Stepping Up Training And Changing Banks

My plan for this week at training is to appear very enthusiastic and serious at training with the eventual goal of next week asking one of the coaches for lessons. To this end, tonight I fenced at least 10 15-point matches - I'm absolutely exhausted and my feet are badly blistered. Only two more days of this and then my plan will be complete. I'll let you know how that works out for me.

I've been trying to set up a bank account here. On the advice of a letting agent I went to BRED (yeah, I didn't trust the name when I heard it first either). Very kindly, she agreed to help talk with the teller and explain my situation. In the end, I had call a special international department since I'm a foreigner. After a brief phone interview, they agreed to end me the forms. They implied that the forms would be easy to fill in and that I could have the bank account within the week.

This morning, a bulging envelope arrived with about thirty pages in it. In order to open an account with this bank I had to post them (since everything had to go through there foreign office rather than just any branch) :

• Two forms of ID
• Two differnt proof of address
• Three last pay slips
• My last income tax statement
• My last three bank statements
• A letter of recommendation from my bank in Ireland
• A cheque so that fees could be immediately

And this was before I got to the 30 pages of forms that I had no idea what they were saying or even what their names meant:

• Fiche de reseignement confidentiels
• Document de demande d'ouverture de compte
• Carton de specimens de signatories
• Document d'option fiscale
• 1er feuillet du document denommé 'conditions particuliéres' inclus dans convention de compte

This was my first smack in mouth of French bureaucracy and I did not like it one bit. To collect all this would probably have taken me the best part of a month.

Just to see if this was the norm I rang HSBC. All they need is the ID's, Proof of Address and a bank statement from home. I'm setting up an account with them Thursday afternoon. What a waste of time...

Goodnight!