Our village center, Annappes, has a church, a bar/cafe, a pharmacy, two restaurants open only for lunch, a grocery store, a take-out pizza place, a cobbler, two bakeries, a hair salon and eight, yes eight, banks.

The town, Villeneuve d'Ascq,  contains three villages, including Annappes and Asqc.  The villages were combined in 1977 and re-named in memory of of 88 men and boys from Ascq who were executed by the Germans in 1944 after the Resistance blew up a train near the village.  No German soldiers had been killed in the explosion.

In our two weeks here, we have visited the bar, the pizzeria, the bakeries, the grocery store, the hair salon (see the new french me above), and five of the eight banks.  Each of these, excepting the pizzeria, are worth a post, but today I focus on on "l'horreur" of trying to open a checking account in France.  Has anyone applied for a mortgage since 2008?  You may have experienced similar hurdles.

Scott's Fulbright information had warned us that opening an account would be difficult, but we didn't expect that the process would bring two middle aged people with advanced degrees and high-school french to our knees. We need an account to pay our rent, and the children's school bills, and most importantly for Scott to be paid his stipend from the Fulbright folks.

First, of course we made the classic mistake of heading for town mid-day, forgetting that stores are closed for 2 hours at lunch.  Later, after Scott headed to work,  I tried to  visit a few banks but couldn't figure out how to the open the doors.  You might think that a confident person would forge through this problem, or perhaps ask for help, but no, I slunk away toward the next bank trying to not to show how embarrassed I felt.

I finally snuck into a bank by closely following a woman as she entered.  I stumbled through my request in french and was told no, they could not help as no one spoke english.  I tried one more bank where again no one spoke english, so I gave up for the day.  The next day I found a receptionist at a bank who was willing to make me an appointment to discuss an account.  She looked really reluctant and I felt particularly unwelcome when she opened a completely blank calendar and suggested a date and time 10 days in the future,  But I was not about to argue.

Meanwhile Scott was trying to work the problem as well.  His Fulbright contact told him that a previous Fulbright fellow had opened an account with a certain bank in Lille.  He called the bank but was told the person would call him back in 4 days.  So a few days later I went to the branch of that bank in Annappes, feeling a little more confident, and hoping we could have a better option than the appointment in 10 days.  "A bank account for someone who doesn't speak French??" they asked me, as if I had asked if I could enter their vault and play with the euros.  "It's not allowed, since you would not understand the terms."  Now back in Richmond, I would not have taken this sitting down, but there is something about not being good at something that really saps your confidence.

 But then I remembered that the Fulbright guy had opened an account with this very bank in Lille.  "Perhaps in Lille?" I asked politely and in french.  "No, impossible." they answered, less politely.

Scott and I argue over who has suffered the greatest humiliation in the past few weeks.  I think being being told to my face, essentially, that my french stinks is worse than his experience later that day when the minute he started speaking to the contact at the bank  she hung up on him.  But then I have to admit he wins for his visit to the police station to follow up on our license plate loss, when he learned people are not allowed in the police stattion without an appointment and he was escorted to the door.

We eventually had the appointment with the bank in town, which also had various embarrassing moments.  We have provided our passports, Scott's proof of work, and much more.  But we won't have an account approved until our landlady provides her identity card, a letter attesting to the fact we are renting from her, and Scott provides proof we paid our taxes in the US.

So for now, we stop at every ATM we see, take out the maximum amount of cash and give the school and the landlady fat envelopes of euros.