See, I'm going abroad next semester, and I will be in Paris from September 3rd to December 18th. This period of time is longer than 90 days, thus I require a long-stay French student visa. And so the fun begins. Anyone wishing to acquire such a visa must bring a big pile of documents IN PERSON to the visa section of their state's French Consulate (mine happened to be 10 East 74th St. in Manhattan) on a set appointment at least two weeks before their departure for France, since the consulate has recently increased the processing time. You will notice that today is August 11th, and with my departure on September 3rd, I was cutting it a bit close. Rescheduling, in the case of my neglecting any document or simply not having a document that the consulate (as I was warned) might randomly choose to request, would really not be possible. In other words, nothing could go wrong. Or else.
So I spent this week gathering documents, copying documents, filling out forms, and figuring out how to get from Penn Station, where our train from Hartford would leave us at 9:20 am, to 10 East 74th St. for my appointment at 10:30 am. This morning, I woke up at 4 am and did a wee double-check that I had everything I needed. Au contraire. I had overlooked a notarized financial guarantee promising that my parents would provide me with a $200 monthly allowance in addition to my college's fully-paid tuition, room, and board. Yes, not just a form, but a notarized form. Mind you, my bank does notarizations for free with almost no wait-time, and probably could have done so yesterday afternoon. But they certainly would not do so at 4 am this morning. Painful. OK then, I print a list of notaries in New York City, and I begin calling them all immediately. I find that several of these notaries provide 24-hour on-site "mobile notary" services. A mobile notary? Almost too good to be true. Almost.
Meanwhile, Mom and I drive into Hartford, park in an all-day lot, and get on an Amtrak train to NYC. Three hours on a train, most of which time I'm repeatedly calling some various notaries. First, I leave messages. Then, a few pick up. No way they can meet me at the consulate at 10 am this morning. Now I'm starting to shit bricks. Finally, one guy calls me back, Mike. He can meet me at the consulate at 10:15 am. $45. Crap. Forty five bucks for a service I could have gotten for free. Goddamnit. Oh well, at least I have a notary, which really is a miracle all by itself. But here's the kicker: A few more of the notaries start to call back. Same-day mobile notary service rates: $60-$80. The way I see it, I saved $35.
Back on the train, Mom and I get into Penn Station. We're ten minutes late, so we can't take the exact subway schedule I had printed out, but the same trains leave almost constantly, so we figure we can pull it off. A VERY kind man directs us to Herald Square Station, where we have to walk before we can take our first subway train. We take the R train to Lexington-59th, from which we take the 6 train (which I was convinced we would miss since we appeared to be on the wrong side of the tracks...) to the 77th St. station, from which we take a ridiculous and very rapid zig-zagging path to East 74th St. After momentary confusion between 7 and 11, I realize that 10 is across the street. And who is there waiting for me? Mike, the miracle mobile notary. I have never been happier to see a mousy man in glasses with a black shoulder-bag. Time? 10:19 am. The form and a copy are signed, notarized, and stamped. A personal check for $47 is written and accepted ($2 extra for the copy). Time? 10:26 am. My appointment? 10:30 am. Harrowing.
This story is nowhere near over. A guard comes out to accept all the people with 10:30 appointments. Once inside, there is quite a line. So I wait, talk to a nice woman who works for the UN and is flying to Paris at 10 pm tonight (I suppose she's in the air now, if all went well), shuffle nervously through my documents for the millionth time, and inch towards the front of the line. Finally, I'm next in line. The woman in front of me takes out cash. Shit. Application fee. Luckily, a nice man has come out to make sure we have our passports ready, and I ask him if he might call my mother in from outside to pay the fee. He snatches my passport and zips down the stairs. Moments later, he re-emerges with my passport, only to say that my mother is not, in fact, outside the door. Oh God. Now I zip down the stairs and out the door to find my mother nowhere in sight. I call her cell phone, and she's down at Central Park. Needless to say, she hurries back, and we are allowed back inside. Now I've lost my place in line and have to wait again, but eventually we get up there, and Mom doesn't want to pay cash (we don't have much for a day in the city) and tries to use my father's credit card (she had recently lost hers somewhere in her room, admittedly because I bought something online and then left it on her bedside table... insignificant detail), which has both his picture and his name on it. He lent it to us for the day and provided us with a written note, signed, with permission to use it. The French woman behind the window does not care. She is in fact rather irritated by our attempt to use my Dad's card, and also by the fact that my mother seems not to have her own credit card. This, I suppose, is the unfriendly consulate employee about which I had been warned. After filling out some useless form, which the woman proceeded to tear in half, we paid the $70 in cash. Thank God Michael took a personal check. Money and passport taken, fingerprints scanned, photograph snapped, I was instructed to sit down and wait for my interview. Meanwhile, I met a UConn student going through the same process, and we ended up being called to our "interviews" simultaneously. The interview consisted of handing over various copies of documents to a MUCH NICER woman behind a window, having those documents stamped, and being told to return on August 24th to pick up my visa. What? Pick up my visa? This endeavor, over which I have been having a week-long anxiety attack, has actually been successful? What a relief.
[INSERT MASSIVE SIGH OF RELIEF]
Now my Mom and I had an afternoon to kill in NYC. Sounds like fun to me. But first, I was starving. All that anxiety and subway-navigating and speed-walking in 90-degree weather will make anyone hungry. Also, I had to find some sunglasses. I had forgotten my Ray-Ban knockoffs and simply had to find another pair. I found one just like mine for five bucks, with 400 UV protection to boot. Now I felt much better. Then we found a nice cheap sandwich shop (after passing up the pricey pizza place we'd found in a AAA guidebook), got some delicious sandwiches, and returned to Central Park. We sat on the grass in the shade, there was a lovely breeze, and my visa application was DONE! Also, I love when fresh basil and mozzarella are actually fresh basil and mozzarella. Even the rolls were good. Plus, the nice woman from the consulate was apparently on her lunch break, since she and a few friends (not including the unpleasant woman from earlier, I noticed) sat down to a little picnic behind us in the park. At this point, I would have almost been happy just to take a nap there in the grass.
Then we pulled out our handy-dandy New Yorker Magazine to locate an interesting art exhibit nearby. The Met looked good, but we wouldn't have more than two hours, so it seemed like kind of a waste of money. Instead, we walked about 10 blocks up to look for a "Bodies Revealed" exhibit at the American Academy museum. We found it just past the Guggenheim, walked in, and found it closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We loitered in the open and air-conditioned gift shop and debated whether we should just go back to Penn Station since we didn't want to shell out for the Met. We were then informed by the two guards at the museum that the $20 admission fee at the Met is in fact just a suggested donation, and that you can donate as little as a dollar and still get in. And so that is just what we did. We saw some beautiful stained glass done by Tiffany (really, it was amazing, massive wall-sized stuff), as well as some lovely sculptures in the New American Wing, and some alarmingly blue porcelain from the 19th century. Alas, soon it was time to get back out on the street and catch a bus back to the station. As we walked back to the bus stop, I spotted a lovely five-dollar red pashmina, and simply had to buy it. Moving on, we got the bus, got on for 50 cents because the driver took pity on my attempt to pay him in cash (they only take quarters, all you hicks from Connecticut), and found our way back to Penn Station, where we bought some delicious muffins from Krispy Kreme, a delicious smoothie, and what turned out to be a delicious salad. It's never hard to find something good to eat in a train station these days.
Though the train was fifteen minutes late, we got home without a hitch, and now I just have to go back one more time before I'm finally ready to go to PARIS!!! I daresay I will have more to blog about then. If a bit less time in which to blog. It's a trade I'm willing to make.
No comments:
Post a Comment