Never lose your bank card in France

I don't recommend it at all. Not that I was planning to lose my bank card when I went to pick up a new compression sleeve for my knee (see, it always comes back to the knee SOMEHOW), but still, if I had it to do over again I sure would have paid better attention to where I put that damned card.

Anyway, it took me a few days to realize that my card was gone, but I think it's a fairly logical assumption that I lost it right after buying said knee sleeve, because I remember having a ton of stuff in my hands as I was trying to leave the pharmacy. As a side note, before I continue on the subject of the card, the one good thing about pharmacies here is the service--I waltzed in to by this thing and the pharmcist even fitted me for it! Had me come to a special area, measured my knee, and gave me the one she thought would be the best. Tried it on and it fit like a glove. Well, like a tight glove, since the goal is to squeeze the swelling out, haha. In any case, that's better service than I've gotten at some so-called professional orthopedic places in the States. So if I had to lose my ATM card while buying a knee brace, at least it was while getting a classy one.

So a few days later I noticed the damned card was gone. I looked all over online and on my bank statements to find a number to call, figuring I could just call and cancel the card and order a new one on the spot.

Oh no.

How could it possibly be that easy?

I gave up trying to find a number and made my way over to my bank branch.

Another tangent: banking in France is super complicated (obviously...how could it be any other way). Once you have your company, you also have a "home" branch. So my home branch is a block down the street. The annoying thing is that all major administrative things have to be done at this home branch, and ONLY at this home branch. Any sorts of recurring payments I want to set up have to be done there (which I had to do for my cello rental), for example. And if/when I want to close the account, I can only do it there. If I had kept my Colmar account open, I would have had to "transfer" my home branch status over to one here in Paris, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything without going back to Colmar, haha. Again with the American logic not quite getting you where you need to go here.

Anyway, so I went to my home branch and got the info I needed to cancel the card and order a new one. So then I had to call a number, where they made me go through, in detail, how I lost the card, when, what I was doing, blah blah blah. Once I got through that, they gave me a confirmation number I then had to take back to my home branch for the final step in ordering a new card.

I knew this couldn't possibly be easy, but what can you do, I headed over to my branch. Turns out it didn't take all that long and the woman was quite nice, but the highlight of the whole process was the letter I had to sign. The thing you need to know about French letters is that they're super ornamented with language. It's totally standard to sign with any number of formulae on the order of "I beg you to accept the expression of my highest regards" and things like that. I even have a textbook with a whole list of them.

Anyway, the letter I had to sign began as follows: "Mr. Director, I have the honor to submit to you my confirmation number for my bank card which I lost (then I had to fill in the details)."

HAHAHAHA. Isn't that great? I had the HONOR of reporting my bank card missing. I thought that was hilarious. And totally French.

In any case, who knows how long it'll take the new one to arrive. Of course I have to wait for two envelopes: one with the card and one with the pin. In September I got the card reasonably quickly but the pin took forever, so I was stuck with a card I couldn't use for like a week, haha. Let's hope they've arrived by the time I get back from the States. And with any luck the dudes who fill the ATM machines will be back from their strike so that the few ATMs with cash will stop looking like gas stations during the oil embargo.