Different culture, different organization

Plans for the last weeks

After my trip to London I mainly wanted to enjoy the remaining time with my boyfriend in France. I only had about three weeks left and still had to learn for an oral exam in economic politics. But of course there were some other things on my to do list apart from my boyfriend and that one exam – I wanted to go to the top of the famous cathedral in Amiens, visit the zoo, visit the house of Jules Verne and meet all my friends one last (or several last) times.

So, I spent some time making my usual summary of the course notes and started to learn a bit. Meanwhile I met my boyfriend for lunch or helped him studying for his English lessons, we went to the Australian Bar in the evenings or just had a coffee in the city centre. I tried to catch every single moment with him, burn it into my mind and enjoy it as much as possible. I knew that I would miss him so much, but I was still not sure if our relationship would continue in the future, because we didn’t talk so much about those things. But I still lived in the present and told myself to love the moment.

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Adventures in Lille - the Algerian Embassy

One day, he asked me to come with him to Lille, a city more in the north of Amiens, because he had to go to the Algerian Embassy. He had to renew his passport over there. As I loved passing time with him and didn’t have so much to do except studying for the exam a bit, I agreed to come with him the coming Saturday.

As I was the person with the car, I picked him up from work the day before and as so often we had dinner together and watched a movie in my room in the student’s residency. In the morning we started our way to Lille and arrived after one and a half hours. I enjoyed being in the car with him, we always found something to talk about and to laugh a lot. Something I didn’t like was looking for parking lots in France – it was hardly possible to find one I thought I would fit in with the car. But my boyfriend is a quite positive and optimistic person, so finally we found a (paid) parking lot only 5 minutes away from the embassy. We left the car and he showed me where it was. Actually, I thought I wouldn’t even be allowed to enter it as I was no Algerian citizen, but well, I could. So, we entered into a much too small building with much too many people in there. It was hot, loud and crowded and the only comment I heard from him was “Well, welcome to Algeria! ”. There were children running around, crying, laughing – as it was Saturday, most of the time the whole family had come to the embassy.

I felt incredibly wrong in there with my long blond hair, my short summer dress which let everyone see my back, and I didn’t understand anything as it was all written and said in Arab. So, I just stayed in one not so crowded corner and let him ask for his paperwork. I already assumed that there would be some problems, or it would take hours to finish here, because it was the Algerian embassy and there were so many people. I just hoped that we wouldn’t have to wait in there, I could hardly breathe! After a while he came back and told me that it would take a while and we could get out and see the city a bit and come back after lunch. I was happy about that and we left the building. Fresh air again!

My boyfriend had to withdraw some money for his passport (as all the other French he didn’t have any cash with him), so we were looking for a bank. I had been to Lille once before with the English girls, so I already knew it a bit. My boyfriend knew it better than me, of course, but anyway we had problems to find his bank. After a while we found one, but he had forgotten his PIN code. We asked the person at the counter, but he couldn’t help him. So, I decided to lend him the money until we would be back to Amiens and we looked for something to eat.

After the lunch in a kebab restaurant we returned to the embassy and I hoped that everything would be finished quite quick now. But of course, it took a lot of time. We had to wait in that still crowded room and it was so hot and there was no fresh air. At least we could talk while waiting and he didn’t leave me alone as before, but it was still a long time to wait. Finally, the only thing they had to do was taking one single picture! I knew that things in that culture are a bit different and take some more time, and that their attitude towards organization might be totally different, but three hours just for one single picture was too much for my brain.

After having finished in the late afternoon we didn’t want to leave Lille yet because the weather was so nice. So, we took the car and went a bit more into the city centre. We left it at a parking lot and continued by foot to a park. There was a small children’s festival, so we walked and walked and enjoyed the sunshine. I could only think about how much I would miss him, but I tried to love every single minute we were passing together. We walked until the zone with all the shops and the most important square of Lille, where we had a coffee to relax a bit. After a small and refreshing ice cream we started our way back – we were both tired and just wanted to return. Back in Amiens we looked for something to eat and surprisingly my boyfriend asked me to drive back to the student’s residency – he wanted to spend another night with me. I know, couples usually spend the nights together, but in fact spending so much time in a row with him was something very new for me. And it made me so happy, and I started to believe in a future for us, even if it was still complicated.

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