dropbox since 2010. The second said “You have added the app CloudOn to you Dropbox”, which was also odd because my boyfriend’s brother works for CloudOn and I couldn’t remember if I’ve installed it or not.

Besides the emails, the other suspicious part was that the account was registered under “juliama@gmail.com”. Now there are two weird things about this email. First, I never use this email for subscription-related things. I have another email account specifically for subscriptions and my online presence. The second weird thing is that my email address is actually “julia.ma@gmail.com”, and I ALWAYS use the dot. Gmail doesn’t care about the placement of punctuation in an email username, so “J.U.L.I.A.M.A@gmail.com” would also get to me. Any time I get emails that don’t have the dot, it’s usually someone who meant to send the email to another address.

So back to Dropbox.

Since the email address is mine, I can actually go to Dropbox and say, hey I forgot my password, and they will email me a link to reset the password. So I did so, and now I have access to this person’s Dropbox. Turns out this person is named “Julia Steinberg” and added a Word document for a scavenger hunt. 

I get extremely annoyed when people accidentally use my email address as WTF would you NOT know your own email!?!? But I’m generally a nice person, so I decide to let Julia Steinberg redeem herself. I left a message in her scavenger hunt document that basically said “you are using my email, please contact me to transfer ownership of this dropbox”. I also left this message in every one of the folders to ensure that she sees it.

A month goes by and nothing. I log back into the Dropbox and, since Dropbox lets you see the entire history of changes, I see that she’s still active but hasn’t contacted me!! I’m guessing that she still has access to the Dropbox through CloudOn on her iPad or something and just hasn’t bothered to heed my message. This annoys me even more. I modify the message in every folder to say “If I see any more activity in this Dropbox without hearing from you, I will delete this account”. That should work right??

It is now April 2013. She has added another folder and a document called “julia smiths essay”, which bizarrely only contains “Julia Smith” and no actual essay. 

So today, I deleted her account.

Here are some common French phrases that you won’t learn from a class or the Rosetta Stone:

“ça marche” - “that works”
“ouias” (pronounced like “way”) - “yeah”. If you respond “ouias” instead of “oui”, you might pass as a non-tourist for just a little bit.
“bon journée/soirée” - “have a good day/night”. Say this when you’re leaving.
“carafe d’eau” - “pitcher of tap water”. Use in restaurants to get free water.

You can also use “bon/bonne” in front of almost any word to wish someone well. Here are the ones I’ve encountered, not too hard to figure out their meaning:

bonne année
bon appetit
bon après-midi
bon café
bonne chance
bon courage
bonne dégustation
bonne fête
bon film
bonne route
bon spectacle
bon sport
bonne vacance
bon weekend

As an American living in Paris, there are definitely some noticeable differences in the way society behaves. 

Things I like:
1. The food is pretty awesome. I like the cost of the food less, but the food is still good.
2. French food uses parts of meat that aren’t commonly found in the USA, like “head and tongue of veal” or any internal organs.
3. People are generally nice when you attempt to speak in French. 
4. The French “pffft” is used all the time to convey so many emotions. 
5. This may contradict #2 of things I dislike, but Paris is super pretty.
6. There are a lot of things to do, so many museums just filled with really cool stuff. 

Things I dislike:
1. The subway stations stink of urine and feces. Réaumur-Sébastopol is the worst, it reeks incredibly bad.
2. There is dog poop everywhere. Literally. I have never before seen so much dog shit.
3. Restaurants have no room. You will literally sit beside the next party. You might have to move your table to let them out.
4. If waiters notice your accent when you speak French, they will constantly address you in English, even if you want to practice!!
5. The service in restaurants is terrible. I understand that there are just fewer waiters because they actually get paid a normal salary (instead of living off of tips), but the service is still bad.
6. People in movie theaters are louder and ruder, constant talking, kicking the chairs, etc. 
7. No one watches where they are walking. You either have to constantly weave around people, crash into them all the f-ing time, or also learn to ignore the path in front of you. People actually do look at where they are going, but if they see you see them, they refuse to move to one side because they assume you will do it. If they see you not paying attention, then they will actually move. 
8. French people have no sense of space (at least, a difference sense than Americans). They think their bodies take up less space than it actually does, so they might (accidentally) hit you in the face on the train or knock over your food as they sit down at a restaurant or smack you in the chest as they put on their jacket.
9. If they do accidentally hit you or run into you or do something that is otherwise their fault, it takes them awhile to apologize (if they even apologize).

Living in Paris means I can jokingly sneer at the tourists, but in reality, I want to do the touristy things too. Here are some tips to make the Eiffel Tower experience more enjoyable :)

1. Buy your tickets online!! See that long line at the Eiffel Tower?? You don’t have to be a part of that!! Just buy your tickets online, go up to the uniformed guy standing at the VIP entrance, show them your online tickets, and BOOM!! You are now in the elevator line :)

2. Look for tickets online waaaaay in advance. I wanted to buy tickets for my sister’s visit, but there was only 2 times open the entire week, both during my work day. If you know when you want to go, don’t delay in getting your tickets early.

Note: I didn’t end up going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but this worked just fine for my sister’s trip.

The first car rental experience we had was horrific. You can read all about how terrible Europcar is here. Our second experience was with Avis, and it was smooth and easy.

My sister and her fiance visited us over Thanksgiving 2012, and they wanted to see more of France than just Paris. In particular, they are board game nerds and wanted to visit Le Havre, a port city that is featured in one of their favorite board games.

So we rented a car for a day from Avis. Now we’ve learned from our previous experience: don’t rent from Europcar, and don’t rent from the rail station. Thus we rented from Avis located at 5 Rue Bixio, near Invalides.

Everything went quickly and smoothly at the rental place. They even told us that if we get back late, we can return the car at their Montparnasse location, with no extra charge!! This was seriously already going better than our last experience.

The car turned out to be the same type of ugly car we got from Europcar, but no matter. It worked fine, and the trip was really fun.

When we got back, we drove straight to the Montparnasse garage (which HAS a sign for Avis). We left the keys with their attendent, and because I was so pleased with Avis, I attempted French:

Derniere fois, nous avons loye une voiture de Europcar, et c’est terrible. Cette fois, c’est tres bon!!

So far, we have had two car rental experiences in Paris that differed greatly! The first experience was extremely frustrating, and the second experience was easy and relaxing. This is the full account of our experience with Europcar. The second experience is here.

We wanted to explore some of the beautiful Loire Valley chateaux so we rented a car for the weekend. We booked a car through autoeurope.com, which gave us a reservation for Europcar at the Montparnasse station. The rental car agencies in the Montparnasse station are tricky to find as they are located deep inside the station on an upper floor. After wandering around the station, we ended up in a parking lot with promising signs but no offices. It took almost 20 minutes of back and forth before we finally got to the right place.

The reservation went pretty smoothly as the lady spoke some English. She gave us a (badly-printed) map of the station and told us where to find the car. It was another trek through bridges and stairways to a parking lot on the other side of the station, and then down to the -4 floor. The car was supposed to be parked in a specific spot, but it wasn’t there. We tried to use the remote key to turn on the car lights and horn so we could locate it, but the car apparently is quite silent and we couldn’t see the lights. Finally another group of people saw the car lights for us and waved us over. This whole process took more than an hour longer than planned.

The rental car itself was ok. It was a Citroen C3 car, kind of dumpy and ugly with hazy white paneling and really unintuitive radio and AC controls. But it worked fine enough for chateaux hunting.

At the end of our weekend, we drive back to Paris rather late, arriving around midnight. The rental office is closed, so we thought that we would park the car and return the keys in the morning (we are lucky that we live nearby…if we had to catch a plane or something, we would have been in trouble). We drove to the garage that we thought we got the car from, but there was no sign for Europcar. There were signs for Avis and Budget, but THERE ARE NO SIGNS FOR EUROPCAR IN THE MONTPARNASSE GARAGE. This was extremely confusing, so we drove around the area for another 30 minutes looking for Europcar signs.

It’s almost 1am, and we are getting desperate, so we drive into that garage anyways, hoping that there would be more signs below. At the -3 level, the road to the -4 level is blocked, and we still have not seen any signs for Europcar. We drive around the -3 level anyways as there were cars coming in behind us. FINALLY, we stumble upon an entrance to the -4 level, and we manage to find the Europcar parking area. To return your car, look for the Avis sign, drive to the -4 floor, and miraculously, you will be in Europcar’s area. There will be no signs to help you.

The next morning, before we go to work, we go to the Europcar office to return the keys. The lady at the desk says, brightly, “oh you could have just dropped it in the keybox!” This is totally the last straw in the experience and we just yelled all of our frustrations at the lady. “You didn’t tell us there was a keybox. We didn’t see any obvious location for a keybox. There are no signs for a keybox. Speaking of signs, there are no signs above the -4 garage level indicating that Europcar exists in that garage. You would think there should be AT LEAST ONE SIGN at the entrance telling people where to return their cars and a sign for the keybox.” There is apparently a keybox you can use to return the keys if you return after the office has closed. No one knows where it is and the rental office won’t tell you about it unless you ask.

The lady managed to weakly smile and said “we aren’t allowed to have a sign…” WHAT THE F@#$ Europcar, how is a car company, renting space from a garage, not allowed to have a sign!? This is a completely failure on Europcar’s side. It didn’t help that the lady then said “if it makes you feel better, I was also confused when I first got here…”. No, that does not make me feel better. That makes me feel like you need to tell your boss that your customers have a legit complaint and they need to address it.

Clearly, Europcar has a signage problem.

The last issue we had with Europcar was the location surcharge. It turns out that when you rent a car from an airport or rail station, it costs an extra 40 euros (which was $59 on my credit card, increasing the total cost by 50%). To be fair, it is written on your rental contract (which I actually read but didn’t notice), but no one will mention it to you when you get the car and it will silently show up on your credit card statement a couple of days later. Do not rent from an airport or rail station. 

In sum, do not rent with Europcar if possible.

One more thing, if you need to refill your tank, the only gas station we found was a BP at 47 Boulevard de Vaugirard.

Update:

I submitted multiple feedback surveys and complaints to both Auto Europe and Europcar about this experience. Interesting fact, Europcar’s feedback form does not allow these punctuation marks: < > ?? & | ; $ % ’ + \

How do you complain about billing without a dollar sign? How do you write contractions and show possessiveness without the apostrophe?? How do you ask these questions without a freakin’ question mark!?!? Why is the question mark forbidden TWICE??

I then submitted another feedback form telling them that they are paying their web developers too much. I’m in a spiteful mood :)

Since we were going to stay in France for longer than the 90-day tourist allowance, we needed to get a residence permit or carte de séjour from a préfecture in France. 

This process has always been described to us as long and frustrating and complicated. We had a totally different experience.

About two months after we settled in Paris, we planned a day off of work to deal with the carte de séjour. All the advice from colleagues and online forums said that the lines at the préfecture would be long, so on a chilly October Thursday, we got up before sunrise to get a head start on the process.

Our first mistake: we went to a préfecture de Paris instead of a préfecture de police de Paris. Big difference!! Our first indication that something might be wrong was that there was no line…and everyone said there would be a long line. Turns out that a préfecture de Paris doesn’t deal with residence permits. This was frustrating, not just because we were in the wrong place, but also because this préfecture de Paris was really out of the way, on the west side of Paris, and far from various metro stops. Don’t go to the préfecture de Paris at 5 rue Leblanc for your carte de séjour.

So we were told to go to Cité, in the smack dab center of Paris, where the main préfecture de police is. When we arrived, we found a really long line!! That gave us hope that we were at least in the right place. Although the line was really long, it moved at a decent pace as it was just a line for security. Once inside, we were directed through the building, up some stairs, and down a hallway into a reception area. We sat down with the clerk, pulled out our documents, and in broken French, told him what we needed. He then responded in broken English that we were in the wrong place. We needed to go to a place that specifically deals with student/internship visas. If you’re a student or an intern, the main préfecture might not help you.

The clerk gave us the address, metro Porte de Clignancourt, all the way on the north side of Paris. No problem, the metro line 4 would take us straight there. We walked a couple blocks and spotted a line of people. After standing behind them for a few minutes, we realized that this line was specifically for refugees seeking asylum (whoops!!) and we actually needed to be in the next building, which had no line outside. We followed some signs and came to a large room filled with students!! The first lady we spoke with directed us to another person, who seemed very confused when we told him that it was our first request for residency. He told us that we were, again, in the wrong place, and needed to go to metro Cité Université for initial processing. The préfecture for students won’t initiate a carte de séjour process for you during the first months of school.

So we were on the north edge of Paris, and now we needed to go to the south side of Paris. Luckily, there is a commuter train that is fast and direct! Cité Universitaire is the university of Paris, which means they should know how to deal with foreign students. We wandered on campus a bit, asked a few people where to go, and finally found the room that processed residencies for students. We filled out some forms, gave them some paperwork, got a medical exam appointment, and that’s it!! Once we found the right office, the process took less than 2 hours!! Completely different than the full-day horror stories we were told.

All in all, the whole scavenger hunt, which took us to every corner of Paris, lasted about 6 hours. 

Epilogue:

The medical exam process was also easier than expected. We immediately had an appointment instead of waiting for a summons in the mail. The earliest appointment was about a month away. The exam was extremely efficient, took less than 2 hours total, involved an eye chart test, a chest x-ray, and a quick doctor’s checkup. And they gave us our carte de séjour on the spot!!

View Carte de Sejour adventure in a larger map

Whether you work during the weekdays or just want to make the most out of your Paris visit, here is a list of my recommended museums with quick info about days they are closed and days they are open late. I have listed these in rough order of my recommendation :)

Chateau de Versailles:
closed Mondays 

Musée National d’Art Moderne (at the Centre Pompidou):
closed Tuesdays
open until 10pm all other days

Musée des Arts et Métiers:
closed Mondays
open until 9:30pm on Thursdays

Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (not to be confused with the Pompidou):
closed Mondays
open until 10pm on Thursdays

Palais de Tokyo (next to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris):
closed Tuesdays
open until midnight all other days

Musée d’Orsay:
closed Mondays
open until 9:45pm on Thursdays

Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie:
closed Mondays

Cité de la Musique:
closed Mondays

Musée de l’Orangerie:
closed Tuesdays

Musée Rodin:
closed Mondays
open until 8:45pm on Wednesdays

Musée des Égouts (sewer museum):
closed Thursdays and Fridays

Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme:
closed Saturdays
open until 9pm on Wednesdays

Arab World Institute:
open until 9:30pm on Fridays

Musée du quai Branly:
closed Mondays
open until 9pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

Grand Palais:
open until midnight on all days

Palais de la Découverte:
closed Mondays

Musée du Louvre:
closed Tuesdays
open until 9:45pm on Wednesdays and Fridays

Eyal shared a revelation with me.

English: I am hungry.
French: J’ai faim.

English: I am full.
French: Je n’ai plus faim.

Taking this with the general attitude that the French have towards food, it seems that the language and lifestyle are in sync here. Americans don’t stop eating until they are full (or in Louis CK’s case, until they hate themselves :P), whereas the French stop eating when they are no longer hungry. Well no wonder there are no fat people in France!!

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to prove any cause or effect here, just making an interesting observation. Also I realize there are other translations, but this seems to be common among French-speakers in France.

I knew I was going to be in France for almost half a year, but my insurance in the USA wouldn’t cover my prescription for that long. I would have had to pay a couple hundred dollars to stock up for the whole trip!

Instead, I thought I’d test myself by getting my prescription while in France. There aren’t many (English) resources online about how it works, except for one blog post, so I am adding another blog post about this to the Internets in hopes that it helps someone else.

First, it’s super easy to get birth control pills in France!! You don’t even need a prescription!!

Walk into any pharmacy (marked by those obnoxious green blinking LED signs), and say “Je voudrais des pilules contraceptives”. I handed my current pill pack to the nice pharmacist so that she could look for the right hormone combination, but they didn’t have the same pills. So she brought out a huge book that listed all the drugs and pills, found something similar enough, and sold me a 3-month pack for 7 euros!!

At one point, she asked me why I didn’t get them back in the USA, and in broken French and English and hand gestures, I told her about the insurance issue. She gave me a horrified look and said “but it’s something you need! How could they not cover that!?” You’re telling me, lady.

So…if birth control is so cheap and accessible in France, what’s to stop me from stocking up here before going back to the USA?? Hmm…

EDIT, Jan 17, 2013:

Turns out that you DO actually need a prescription to get pills…not sure how I got away with it the first time. I went back to the pharmacy to get a refill, and every pharmacy said I needed to get a prescription. I said, “well someone sold me pills before without a prescription…” and one of the pharmacy ladies replied “well some people break the law, people kill other people too.” I thought that was an unnecessary comparison.

Anyways, I made an appointment with a doctor at the American Hospital of Paris, where thankfully most people speak English. They actually had appointments the same week! My appointment cost 80 Euros and took less than 10 min.

Tips on visiting the Montparnasse Tower:

1. The Montparnasse Tower is the tallest building within the city limits of Paris. However it’s not the tallest structure as the Eiffel tower is about 50% taller! So the view from the Eiffel tower may be higher, but the view from the Montparnasse will INCLUDE the Eiffel tower :P so that’s a bonus.

2. You can buy your tickets online, but unless the ticket line is suuuper long, there’s not really an advantage because the entrance line is pretty much the same as the ticket line, and I don’t know if they would let you jump past the ticket line. Also the online tickets are valid for a year from the date of purchase. Tickets were 13 euros pp.

3. Paris during the day and Paris during the night are both spectacular, so we visited about an hour before sunset to catch both. You can take pictures from the panoramic floor (56th story), go up to the terrace for more views, go back to the panoramic floor for a drink, and then do the terrace again when the sky is dark and the city is lit up.

4. The large tour groups (usually Asian) typically don’t have much time at each location, so they don’t get up to the terrace. Less people = yay :)

5. The Eiffel Tower lights sparkle every hour on the hour at night, which is a treat to watch from the Montparnasse.

Note: we visited the Montparnasse Tower mid October 2012. It was chilly at the top.

So I live in Paris right now and trying to see as much as possible. This means that I end up doing things that are, unfortunately, very touristy. Here are some tips to make the touristing experience less frustrating.

Tips for seeing Versailles:

1. Buy your ticket online!! You can get a “passport ticket” that gives you access to the main palace, the gardens, Le Grand Trianon, and Le Petit Trianon. In the summer, there are special days where the garden fountains spray to music.

2. Plan for a full day trip. We are not early morning people so we didn’t get to Versailles until noon-ish. If you go during high tourist season, the line into the main palace will be heartbreakingly long. We walked into the main courtyard, saw the line, and almost lost hope in seeing anything at all that day, but it turned out that the line was just for the palace. If the line is long, go around the side directly into the gardens!! Go explore the gardens and the Grand and Petit Trianons first. These all have considerably less people, are just as beautiful and interesting, and not to be missed because of a long line. When you’re done with these and there are 2-3 hours left before closing time, *this* is when you should go back to the main palace. The line will be considerably shorter (or non-existent in our case).

3. Don’t miss the Grand and Petit Trianons. Sure they are smaller and a bit of a walk, but they are totally worth it. Definitely walk around the grounds and gardens around the Trianons, especially the little hamlet. Super cute and quaint.

4. Pack a picnic. This saves you money (typical touristy place, so it’s expensive) and time. There might be signs that discourage picnicking in non-designated picnic areas, but people don’t really listen to that (although I would suggest illegally picnicking next to someone with a larger illegal picnic). Also it’s really beautiful to sit by a fountain or the lake and enjoy a baguette with sausage and cheese. Also the swans and ducks will come by to share your baguette.

5. Wear good walking shoes. Versailles is huge and you will walk a lot.

Note: we did this trip at the end of September 2012.

It’s so easy to jet around Europe these days with discount airlines. Eyal and I wanted to go to Warsaw for a weekend, so we booked a flight through Wizz Air from Paris Beauvais to Warsaw Modlin. What we failed to realize was how far these airports actually are from the main city. Actually no…we knew that. What we actually failed to realize was how much of a hassle it would be to get to/from those airports!!

Paris Beauvais airport is far from Paris. You have to take a 1.5-hr train (an actual train, not the commuter rail) ride from Paris Nord to Beauvais train station. Easy enough, just plan for enough time.

Then you have to figure out how to get from the Beauvais train station to the airport. This is not an easy task. We thought we would just take a taxi, but that didn’t work for us. We waited at the taxi stand but didn’t see any taxis in the 30 min we stood there. The taxi phone number also doesn’t work. You could take the shuttle bus which comes every half an hour, but that’s another half an hour ride with stops along the way, and we didn’t plan enough time for that. We lucked out that an illegal taxi was willing to take us for a ripoff of 20 euros, but at that point, we were pretty desperate.

Tip: Plan at least an extra hour to take the shuttle!!
Tip: Alternatively, take a bus directly from Paris to Beauvais airport. I think you have to make reservations and plan for at least 3 hours travel time.
Tip: Illegal taxis are basically people who use their own cars to make more money. They are not insured like taxis and don’t follow the set rates. Use at your own risk!!

Lucky for us, the flight waited for us (read: the flight was delayed) or we might would have missed it anyways.

On the return trip, we took a bus that went directly from Beauvais airport to Paris Porte Maillot. Super comfortable and convenient.

Ok!! Warsaw Modlin airport…also not in Warsaw. It’s possible to take the train from Modlin to Warsaw, but our flight got in pretty late and the trains run like once an hour at night.

We ended up renting a car, making the whole trip easier. When I looked for car rentals online, the fine print said that we would need an international drivers license, which we don’t have. So we decided to just show up at the airport car rental (we used Avis) and hope that they’ll give us a car without the international license, and they did!

We got a GPS for the car, totally worth it as we didn’t have data for our phones and we don’t know any Polish. Also the GPS knows what the speed limits are for each road and will even warn you if there are speed cameras. The downside is that the GPS didn’t know about the Modlin airport, making it quite difficult to find our way back. We ended up in a visitor’s center in a park to ask for directions and a paper map.

See Eyal’s posts for details of our Warsaw trip: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

Note: we did this Paris to Warsaw trip in September 2012.

Eyal and I had a layover in Iceland on our way from Washington DC to Paris, and I thought it would be fun to ask for a long layover and explore Iceland for a few hours. This turned out to be an excellent idea!

If you have never been to Iceland before, you are definitely missing out on an incredible gem. Even the few hours we spent there convinced me that we absolutely need to return to fully explore the island. We seriously thought we had landed on Mars! The landscape looks incredibly different than anything I’ve seen as it has been sculpted by volcanoes. Also the morning fog added to a general creepy feeling as we drove around. Also being incredibly sleep deprived added to the Mars-ness of the place.

Some thoughts:

1. We didn’t manage to find any rental car deals beforehand (though we didn’t plan more than a couple weeks out), and the cost of an on-site rental turned out to be pretty comparable to what I remember seeing online. This gave us the ability to be more flexible (in case the flights changed or we were too tired to explore) but also had the risk of there not being any cars available. The cost of a rental car for 1 day was about 200 USD. It might be more cost effective for longer rentals.

2. We went to the Blue Lagoon (close to the airport and totally weird) and then drove to Reykjavik for the day. We had a few hours to kill before driving back, so we took the long way back. Highly recommend just driving around! The scenery can change on a dime, from meadows to bubbling geysers to looming mountains to black lakes!! Something would catch our eye and we would pull over to check it out.

3. We tried whale but sadly not puffin. Whale was very much like a cross between a cow and a tuna. Not sure why that was surprising, not sure what I expected. I’ll bet puffin tastes like chicken from the sea…I’ll report back when I try it :P

4. There is a gas station near the airport to refill the car. The tricky part was getting the pump to accept our credit cards and work. A bunch of other people (presumably also tourists) got frustrated and left, but finally someone who seemed to know what he was doing managed to get it working, and we immediately asked him for help. So yeah, I suggest doing that :P

5. The car we rented had heated seats…totally worth it!! It’s pretty chilly in August.

So yeah, if you have time to spare in your travels, make your layovers longer and more adventurous!! Also go to Iceland, many times, you won’t regret it.

Notes: this trip was in August 2012 at Keflavik airport in Iceland. See Eyal’s post for more adventure-centric details on this trip.

Even though the 2012 USA elections are over, I would like to post this animated gif that Eyal and I made. It’s a recursive acronym!!

Made with Processing.