After discovering on Saturday that in order to get Fontenaysien rates at the swimming pool and the ice skating rink we had to have special cards which could only be obtained during the week I set to work. First, I needed to get together the documents necessary for establishing our residency in Fontenay. Photo identification for everyone was easy enough, since we all have passports. I'm not certain what they do about French children, though perhaps French national identity cards are issued at birth? Also easy were identity photos for everyone, since we've needed them a couple of times previously and they come in sheets of 5 photos. (Incidentally, my new strike-it-rich scheme involves convincing everyone that they need to provide identity photos for everything, and then installing the booths, which are ubiquitous here, in malls and shops in the United States.) Potentially more difficult was proving our address, since their preferred proofs were (1) an electric bill (ours is included in our rent, so we don't get the bill) or (2) a current rental payment receipt (ours is direct transferred from our bank to our landlady's, so we don't typically get a receipt). I hoped that our original rental contract would work, but I brought along bank statements, our 1 rental payment receipt, and Blaise's pay stubs, all of which had our address on them. (I also brought our marriage license, and birth certificates for the kids in case they decided to be difficult.)
Then I went in search of the proper office for the cards. All I knew was that it was somewhere in the Salvador Allende sports complex, which is huge. It includes a couple of gyms, martial arts studios, the ice rink, and swimming pool, and tons of office space. Most of the office space, so far as I can tell, is on the upper floor, where it is accessed from the parking lot on top of the Auchan, so I picked a door and went in. There was a group of people standing around and chatting in the first office, so I told them what I was looking for, and they told me that I needed to go to the cash desk for the swimming pool and ice rink, down the stairs to the right of the offices. Back outside and down the steps (I wonder if the complex dates from the late 1960s, since virtually everything has separate entrances, and even the stairs are all outside. It would be very difficult for protesters to shut down the building effectively.) and over to the entrance to the swimming pool and ice rink.
I knew as soon as I got there that the cash desk was closed, but there was a security guard, and I thought that perhaps I had misunderstood where exactly I needed to go, since of course the conversation had been carried out entirely in French. I had been under the impression that the cards were obtainable during regular business hours, and 11 a.m. was definitely regular business hours. So, I asked the security guy, who told me that the cash desk was definitely the right place, but I would have to come back when it was open, which was when either the pool or the ice rink or both were open to the public, either over lunch or when school was out for the day. (Talk about the antithesis of normal business hours. I suppose that makes sense though, since the ice rink and pool are in more or less constant use by school groups during the day. Swimming and ice skating are both part of the school curriculum.)
So, later that day, after I had picked the kids up from school and dropped them off at home and started dinner I headed back over to the ice rink/pool with my folders full of information and headed for the cash desk. The woman who was working there asked for identification (the passports) and whether I had photos for everyone (I did). She glanced over our rental contract and then asked me to write everybody's name and birthdate on the back of their photo. I could return when the pool and ice rink were open the next day to pick up the cards, and we would be eligible for the cheaper rates (about 15% off at the pool, 30% off at the ice rink).
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