For me, waiting for an important flight is like my 8-year old self waiting for Christmas morning, except worse. When you’ve matured beyond childhood, you now have the anxiety that comes along with the contradictory feelings of pure excitement and impending doom. Today, I wait for my flight to Europe. But at the beginning of 2017, I was waiting for my flight to Chicago to obtain my French Visa.
Now, I’m extremely detailed when it comes to filling out applications and didn’t leave anything to chance when applying for my trip. But when it comes to the French, maybe you just can’t be too perfect. Aside from reading the instructions on the consulate website a million times, I read others’ articles, advice, and experiences. There are three things you need to know about obtaining a visitor visa that nobody else is talking about.
- You need money.
- It doesn’t matter when, where or how you come about that money.
- And the French consulate does not allow backpacks.
It’s funny now, sure. But here’s the story.
Visa tip 1. You need money to be a visitor in France, and I didn’t miss that fact reading their website one million times—it’s just not there. So as I prepared my application and printed everything I could think of regarding my finances (proof of income, three months of bank statements, investment statements, means of paying for my trip) I was not terribly worried about this affecting my chances. Then, within 60 seconds of speaking to the woman behind the bulletproof glass, I learned that I actually had no chance. The dialogue went something like this…
“When do you leave?”
A: “March 16th.”
“How long will you be gone?”
A: “Six and a half months.”
“You don’t have enough money.”
A: “…What? I have all my accounts there. I think there’s enough.”
“How are you paying for this?”
A: “Savings, it says right there.”
“But you don’t have enough. You need [pause] €1100 per month.”
A: What?! “As you’ll see in my paperwork, I’ve paid for my apartment, flight, and health insurance already. My apartment cost has got to count for the majority of that.”
“Food is very expensive in France. What do you want to do?”
What do I want to do?! I’d like to get my visa, thank you very much. I’m also totally thrown off that it took her 5 seconds to look at a sheet and find the cost of living, yet it took me 2 months to prepare for this appointment. There it was, in true French fashion, the cold cold woman behind the counter temporarily broke my dreams. As I packed up my piles and piles of paper, the tears came and just didn’t stop. And minutes later, the dialogue started back up…
“Why you cry?”
A: Because I’m in Chicago, with everything I need to get a visa except the one thing you didn’t ask me for. Because all I need is this visa to make this trip happen. Because you made me pay to drive eight hours and $50 to park downtown, but I don’t have any money to go to France. And because this is the first time I’ve stopped to think about my decision to move to France.
Visa tip 2. It doesn’t matter when, where, or how you come about your money and you can do it at the last minute, despite what everyone online says. People suggest it would look like you borrowed money if you have large one-time deposits. Well guess what? In the month before my second appointment, I had a number of large one-time deposits. And I was confident doing so because I asked the cold cold French woman what would happen if there were large deposits of money. I asked her, “What if I borrowed a ton of money just to give it right back to that person?” She said, “You just need money.”
So I planned my second appointment one month after my first, on February 1st. I printed umpteen more papers about my finances, waited for my next month’s statement, and was quite confident. I got to security on the first floor of the high rise to check in.
Visa tip 3. “You can’t take that backpack into the consulate.” What?! As someone who carries a very large bag everywhere I go, I can assure you the purse I brought to my first appointment was as big if not bigger than my current backpack. And as a seasoned visitor of the consulate, I did two things that made this more difficult. I flew and took the train in, and only arrived five minutes early. Apparently, stress causes one reaction in me, which is to want to cry at moments like this. As I kept myself from welling up, she said, “You have two options. You can put it in your car or take it to the gym across the street.” Of course, I was already too panicked to listen to directions to the gym. I book it out the door, frantically look around, don’t see a gym, nearly grab the woman closest me and ask her if she knows where a gym is. Thank goodness for that woman. Let me say it again—thank goodness for that woman. I’m in high heels running to the gym, I pay to leave my bag, run back and get upstairs just in time for them to accept my application, and take a stunningly terrible photo of myself.
There you have it. The survival-of-the-fittest approach the French government takes to letting Americans stay in their country. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually think France is full of cold people. But it was a nice reminder that I’m leaving the overly-friendly culture of the US, and the comfort of it as well.