Stale Wine With Mouldy Cheese - The 'French' Experience

Sinead, my friend from work, gushes about the French. They have such great taste in everything, their fashion sense is superior, their food is superior, their culture is better, their architecture awesome. In fact they are better at every conceivable thing you happen to mention. As I was up to my eyeballs in veneration for the French, we decided to take a weekend break there finally.

The French embassy in Edinburgh is about an hour and a half’s drive away. After a couple of days of researching, we found we needed – Originals and copies of our passports, resident visas, application form, employment confirmation, bank statements for three months, payslips for three months, return flight booking, hotel booking, travel insurance, marriage certificate, passport size photos where your face was no more than 30mm etc etc…You get the gist - taking into account both our papers, this was a tree worth of paperwork!

Looking at the Embassy website, it seemed they were open 2 hours five days a week, so after juggling a few things at work, we managed to get away precisely in between those hours.

On sound advice, we actually arrived there an hour and a half before opening time and found a queue of people already assembled.

Anyway, a gentleman in a pink shirt came out and gruffly demanded everybody’s passport. So far so good. He then instructed the guard on the door to make sure the elderly gentleman in the front, who at this point looked decidedly unsure of what was being said in strange accents, ‘stayed behind the line’. I should have known. If a man does not have the decency to make a polite request to an older man, and instead chooses to flex his muscles, his sensibility and intelligence is definitely in question, as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, we went in. Another gentleman checked our papers, asked us if this was the first time we’d come to apply, and then at the very next paper, nodded his head in disapproval. ‘This should be on a covering letter’, he said, pointing to my job contract. ‘But your website said to bring proof of employment and this is standard proof of employment I’ve always used, for every other country’s visa’ – this is me, thinking my smooth, cultivated voice always works. Not here – ‘you need a covering letter.’ End of conversation. The moment I tried to explain further why he was making such a big mistake, and why my document with the official seal and full contract of employment, was in fact more authentic than what he was asking for, pink shirt appeared again. Now, he said, ‘you don’t call the shots here, I do. So, you have to leave’. ‘But you should at least look at what I have’ – me again, voice neither suave nor cultured this time. ‘Okay’ – he glances at my document for one and a half nanoseconds and drops it with a flourish – ‘I can’t accept this, now you have to go’. The next time I try to open my mouth, the guard is called for. The poor chap, looking frankly embarrassed and flustered , looks from me to the pink shirted demigod.

On the way home, the conversation in the car is cryptic. I’m still seething and raging while hubby, ever the shining beacon for the dejected soul, takes a more pragmatic view. ‘I’ve been told by friends, nobody gets a visa the first time from the French Embassy…one of the guys in that queue was there for the fourth time.’ Does that make this episode acceptable? I can’t understand how that man could be so rude? Afterall, we were there for a tourist visa, weren’t we? France's economy thrives on tourism, doesn’t it?

‘Hmm. Did you look around you? Every person in that queue was from a so called ‘third world’ country. European Union citizens don’t need a visa to travel to France. The embassy staff are used to being arrogant and behaving badly.’ He recounts more stories from friends/colleagues who’ve been similarly mistreated. People forced to travel umpteen times to the Embassy from distant cities and towns after applications being rejected on flimsy premises. Very rarely does one get a visa first time. So, it’s the fact that I was born in the wrong post code, a la god man, that I have to be treated in a certain manner?

We both rushed back to our respective workplaces. But something at the back of my mind kept nagging. Does my Indian passport make it easier for people to be rude to me? Is an assumption (right or wrong) of a person’s respectability on the basis of his/her nationality a ‘done’ thing?

It’s a wider issue. People, (usually uninformed empty-headed morons) taking for granted their superiority over anyone from the ‘non developed’ world.

I’m immensely proud of my Indian heritage, always have been. I’ve always considered myself fortunate for being born in a land which gives me deep seated roots, anchors me, at the same time instilling in me a strong sense of awareness and jest to achieve whatever the world has to offer.

What do you do though with snotty nosed bureaucratic officials who do not deign to talk in the first place, assuming you have nothing useful to say?

The delightful aroma of fine French wine has certainly turned acrid for me. While I figure how and where to complain about the man’s obnoxious behaviour, my husband has obviously moved on and is in the process of organising a ‘custom made’ letter to the French Embassy. Having considered dropping the whole plan, I have conceded we need to go, more in order not to waste the hundreds of pounds already spent on hotel and flight bookings….But this does leave a bad taste in the mouth.