More on Lyon

What with all my posts about bureaucracy, one could almost forget that I'm spending the rest of the year in an incredible city, a city that is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  And of course, there is bureaucracy, but there is a human face to all of this and people have been generous and kind. 

That goes for the bureaucrats, too!  Yesterday at the Mairie, the woman helping me was very apologetic about not being able to do what I needed her to do, and that was after the woman at the desk complimented my French pronunciation.  (I have an obvious American accent when I speak.  If someone compliments my pronunciation, she is likely being kind!)

Later in the day, I went with friends to the Resistance/Holocaust memorial of the prison of Montluc.  It was overwhelming, and as I was standing, thinking about the victims deported to Drancy -- and then sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I must have had a funny look on my face.  One of the museum guides stopped and made sure that I was doing okay.

Yes, there have been documents to collect, calls to make, trips to the prefecture and the mairie and long waits in line, but throughout it all, I have been treated kindly.