The French Caveat

France is great, I really enjoy living here. Of course I miss people and places in the US, but if I had to choose a city to live in for the rest of my life, Paris would be very high on the list. It's pretty, but not in a sanitized way. It's exciting, but also predictable. I'm just saying it would make a good long term partner.

The thing is, however, in France, whenever something is good, there has to be this other "thing." Nothing is free (above all, not my internet service which is called "Free"), there's always a caveat. The medical care is top-notch and "free", but we all know how my experience went dealing with them. The Parisian métro is great, except when they are on strike. France is great, except...

The latest installment is Vélib, the fantastic public bike system. There are about 700 stations all around Paris, about 300 yards away from each other. At these stations are about 10,000 bikes that you withdraw from one station and return to any other. You can get a yearly membership for 29 euros or pay one euro for each half hour. With the yearly membership you get one half hour free each time you take a bike. Really, it's an awesome system. Fantastic, every city should have one...

Except...

In deciding whether or not to sign up, he obvious choice was to take the yearly membership. Naturally, you could sign up online. I found the site easily enough and began filling in my information. Name, birth date, nationality, address, all of the standard fields were there. I provided my credit card number for the one time fee and my bank information as a guarantee against me stealing, destroying, and/or selling their bikes. Even better, I was able to associate my Vélib subscription with my magnetic métro pass so I only need to carry one pass with me.

Anyway, the whole process is going great. I'm thinking that I'm going to hit the "Subscribe Me" button and be able to take my pass outside and cruise around for 30 minutes. It will be great, it will be fantastic, I'll fall in love with Paris all over again. So there I am, hopes up, shoes on, ready to ride. I click the button and, and, and....

It gives me a PDF that they have filled in with my information from the previous pages that I am now supposed to print out and mail in. Huh? What? Gwah?

IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!!! All that typing that I just did, now it will have to be re-typed by some French administration slave, duplicating the opportunity for transcription errors, costing everyone money (but that's what the VAT is for), clogging the mail (though providing jobs for people like the communist revolutionary postman, Olivier Besancenot, who ran for president a few months back).

Wow, France, you really had me there. I really thought that something was just going to be awesome from start to finish, without any caveat. You got me. You got me real good. I should have known better, I really should have. And really, it doesn't change anything between us, you're just like I always knew you were, really wonderful, except...