Overdue Vroom Update - South of France November 2023
It has been a long while since I wrote a post. If you are interested in filling in the big gap in what we have been keeping busy with since April 2023 (embarrassingly the last time I wrote blog entry), you can always check out our PolarSteps account and read about our 20 day trip from the Netherlands to where we are now in southeast corner of France 20 minutes drove from the Spanish border.
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| Where we are living until the end of February |
Follow us on our trip ‘Maureillas las Illas’ at https://www.polarsteps.com/
It was a busy summer of visiting family and friends, spending time with my father and sister in Portland and generally enjoying the great weather of the Pacific Northwest. We returned to The Netherlands in September and stayed just over a month catching up with friends and family we had not seen for a while. As usual, we trimmed the hedge and finished some maintenance at Herman's mother's house in Zeeland. We had a brief, three day overlap in the Netherlands with Tessa and her fiance, Delaney, before heading south for our next house sitting adventure.
Herman and I continue to travel, house sit and chase our rainbow; searching for our "coup de coeur" - a magical, heart stopping village, with a
just right house for sale. We love the area of
France where we are currently house sitting near the Spanish border on the Mediterranean
side of the Pyrénées. "Our" new pet, Leiko, a 6-7 year old
Beauceron (breed of a French herding dog) rescue dog with soulful eyes..jpg)
Leiko and his first time seeing the ocean!
In fact, we like it here so much that when the opportunity arose, we extended our stay from the end of December until the end of February. After three semi-nomadic years, we figure it is wise to experience winter in a place before making a longer term commitment to staying. Here in Maureillas, we have jumped into various activities with both feet, we are training 4 times a week with the local running group, participating in a French/English conversation group, and I joined an Illuminated Manuscript painting group that meets only once a month. These activities along with walking Leiko several times a day are keeping us busy with something on the calendar almost every day of the week. We are also making time to visit real estate for sale in the area and have seen around 20 houses across 12 villages! No "coup de coeur" yet, but the process is helping us to figure out what we would like to find in a property.
People dancing La Sardane in Ceret 
Mushrooms for sale over the border in Spain
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| Lunch with the neighbors |
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| Fiduea - traditional dish like Paella with noodles |
If you are not interested in tales of hoops and bureaucracy, I advise you to stop reading here!
The ongoing saga of "becoming" Dutch... In Paris last February, I finally turned in my 5 cm thick "dossier" of paperwork needed to complete my Dutch citizenship application. All the t's crossed and i's dotted...or so we thought. We were reassured at the time that it was now only a matter of waiting patiently up to a year before we would get an invitation to attend a swearing in ceremony in Paris. My "dossier" was one of the best the Embassy had ever had come through. Between February and November, I checked back with my representative at the Dutch Embassy in Paris three times to check there was nothing additional that I needed to do...
Yesterday I received a phone call from the Dutch Embassy and a letter from the IND (immigration office in the Netherlands responsible for making the citizenship decision). At first I thought, "Finally we will get a date to come in for the swearing in ceremony!" Unfortunately I could not have been more wrong. It turns out that a Washington State report that I have never committed a crime is not enough evidence that I will be a good citizen. I must also procure a FBI "rap sheet" and get an apostille on that document. In addition, because it has been over 6 months, I have to redo a French background check and send in a new one. This doesn't sound all that bad at first, except for the stipulation that if I were not to manage the FBI dossier before three months passes, my dossier would be closed! This dossier has taken us the better part of two years to complete and over 1500 euros; the idea of starting over is ridiculous. After about 4 hours of online research, we had figured out that it is impossible for me to get a paper version of the FBI background check done with the necessary apostille in time and we do not yet have confirmation that a virtual e document will be acceptable. I was feeling pretty despondent, but by the end of the day, we came up with three possibilities to get the fingerprints done for the FBI background check on the correct form (American Embassy in France and Spain do not do fingerprinting for their citizens): I can meet someone in Paris to get the prints taken (very expensive), I can fly Barcelona to Washington DC, go to a post office and then fill in an application stateside, or get the prints done in Barcelona at the Police station. Today we are going to start with the police station in Barcelona and see where that leads...
The bright side of this story is that in the late afternoon, I decided to try and call the IND directly (we have tried this many times before and usually we end up in an endless automated message and cannot actually speak to anyone who knows answers to our questions)...miraculously, the phone number on the letter was a direct line to the person responsible for my dossier! I was able to explain to her our catch 22 situation with documents and the three month deadline. She was able to assure me that my dossier will not close early and that it will still be valid if it takes longer than 3 months. In addition, we are able to reach her directly next week in order to get clarification about whether immigration will accept a non paper version of the background check, which could speed the process up significantly.
Becoming Dutch is not for the faint of heart, mind or purse!
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