Nothing works!
From the outside, life in France does seem perfect but sometimes it’s just frustrating. Here it is, the week before Christmas and nothing is working. The electricity, the washing machines and now the trains are going on strike. On top of it, my resident card expired in October and due to delays in government administration, I’m stuck in France! Here’s what happened….
Last Monday, I put on the kettle to make a cup of tea. I had lit a couple of candles and was looking forward to a cozy moment on the couch, when all of a sudden the lights went out. I’ve lived in a lot of houses so I am very familiar with fuse boxes. I went and turned the fuse back on and boom! out again. Hmmmmmm. In the beginning I figured it was just a security thing. Perhaps the dishwasher was having a problem. I wasn’t too worried. Well, as each day past, it got worse. I’d turn on the stove, microwave, anything and boom! Out went the lights. I had tried everything and I couldn’t figure it out. My landlord happened to swing by that day so I told him about it. He gave me some line about how I must be using too much electricity. Hmmmmmmmm, don’t think so.. I’ve been here for 1.5 years and nothing like this has ever happened. I waited.
Well, Friday came and as I was on my own I decided to try something new for dinner. I’d seen a lot of people cooking butternut squash whole in the oven for the holidays. I had one and decided to give it a try. Easy, I know, but a different way to do it. After spraying the oiI and sprinkling a bit of salt and pepper, in it went. Easy and healthy. I was psyched.
Well, you guessed it, boom! Out went the lights. I was starting to get annoyed. It was now Friday night and everything would be closed for the weekend. I decided not to stress and sent an email to my rental agents. I figured we’d get it sorted out on Monday. The squash managed to cook in the oven that had been on for about 15 minutes as I just left it in the heat for awhile. Yum! We were unable to cook all weekend
Sunday came and I decided it was time to get some laundry done, as we were on our way the following week to celebrate Christmas in Amsterdam. There are 2 washers and dryers here so I thought I’d get it all done that day. Wrong again! When I went back down down to put the laundry into the dryer, one of the machines was stuck and i couldn’t open the door. Uggh!!!!!
I washed everything, again hoping that the machine would reset. I looked on YouTube and tried to figure out the codes so that I could open the door to the machine. Nothing worked. So after I had exhausted all possibilities, I decided that Monday would be the day that we got everything fixed. A professional was needed
Monday came and the landlord and the rental agents did their best to figure out the problem. We started with all of the usual things (that I’d already done) and finally, he went and looked at the meter. For some reason, our electricity level was set very low. He didn’t understand. He called EDF (the electric company) and found out that somehow, they had made a mistake and that they would need to find out what happened before they could fix it. It looked like someone had called in to lower their maximum output and they mistakenly changed ours instead. How this happened, nobody knew, but now they needed to investigate. This went on and on. By Wednesday, there had been 4 (very long) phone calls and promises of changing the energy level. Nothing happened.
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I was getting ready to make a call to the landlord for an update, when I saw on the news that the trains were going on strike. Pia and I are meant to be taking the train on Sunday. Why the train? Well, I still haven’t received my updated resident permit which expired in September. I have been told not to leave the country for fear of not being let back in so didn’t want to risk taking a plane. They don’t really check your passport on the train.
Talk about complete aggravation!!!! It is now Thursday. This morning I woke up to find that my electricity had been put back on. The washing machine still isn’t fixed, however, and we are still trying to figure out how we are getting to Amsterdam.
This was week where nothing worked and it took a whole week to resolve.