When I arrived as a foreign-exchange student in Dijon, France, I was bombarded with war stories about run-ins with the infamous French bureaucracy. I got my first taste of it standing in line to enroll in my classes. You stand in line for three hours to see somebody at a desk tucked away in a narrow corridor just off the large entrance hall. You finally get to the front only to be told that this is the line for non-EU students, and that the much-shorter line for European "Erasmus" students is adjacent. Of course, both desks are hidden since the corridor is filled with people, so you cannot see the purpose of each line until you are at the front. Once you are there, you must present a number of documents, proofs of identity, and a photocopy of an EU Health Insurance Card (which was not on the list of required documents you were sent and which you must show even if you have on your possession the physical card). The point of all of this is to fill in a form at the desk and make an appointment for one week later, when you will bring in all of the documents that have just been checked so that they can be checked again. Officially. [1]
[1] - https://worldcrunch.com/rue-amelot/david-foster-wallace-find...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC7xzavzEKY
