Get ready with me: moving abroad edition

How to get a French student visa, a Parisian apartment—and every other item I've been checking off my to-do list lately

Up in the air

“I’m moving to Paris!” It sounds like a dream—and once I land, I bet it will be. But the making-it-happen part? Well, that’s been a bit of a logistical nightmare.

Fortunately, as your resident Reformed Overplanner, this was a bureaucratic and administrative dumpster fire I was positively born to fight!

In today’s missive—which you’re reading as I climb aboard an eastbound Air France jet—I’ll fill you in on everything that happened between enrolling in baking school and checking my overstuffed suitcases through to Charles de Gaulle Airport:

• 🇫🇷 Getting my student visa,

• 🏠 Snagging an apartment in Paris,

• 🐈 Finding care for my home and pets, and

• ✏️ Tackling all the other bits and bobs of baking school administrivia.

Let’s dive in!

In an interview with the inimitable

David Lebovitz

, author

Lindsey Tramuta

describes the French visa process as “a comedy of errors at every turn.”

I heard these words as I was deep into a battle with my own long-stay student visa application, and let me tell you: I had never felt so seen.

I began the application process on December 7; by January 13, FedEx had delivered my passport with its brand-new visa sticker. That’s a supremely reasonable turnaround! But the month of December brought with it enough stress and confusion to give me a few new gray hairs.

For a bit of context, the French long-stay student visa application is a two-parter:

1. First, you submit an application and supporting documents to an organization called Campus France, and await their approval.

2. Then you can move on to part two: submitting a second application (and more supporting documents) to the French Consulate in Washington, D.C. via their third-party facilitator, VFS Global, during an in-person appointment.

Each half of the process takes up to three weeks. With three separate bureaucracies involved, that ends up being a lot of time for things to go wrong.

The first minor snafu: although baking school has nothing to do with my Bachelor of Arts in history, Campus France wanted my official college transcript from 15 years ago, not the unofficial one I had on hand. Cue a comedy of errors with the Georgetown University registrar right before Christmas…one that left me grateful for my amazingly helpful father, who lives close enough to pay them a visit.

Attempting to upload said transcript is how I discovered the second—and much bigger—problem. Thanks to a security breach, the Campus France website had apparently gone dark for an entire month, rendering application materials for students from 72 countries (!) inaccessible during that time period.

Thus began my journey of trying and failing to contact Campus France for clarification: first in an understanding way, then in a mildly plaintive manner, and finally with increasing desperation as my departure date drew closer.

Finally, I obtained their approval in the form of a brief and thoroughly anticlimactic email, which meant I could show up at the Seattle VFS Global office to keep the process moving.

And so I did, with a bulky folder stuffed full of the documentation I’d need to prove I was a worthy visa recipient: everything from proof of medical insurance to financial statements to my flight details and a copy of my Parisian lease, plus a cover letter and an official application printed in French.

I won’t bore you with my feelings about VFS Global’s “permanent surge” pricing structure or the enraging intricacies of their scheduling system. All that really matters is that a lovely VFS employee took pity on me the day before New Year’s as I found myself outside their locked building, moments away from screaming “STELLA!” like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.

From that moment onward, everything got better (read: I began getting regular text updates about the status of my application). But Lindsey Tramuta was right: visa applications aren’t for the faint of heart—or, as I learned, those with untreated anxiety disorders.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m en route to Paris as you read these words—which means I can’t be 100% sure that I’m not the victim of a very convincing scam involving landlord impersonation, leaving me down a couple thousand bucks and without a place to stay.

That is to say: take this next section with a healthy dose of salt.

Because students are supposed to arrive on campus by 6:30 each morning, I knew I wanted a place near my school—and, ideally, I didn’t want to spend more than my current monthly mortgage and utility payments combined. Those criteria helped me narrow down listings on various reputable long-stay sites like Morning Croissant, plus familiar vacation rental platforms like Vrbo and Airbnb.

In my search, I kept seeing the phrase bail mobilité pop up, which turns out to be a specific type of French short-term lease for students, trainees, and employees on temporary work assignments. So by the time I found the perfect listing—in the 6th arrondissement, a four-minute walk from Ferrandi, and not a penny more than my current housing expenses—I knew that the next step was signing a contract in (gulp) French.

Before running the Word doc through Google Translate and learning how to turn my US dollars into Euros bound for a French bank account, I needed to know my new landlords were legit. After speaking on the phone, exchanging emails, and getting a copy of their own passports, I felt comfortable enough to sign my three-month bail mobilité and put down a deposit.

My new apartment (if it is, in fact, real) is a third the size of my house, has a kitchen equipped with a glorified toaster oven and mini-fridge—and seems absolutely perfect for these next twelve weeks.

Friends, if you ever leave your house for an indefinite period of time, I highly recommend having a trusted family member who lives 15 minutes away on a month-to-month lease.

That’s how my brother ended up ditching his rental and moving into my house last week—after helping me move a few items into storage—in an exchange that works extraordinarily well for both of us. He gets a fully-furnished home at a steep discount from market rates, and I get a fantastic caretaker for my house…one who also happens to be covering all my costs.

Moving to Paris would be far less feasible without this lucky twist of fate. The only catch? He’s allergic to cats.

This is how I found myself on a multi-day road trip to Santa Fe with my three furbabies, where my boyfriend will be showering them with unconditional love and catnip-flavored dental treats for the next few months.

Road trippin’ with my three favorite allies

I learned a lot on my feline road trip: which hotel chains allow you to bring an unlimited number of animals into your hotel room (Kimpton, you’re a lifesaver), how to build a backseat white-collar cat prison in your Honda Civic (the mobile version of our catio), and that no matter how clever you get with this project, two out of three cats will definitely be smart enough to figure out how to break into the front-seat danger zone.

Also: even though they might try to convince you otherwise, your cats really will be happier (read: less overstimulated) locked inside their carriers for the duration of the ride.

Then, there’s everything else my school requires me to tackle before Day 1: providing measurements for my uniform (converted into centimeters and kilograms), obtaining medical, liability, and repatriation insurance (this was much easier and cheaper than I’d feared!), and setting up a doctor’s appointment in Paris to sign off on the fact that I’m vaccinated and healthy. Check, check, and check!

Next time you hear from me, I’ll be settling into my temporary new life abroad. Let the adventure begin!

Warmly,
Maddie

Breakfast Club is a newsletter about pastries with a side of personal growth, from an ex-financial planner turned baker. If you savored this edition, click the ❤️ (or share with a friend!) to help new readers discover it—and subscribe to get each letter fresh from the oven.