Why making things easier when you can make them more complicated ?

Today I came back from school by bike and what should have taken me 30 minutes according to people here, took me 50 minutes. And I thought I was going to die. Biking here is like smoking an exhaust pipe! So I think I’ll take the tram instead and go biking on Sunday mornings when everybody will still be recovering from the Saturday night parties. I also “tried” to eat at the Restaurant Universitaire (university restaurant) at lunch. Bad luck… To have meals there you have to: 1. Fill the paperwork, 2. Go to the other side of the city to give the paperwork and be given a card (you have to include the usual never-ending waiting lines of course), 3. Put money on your card, 4. Get food. Welcome in France!!! It would have been too easy to just be able to buy tickets… Explaining the all process to the international students who were with me was a lot of fun too… Anyway, you definitely have to be patient in this country and get used to fill paperwork for absolutely everything. The problem is that I’m not really patient and that it gets even worse when I am hungry ;) But, that’s how things work here and I’ll try to deal with it for the next few months (can’t fight against the whole system anyway) and keep my mouth shut…