With visa in hand, I was able to request the “Certificat de changement de résidence,” which is French for “since you’re coming to live in France, you can bring your stuff with you without paying customs duty.” The companies involved in shipping my stuff from here to there need it to get through customs.

I poked around on the French Consul in San Francisco site and found the relevant page, in French: https://sanfrancisco.consulfrance.org/spip.php?article1830. A the end of the page is a “cliquant ici” link, which is actually a mailto: with the email address my request should go to, admin-francais.san-francisco-fslt@diplomatie.gouv.fr. I sent email with my passport, visa, and address information, and date of my move, 17 October. The nice diplomat at that address responded with a request for credit card info to charge the $24 fee. And, voila, by return email I have the certificat, a letter with an official stamp and signature.

Time elapsed since my visa appointment on 4 September: barely two weeks.

I have my visa, picked up in San Francisco today. That’s a story for later.

Good from 10 October 2018 to 10 October 2019. This is really happening!

For those following my adventures in moving to France, here’s my experience on the visa  process.

France is one of several countries contracting the visa process to VFSGlobal. Not every consulate is with VFSGlobal yet; my experience is with the San Francisco location. To apply for a visa, I started here: https://france-visas.gouv.fr/. I created an account and started an application. I received a list of all the documents required, and made an appointment to appear in person with my documents (that was today’s adventure). Despite the document that acknowledges receipt of the application, the appointment is at the VFSGlobal office at 315 Montgomery St, not at the French Consulate at 88 Kearny, San Francisco. It’s only about three blocks from one to the other location, but in San Francisco three blocks can involve a significant change in altitude, so for me it paid to get the right location and park as nearby as possible.

What they didn’t tell me: I was one of many people applying for various flavors of visas from any number of countries, mashed into a smallish waiting room. And there was a sign saying that the VFSGlobal staff have no influence on whether your visa is accepted or not. So brushing up on basic greetings in French does no good.

Next, even though there’s nothing on the visa application checklists that says this, I needed a photocopy of my passport and other ID (driver license in my case). But, they made copies for me and charged a buck each on top of the application fee. The application fee quoted on the application site is 99€, which translated to $115, a quite reasonable $1.16 to 1.00€ conversion rate.

And, despite what I read on various blogs and discussion boards, I didn’t need an FBI report. (I should write up that experience, too, later.) In fact, VFS Global staff will take your fingerprints in a final “biometric” step.

What did I bring to persuade French authorities that I’ll be a valuable contributor and not a burden to France? They expected bank account statements (I brought three months’ worth). I also brought and handed over my Social Security statement showing how much SS will be paying me later this month; my latest IBM 401k statement; my latest MorganStanley account statement (IRA and non-retirement accounts); and a statement from my French bank account. Also, a copy of the lease for my initial apartment in Montpellier, and my ticket via Air France. Return ticket was not expected, but it’s cheaper to buy round-trip and just cancel or never use the return.

In one week I can check the visa application site to see status, and, if all goes well, check again after two weeks to see when I can pick up my passport.

My fellow students in Maryon’s very-beginning-French class, via the Alliance Française Silicon Valley in Santa Cruz — which I can recommend — insisted that I make some record of how I go about moving to France in my impending retirement.

So here goes.

I will say at the outset that I intend (knowing that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions) to avoid becoming Yet Another Expatriate who has harrowing yet amusing adventures dealing with those funny French. Enough already. I will tell here what I did and how it went. That’s it. Let’s see how long that lasts.

For starters: How I got to here.

I first visited Paris in July 2010 for a meeting of the ACM SIGCHI executive committee. We were there to set the stage, as it were, for CHI 2013, the organization’s big annual conference that we’d committed to hold in Paris three years hence. Getting an expense-paid trip to Paris while doing voluntary but professionally related work seemed like a good deal. It was.

I enjoyed that trip. I found that waiters were able to understand my minimal French: At least one complimented me on my pronunciation. I learned how to navigate the Metro. I saw some sights in company of the wonderful Elizabeth Churchill (now VP of ACM when she’s not a design exec at Google). I saw enough to know I wanted to come back and see more.

So, come 2013, I was back in Paris for CHI 2013. But I planned ahead and booked something near to a week of pre-conference time to my self, to explore the City of Light and its many museums. I visited the Louvre, saw “Winged Victory” and the “Mona Lisa,” like a good tourist. I visited the Musée d’Orsay and was stunned at my first experience of Van Gogh’s work in person, especially the “Starry Night Over the Rhône.” I visited the Musée Montmartre and strolled by the Lapin Agile. And Espace Dali. The Centre Pompidou. The Guimet. The Galeries Lafayette — no, that was in 2010. The Musée Rodin, “The Thinker,” “The Gates of Hell,” and discovered, like everyone before me, Camille Claudel.

I also made friends with two lovely young ladies who were generous enough to engage in conversation despite my minimal grasp of their native tongue. Carmen at the Pomme de Pain helped me select a lunch combo — sandwich, dessert, beverage — smiled and called out “Ça va?” when I showed up later with a CHI lunch crowd. And Judy (Jeudi? I never asked), the hostess at the hotel’s dining room, who smiled and conversed briefly each morning. Because of these two I learned that the French are not really rude at all, if you’ll just try speaking their language. It is their country, after all.

So, I came home from that trip thinking that I liked France, that maybe it would make a suitable location for my retirement, and that five years was a good timeframe for planning: Long enough to be practical, soon enough to make it real, if I started taking the steps.