The Soup Nazi works at the Prefecture

Do you remember the "Soup Nazi?" He was the fictional character from the 90s TV show Seinfeld who demanded that his customers follow a methodical process in order to receive their soup. If the intimidated patrons missed a single step in the sequence, he shouted "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" I'm fairly confident that the Soup Nazi now works for the French government.

This week, the dreaded time came for us to renew our Cartes de Séjour (residency cards). As long-stay visitors, we need to renew these annually in order to stay in France legally. I've already described the office of the préfecture in a previous post. This time, we found ourselves standing in the huge line that I described in that blog. We arrived at 6 am in order to be ready when the ticket window opened at 8:30. You have to get there that early because only a limited number of tickets are given out each day, and the daily demand is much larger than the supply. At 6 am, there were about 50 people lined on the sidewalk, but when the time came for the doors to open, we ended up with tickets #83 and #84. Why? The line-cutters, naturally. It was interesting -- and infuriating -- to watch people boldly smuggle their way into line. Here's the dance: someone would come up, check out the length of the line, realize they wouldn't be seen by the administrators that day if they went to the end, and subtly sidle their way next to someone who wasn't paying much attention. Sometimes they stood between two parked cars, waiting for an opportune time to jump the line. Greg made himself as big as possible (not hard to do at 2 meters tall) and put on his "angry face" so nobody tried to get directly in front of us.

Ripped this off the web - but our line was similar

Once we secured the tickets that guaranteed our spots, we waited again inside for our numbers to be called. As we waited, we prayed that we'd be blessed with a kind and helpful employee on the other end of the window. Then I combed through the paperwork, double-checking that we had every document listed in the proper order plus photocopies of each. Greg had to go to the photocopier - twice - because I'd forgotten that we needed to be seen individually and therefore had to double up on the copies of our documents. Stacking the documents, I groaned at our horribly sullen photographs, the ones that will end up on our ID cards for the next year (no smiling allowed, or it's "no soup for you!").

Finally, the time came. Our number was called, and our prayers were answered. The lovely woman who processed our documents allowed us to be seen at the same time, which helped tremendously. She patiently endured our limited French, and explained things slowly. This is where the "soup nazi" analogy really fits...although she was kind, there is still a proper procedure to follow. For example, you only answer the questions that are asked, you don't give any irrelevant or extra information. You hand in each document in the correct order, original plus copies, one after another, through the tiny slot in the plexiglass window. Sign here, check here, circle this, verify that. Then fingerprints, final instructions for picking up the documents in 8 weeks, and suddenly it's all over. We stood up, shaking slightly and finally smiling for the first time all morning. It looks like we'll get our soup after all.