"What fresh hell is this?"
For someone who has made a life of moving, you would think I would know what I am getting myself into each time I break out the boxes. After an embarrassing number of moves, I think I actually do, and I am comfortable with the minor inconveniences that endure for a week or so until my things have arrived and have found their new places in the cabinets and on the walls. But moving within France? This is pain on “a whole nother level” to quote one of my favorite Key & Peele skits. The past two weeks have tested me, brought me to my knees and had me looking skyward with promises to never do this again, just please make it stop.
Everything was going so smoothly up until the moment we were supposed to get on the train in Nice Ville and head to Dijon Ville. We packed with plenty of time to spare. The two movers came exactly on time. The reserved parking sign placed by the city of Nice was located properly and the precious parking space in front of our building was empty and open for their truck. They, like all professional movers in my experience, were skinny and somehow as strong as Atlas. They emptied our place in two hours. They said “Good job” in broken English as they seemed to have really appreciated our organization and preparation.
After they left, we had our apartment cleaned by a team of two women, one of whom brought their child and posted them on the couch to play video games while they did a mediocre job at best. This kind of thing is par for the course. That afternoon we had our furnished apartment inspected by our property manager who had otherwise been incommunicado for the 18 months we lived in Nice. She counted every fork, checked every chair and table, and inspected every square centimeter of the cabinets and bathrooms, and commented on the mediocre cleaning by the women. “Oh la la.” (Never mind that when we moved in, our apartment was filthy.) She didn’t like that our horribly uncomfortable white couch had not been professionally steam cleaned. Again, nothing to get worked up over. This kind of thing is normal and you just have to roll with it. We handed over the keys to the property manager, and then said goodbye to our neighbor, who was already moving his stuff into our apartment from across the hall, as it was now going to officially be his apartment.
Our train was due to depart at 3:15 pm. While we sat and had a final coffee in the station’s café, I noticed on the departure screen about 2:45 pm that our train was delayed. This happens a lot in France. Fine. It’s usually 10–20 minutes, or so. But there was no new time listed, which was weird. At about 3:05pm the board showed the train cancelled. Cancelled? Completely? We went over to the entry hall where the gate was and there were hundreds of people standing around looking very confused, or outright panicked. The train was a double train, meaning that it was two trains connected by the noses of the engine cars. The trains were to travel connected until Lyon and then separate as one terminated and the other continued on to Paris. This meant that A LOT of people were now left stranded in Nice. My phone buzzed and it was an email from the SNCF, the national rail service of France, informing me that the trip was formally cancelled and that I had 48 hours to cancel or rebook. Furthermore, the cause of the delay was that some idiot arsonist had lit a fire near the tracks between Nice and Marseille, so ALL trains going west were cancelled until at least midnight. Good luck everyone, you’re F’d.
Imagine the disruption to people’s lives. The family standing next to us with a teenager and a child looked absolutely dumbfounded. The teenager was yelling at his parents, “Why can’t we go? Can’t we just fly? Where are we going to stay?” I quickly understood the boy was on the spectrum and he was not handling the stress of the situation well. His parents were stoic in the face of his onslaught and I admired their strength in this time of crisis. They were Americans, it turns out, from the Bay Area, and they also spoke Mandarin, so Chien-hui helped them understand what was happening, since they had not received the same email that I had. They were on their way to Lyon, where they had a hotel room waiting. What would they do now? Perhaps call the Airbnb they just left and see if the host could let them check back in? Imagine all of those people all on their phones trying to rebook train tickets, competing for precious seats the next day on trains that were probably all already sold out. We wished them well and they us.
We also had two big problems we needed to solve. The first was that the moving truck was going to be at our new apartment in Dijon at 8:00 am the next morning to unload our stuff. The second was where were we going to sleep that night. We could not take a train anywhere. The second problem was, luckily for us, easier to solve. I texted our neighbor, the one who had just moved into “our” place and told him what had happened. He told us to come back. Another stroke of luck for us was that our upstairs neighbors, Nik and Julie, who you might remember, happened to be away in the US and their place was empty. Our neighbor also happened to have their keys. We texted Nik and Julie back in Chicago and they immediately replied that we could stay, no problem. They wouldn’t even accept our offer of payment. We couldn’t have been more relieved and grateful.
After resolving the accommodation issue, I was immediately on my laptop. First things first, I cancelled the train ticket and initiated a refund. Then I found a last minute flight for 6:00 am the next morning from Nice to Paris and then the only two remaining train tickets from Paris to Dijon. This had us getting into Dijon at noon. That’s the best I could do. I bit the bullet and paid the price.
I had the phone number of our mover so I texted him and explained what happened. I knew they were to meet us at 8:00 am and then they had to get back on the road to Nice and I wasn’t sure how they would respond to me letting them know that we wouldn’t be there until 12:30 pm at the earliest. Now, after unloading us they wouldn’t be on the road until much later and this meant they wouldn’t be getting back to Nice until late night after the seven hour drive. But the news was met with kindness and he told me not to stress. Then he offered to pick us up at the train station in Dijon in the moving truck, which we astonishingly accepted. Amazing.
Twenty four hours later, exhausted, with little sleep, our boxes chaotically piled in the various rooms, we stood in the dining room of our Dijon apartment looking at each other in disbelief. We were home.
But the pain wasn’t to be over. In fact, the heat was about to be turned up, literally. The dreaded canicule (translated loosely as the dog days of summer), a historic heat dome hanging over Europe, was just hitting and the normally mild weather of Dijon, usually somewhere in the mid-70s this time of year, was hovering near 100 degrees. We have no air-conditioning in the apartment, which is entirely common in France, because in the past it wasn’t really necessary. With climate change attitudes will have to change along with it. This year people are dying in huge numbers and the truth is over 200,000 people have died in the past four years here in Europe from heat-related causes. Not joking.
There is a lot of controversy regarding AC in Europe. Most people feel it is an energy waste, and many others have a cultish belief that AC makes you sick. A lot of other people think it will ruin the beautiful architecture of the Haussmannian buildings. But then we also saw a video this morning of people in France fighting over newly arrived AC units at the hardware store like it was Christmas in America and everyone pushing and fighting to get their hands on the latest doll. So it’s complicated, but I think these heat domes are the new normal. We’ve already had two canicules this year, one in May and now this one.
The fear is that buildings will end up looking like this
We parked it in the Hotel Darcy right in the city center and praised the gods of air-conditioning as we entered our room and it was absolutely arctic. We have no such qualms about the precious cold air. We were to stay in the hotel for only two days now, having already missed one with the train snafu, until our furniture came and we could start sleeping in our apartment.
All of it was due to be delivered in the next couple of days, along with our appliances, bookcases, plates, forks, towels, everything we needed to begin living again. Coming from a completely furnished apartment in Nice, we had none of these items and had to buy them all again. It was going to be busy as we received the various deliveries. We had also arranged to have ceiling fans installed in three rooms in hopes that this would help keep things cooler, so we also had the installer coming to do that.
The next morning we walked over to the apartment while it was still fairly cool out. The installers came early, there were two of them, and they put in the fans without any issue. I also convinced them to change a couple of pendant light fixtures for us in the main rooms. That also went smoothly. The air definitely moves now, even if it is hot air. The humidity in Dijon is very low, especially compared with Nice, somewhere around 25–30%, so it’s quite dry. But at least we have very tall ceilings, so that helps. Hey, we used to live in Arizona, we know dryer-air when we feel it.
Then the next morning the appliances came. These poor young guys had to walk the refrigerator, the washing machine, and the dishwasher up the tight twisting stairs of our 126-year old building. Luckily we are only on the first floor (in the US, this would be the second floor). The washing machine was installed with no drama, as was the fridge. But the dishwasher had two issues, one being a leak in the under sink plumbing that was somehow missed by our inspector. The other was that the space cut out to run the hoses and electricity from the dishwasher space to connect to the under sink plumbing in the next cabinet wasn’t big enough. It would require a jigsaw to open it up. That was going to be all on me. Did I have a jigsaw? Of course not. But I would have to worry about that later.
That afternoon the furniture arrived. Again, two young men had to bring up all of the boxes and then build our table, our couch, our nightstands, the TV stand, and our bed. The appliance delivery guys were still here when the furniture came and there were greetings all around as it turns out they knew each other. Our experience thus far is that the men who work delivery-, plumbing-, installation-, and handyman-type jobs in France are usually of Arab descent. That’s what happened here and I can only deduce that they come from the same communities. Bisous kisses were exchanged all round. I know, hot, sweaty, young men exchanging cheek kisses is not something you would ever see in the States, but here it is somehow endearing. In Arabic they gave each other crap as they helped each other move appliances, flip tables, and bring in mattresses, so the community had it’s advantages, if I can say so selfishly.
The bed was missing what is called a sommier, a kind of French box spring, or a mattress platform, really. This meant that the mattress had nothing to rest upon and it just sort of fell inside of the frame, flopping like a dead fish. Worse, it turns out I never ordered one when I bought the bed. I didn’t know, we don’t really see them in the USA, as we have box springs. The guy who sold us the bed had understandably slipped up and just forgot to tell us or add it to our order. After days of not being able to sleep in our own bed—and we were more than ready to do so—but nooo, we were being punked again. To get a new one from the store where we ordered the bed was going to take four weeks. I guess we could have slept on the mattress on the floor, but my back was telling me “F that, Dude, I will make you pay. Try me, I dare you.”
But I was able to find a sommier online that I thought would work and would come in only four days. That’s best we could do. So back to the hotel we went and extended our stay for two more nights. At least we would be getting more AC. The heat in Dijon now being 98 degrees plus for the fourth day in a row.
The next day I took an Uber over to the Leroy Merlin, which is the Home Depot of France, to get the plumbing parts I needed to fix the leak and to get the jigsaw. The guy in the plumbing department spoke English as well as I spoke French, but he could draw really well! He showed me how to fix the leak by drawing how the parts fit together and I was able to do that when I got home. I cut out the base of the under sink cabinet about 3 inches with the jigsaw but only after Chien-hui figured out the chuck on the saw and was able to secure the blade. I wasn’t putting it in far enough apparently and the blade kept flying out when I would start cutting. I was able to get the hoses and power cord under from the cabinet next door where the dishwasher was and wah-lah, the dishwasher worked like a champ.
The bed frame sommier ended up coming early, but it wasn’t the right model. I mean it wasn’t the one I ordered, but it turned out to be the one we actually needed once we saw it open. Dumb luck. We did have to build that together, and it was complicated, but once we did and got everything in place and level with the adjustable feet, the bed was so comfortable. Finally, our first night on our new bed in our new place and it was only 90 degrees. But we had a portable fan hitting us from the side, and the new ceiling fan hitting us from above, both cranked to warp speed, so we managed to get some sleep. Honestly I think we were both just so tired, we could have slept on the ground outside and we would have slept just fine.
The bookcases came yesterday and the two guys who built it were great. They spoke Arabic and French, so I got a good workout in French yesterday. They knocked it out quickly. I was able to put all of my books away and get the boxes out of here. The cutlery came yesterday morning. Our dishes were delivered this morning after three failed attempts. Apparently we need to put our name tag on our mailbox still. Not that the box of dishes would fit in our little mailbox, so I didn’t really get that. France.
We still have no internet or TV. The installer cannot come until July 6th. We were able to go and pick up the new boxes we need and they gave us a weak little 4G wi-fi box to use temporarily, which is how I am able to post this blog post today, but it is slow and the unrelenting heat in the afternoons definitely affects the speed and connectivity.
Chocolate bars melt and give up in non-air-conditioned stores in Paris
The canicule is supposed to continue today at 99 degrees, tomorrow at 101 degrees, and Sunday it will begin to move out at “only” 93 degrees before temperatures finally fall into the 80s next week. But they are already predicting the next one will hit July 14. The trains across the country have halted because the tracks are warping in the heat. The blacktop on the roads in the center of France has melted and cannot be driven on. We stepped on some here in Dijon and it left footprints. They banned all public alcohol consumption in Paris because the hospitals are overrun with those suffering from the heat. I read this morning that the police have asked the promoters to cancel all music festivals scheduled for this weekend due to heat stroke concerns.
The French are losing their minds over this heat. There are no portable AC units left anywhere to buy. But it’s worse in Bordeaux and Nantes, where we almost moved, with temps nearing 110 degrees and not an AC unit to be found anywhere as they do not allow them in the historic buildings. The people who live on the fifth floors under the zinc roofs are enduring 120 degrees. There are Tik Tok videos of people cooking two inch steaks on frying pans outside their windows.
It’s been two weeks of hellish temperatures and daily doses of immense patience but we are finally getting settled. The idea of ever moving again makes me nauseous.
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