American not so Express.

Never, ever, take out traveler’s checks in dollars when traveling to Europe. I’m swallowing my shame in admitting that I fell prey to this seemingly obvious mandate. Before I left the US I took out a few hundred dollars in Amex Traveler’s Checks with the idea of either 1. Cashing them once I arrived in Paris to pay for the first few weeks’ expenses, or 2. Depositing them in my new French bank account once I opened it as a base amount. After running all over Paris in the first few days I arrived I gave up the idea of exchanging them for cash as I would loose such a larger percentage of the sum in the process. To find this out, I roved the city from bank to bank each one suggesting I (futilely) try another one for better rates. I nearly got kicked out of the Bank of France as if I were asking for a handout by suggesting that they would debase themselves by changing over traveler’s checks. Silly me to think the Bank of France was just another bank. Exchange bureaus were no better. With the rates I mean, they at least gave me the satisfaction that I had come to the right place.

So I pocketed the checks in a safe place and brought them here to Toulouse with me. After I opened up my bank account I asked the very nice woman who helped me if I could deposit these checks in my new account. She assured me that I could, with a small fee of course, only not at that  particular office. I must go across town to another branch where they actually handle money she said. OK. At least there's a light at the end of this tunnel and I have somewhere concrete to go to get rid of these things. A few days later I show up at this "other branch", checks in hand and requisite banking vocabulary memorized. When it was my turn in line I placed my checks on the counted and explained I would like to deposit them into my account. My worst fears came true as the teller looked back at me as if I had just presented him with Monopoly money. He turned to his colleague and asked for help with this preposterously unprecedented task. Maybe he was new. His colleague came over and swept up my checks and brought them into another room to examine with 3 other tellers. I could hear them talking in puzzled tones though the open door until I finally heard one exclaim, “Ah Ahmereeecan Exprez!” Voila. She came back out and gave me the necessary deposit slips, I signed my checks and walked out satisfied.

But that would have been way too easy if the story had ended there. After a week of no activity in my account I started to get worried that my precious checks had gotten lost in translation. So I returned to the bank across town. I was assured that everything was fine and that things like this often take almost a month to process, plus with the recent strike who knows how long these things could take. I tell you, these strikers are impressively effective at slowing things down.

Several days later I was awoken from my dream that my checks were en route to being safely deposited in my account, (literally and figuratively, it was 8am) by a teller who had called my portable to tell me, more or less, that my checks could not be deposited and I needed to come back and pick them up from the branch. As it was before 10am my French was even worse than usual and I misunderstood where I was supposed to pick up the checks, costing me a trip to the wrong branch, and looking like an idiot. But what would life abroad be without my daily piece of humble pie?

When I finally got to where I needed to be (the front of the line at the correct branch) I explained I was there to get my checks back. Blank stare. Oh crap. I stood there awkwardly for a while not wanting to leave sans cheques but not sure who else to talk to. Then I saw the woman who had taken them from me in the first place and after a few moments of my grammatically incorrect panicked explaining that they had seemingly misplaced a sizeable chunk of my savings account, she remembered who I was, smiled grandly, rifled around a filing cabinet, and presented me with an envelope with something French illegibly scribbled on the front (probably something like, “Silly American, who uses travelers checks anymore?”) with my checks inside.

So I walked out of there profusely thanking the people who had run me all over the city, told me they could complete a transaction they in fact could not, woke me up at the unheard of hour of 8am to tell me so, and then scared me to death that they had lost my signed travelers checks.

I can now say with certainty that travelers checks are a thing of the past that our parents (sorry readers of parental age) are convinced are a good idea to travel with and in fact never are, inside or outside of the US.