Signing the Lease

Reallocation nightmares

In the grand plan of relocation, the initial stay in the service apartment was supposed to last four weeks. The pressure was on me to secure a permanent residence, leading to reluctantly agree to one of the flats we viewed on the very first day.

However, the real drama unfolded when it was time to sign the lease. Enter the complete French bureaucratic experience. Everything was in French, and the proceedings felt like a time warp, reminding the days in India when we used to send letters via Registered Post, complete with an acknowledgment slip.

During our first attempt to sign the lease, they requested a hefty cheque of almost 3000 Euros. Oh, but I didn’t have a French cheque book, and my account had no funds. What a shame! No one had forewarned me.

Luckily, having just arrived from the US, I did have funds in my US bank account. Imagine the predicament had I come directly from India, facing the prospect of being a poor guy with only a few thousand rupees in an Indian bank.

I returned to work seeking HR assistance, only to discover that I would be paid monthly, necessitating a wait until month-end. I worked with my management and HR to secure an extension of my temporary stay at the hotel.

After a week , armed with the mint cheque from Crédit Lyonnais, We finally obtained the keys to the apartment. The journey to settle in a new place had proven to be more of an adventure than expected.