“Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you, you have only to spend a little money.”
We learned the hard way just how forbidding and cold France can be when you have no money by spending our first twenty-four hours there without a Euro to our name. It wasn't that we had no money, it was just that it was all tied up safely in Bank of America with the operative word in that sentence being America. I just assumed we'd be able to get cash out of an ATM with our Discover Cards like we'd been doing in London.
I began to suspect that my plan was flawed when the ATM inside the chunnel station on the English side said it couldn't read my Discover Card or my ATM card. I tried to ignore the nagging feeling of anxiety on the ride over but that didn't make the problem go away in Paris. We didn't panic at first when the ATM's all said the same thing because we still had my Mastercard that I never used (Stacey's ATM card had accidentally been left at home during the wedding confusion.). I had to call Citibank because I couldn't remember my pin and they told me all they could do was send me to the automated system that told me I would receive my pin in the mail in 7-10 days, which by the way, I am still waiting for. As soon as we knew we were screwed, we cashed in all the British Pounds we had for 27 Euros which turned out just to be enough to pay the cab fare to our already paid for hotel. Thank you, completely honest cabbies, for not taking advantage of us.
That night, after having an old Cliff bar for my official first meal in France, I called Bank of America and was told to just go to a PNB ATM which I did several times the next day only to discover that old familiar message telling me my transaction could not be processed (also the title of my autobiography). We hungrily walked for five hours straight trying to get cash to no avail. When I got home I would later learn that BOA had left several messages on my cell phone telling me my card would be suspended on suspicion of fraud until I called them. (I guess I have a limit that I can only try to pull out 300 dollars at a time, that's dollars not Euros.) Too bad my cell phone was turned off the whole time.
Finally, we broke down and called Stacey's parents so I could tell them that after five days of marriage I was not longer able to support their daughter. Luckily, they were more than happy to wire us what we needed. So after three trips to Western Union because of various snafus, we were well on our way in Paris to be snubbed by for not speaking French instead of for being bums. (I am withholding one vital fact for dramatic effect. We did get my card to work at a little store sometime in the early evening where we bought such American comfort food as sandwiches, Diet Coke, an Oreos.)
So that is the story of how we arrived in Paris Friday night with no money and went to bed Saturday night with enough Euros in our pockets to eat our way out of Paris.
Epilogue
The first two things I did when I got home was send a check to my in-laws and open an account at BECU.
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I feel your pain. I arrived euroless in Paris at 6am and nothing was open. My first adventure in panhandling was so that I could obtain money to pay for the public restroom.
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