View off the balcony of Valbonne apartment.
If you've got this, it means I put you on my list of people who I'm hoping might like to get my updates on life here in Europe. Please let me know if you don't want 'em, and I'll take you off of here. I'll hopefully send something every couple of weeks, whenever there is something to tell. I've added addresses of Seattle friends and theater pals, regular email buddies and family. So, here goes.
I've settled in very well in Valbonne (say 'Vahl-BONE'), a 16th-century post plague town with a 12th-century Chalasian abbey. The town is laid out in a grid, due to the influence of the rather organized monks who lived here, and the population was refurbished by importing Italian artisans to make pots from the local clay, found in Vallauris and Biot. The history of this region is invasion after invasion - Romans, French, then imported Italians after the plague, then at the turn of this century it became a vacation mecca for Brits and Americans (especially those who felt the climate would help them recover from tuberculosis, particularly around Menton). Also a certain amount of Scandinavians. And at some point France lost the Algerian war, and Algerians who sympathized with France had to flee Algeria and came to France, and mostly settled in Marseille or the Riviera, since the climate is similar. Also up the coast we have Monaco, with about 30,000 residents, of whom only 5,000 are native Monegasque. So, perhaps I'm a stranger, but who is native here anymore?
The latest wave, I guess, is the geeks flocking to the high tech center of Sophia Antipolis, which is where I work. It was planned in the 60s, and now is very popular - office space is hard to come by, although that's also due to a strict building code requiring preservation of forests.
So that's the history lesson for today.
Valbonne itself, by the way, is picture-perfect and full of cutesy shops and people who speak English, including an English bookstore, and has a cinema that generally shows arty films in the original version. Some folks advised me to live out near the water (only 5km away as the crow flies), in Antibes or Cannes, since it's so happening out there and I'm a single gal. But our office admin, Agnes, told me about Valbonne, and it has pubs, restaurants, and lots of young professionals like myself. And she found me this incredible apartment, complete with friendly neighbors who even speak English and a funky artistic landlady who lives in the Caribbean most of the year.
I live right by a succession of little shops: two boulangeries/patisseries, an Italian food store, a produce market and a boucherie (butcher). If I leave my bedroom window open, I get the smell of rotisserie chickens wafting up from the big glass roasting oven out in front of the boucherie during the day. I stopped into a few stores today as I arrived home, and now I'm snacking on a black radish with bread and butter, and some coarse salt. Sounds weird, but it's mighty good.
I must leave this all behind for a while come Sunday, as I depart for Belgium to start on my first project, for which I am engineer, tech writer, and manager. I'm it. Fortunately it is to work on something with which I am familiar, and so hopefully I will have time to savor the sights, and the chocolates, of Brussels. And so my weekend from now to then is mostly packing, planning, cleaning, etc.
I'm officially a resident of France now; I went to the prefecture with the lawyer today and we obtained my Carte de Sejour. So I can leave France and come back in without problems, and work legally in most of Europe. In order to get this document, I had to enter France under a long-term visa (which required Attestations from OSI Folsom and Sophia, my signature, a stamp from the prefecture, and a trip to the Consulate in San Francisco with all of the above, my passport, photocopies of everything and $104 in cash, and I had to be searched, go through a metal detector, and fill out a form in French - and that's the streamlined method for computer professionals!).
Entering France caused an appointment to be made for a Visite Medicale, to make sure I'm medically fit to live in France, and a work permit was generated. I had to drive up to Nice, a city that is dreadful to navigate, and find the Centre Medicale, which was spread out through an indoor mall/office building, and wander around trying to figure out where they would be examining foreigners. Fortunately, I saw an admin behind a desk in Radiology who looked nice, so I went in and asked in my tortured French, "Ou est le Visite Medicale pour le Carte de Sejour?" "Ici!" She replied - right here. Well, radiology, um, okay.
So I found it, and had a chest x-ray, eye exam, urine test, and height/weight/blood pressure/pulse all noted down. I had been told they would give me the certificate, but they explained that it had to be mailed to OSI because OSI had requested my documents, not me. Now, you need that to get the Carte de Sejour, but as of today, two weeks later, it hadn't shown up. We went to the prefecture planning to get a three-month temporary one, but for some reason they actually gave me the real one, probably because they know and trust my lawyer, and if I have to come back, it's just more work for them. So, this is classic French administration. Voila! Oh, and we had to present my passport and visa, my lease agreement and an electric bill as proof that I really live here, the original Attestations from OSI Folsom and Sophia, two photos of me, photocopies of everything, and 220 ff (you can't give them cash; you have to go to a window and purchase certain stamps for that amount). France: Land of the Procedure. Culture shock.
Typically as you arrive in a new place like this, you have a tide of excitement that carries you a while, and then occasionally the difficulties of life get you down. I had a bit of that last weekend, when I was tired of the big scary world and hid out in my lovely apartment. But I think that's natural, and come Monday I was ready to deal with everything again.
Well, I think that's sufficient. Right now, I can hear the Valbonne youth gathering outside on the plaza for their Friday evening hangout. It can get a little loud, since they like to race motorbikes and shout, but they go home by midnight and things settle down. Diana Krall is singing 'Frim Fram Sauce' on the stereo, and I can still hear the abbey chimes in the distance. Bon nuit!
-- C a r o l y n H a s t i n g s
OSI EMEA - Sophia Antipolis, France
"I'm hearing the light from the window,
I'm seeing the sound of the sea..."
- Michael Nesmith, "Rio"
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