Hey all,
I am putting together a dossier to exchange my Virginia driver's license for a French one at the sous-prefecture in Rambouillet. Based on advice from this site, I took 10 hours of lessons at an auto-ecole to get comfortable with driving manual and priorite a droite, and I'm reading the Code Rousseau on my own time (both of which have been extremely useful, and I would recommend anyone else exchanging a license to do the same!).
Two questions that have come up:
1. Do I keep my license between the time I submit the dossier to the sous-prefecture and the day I actually go in to exchange it for a French one? I contacted a few traducteurs assermentes to get price quotes for translating the license and my driving record, and one of them is trying to upsell me on an "extra bilingual file authenticated with an apostille to allow you to drive while the file is being dealt with", for a mere extra 40 euros. This seems to me like a load of hogwash, because from what I understood from the sous-prefecture's website, I will still have my license while the file is being processed, no? They will convoke me to present the original, and then a second time for the exchange, right? (I am also 99% sure that only governments are capable of issuing apostilles, but that's a side issue)
2. I downloaded an online version of my driving record and a DMV compliance summary saying I haven't had my license suspended or revoked. Has anyone had success using printed-out online docs for this? They don't look as official as I would have liked them to (given that this is France), and I'm not sure if I'm going to run into problems if the sous-prefecture wants the "originals", since they look no more original than a photocopy. To be fair, I'm not sure that I would get better copies if I asked my parents to go wait in line at the DMV, since they may very well print the exact same thing.
Thanks for any clarification or personal experiences!
L
I am putting together a dossier to exchange my Virginia driver's license for a French one at the sous-prefecture in Rambouillet. Based on advice from this site, I took 10 hours of lessons at an auto-ecole to get comfortable with driving manual and priorite a droite, and I'm reading the Code Rousseau on my own time (both of which have been extremely useful, and I would recommend anyone else exchanging a license to do the same!).
Two questions that have come up:
1. Do I keep my license between the time I submit the dossier to the sous-prefecture and the day I actually go in to exchange it for a French one? I contacted a few traducteurs assermentes to get price quotes for translating the license and my driving record, and one of them is trying to upsell me on an "extra bilingual file authenticated with an apostille to allow you to drive while the file is being dealt with", for a mere extra 40 euros. This seems to me like a load of hogwash, because from what I understood from the sous-prefecture's website, I will still have my license while the file is being processed, no? They will convoke me to present the original, and then a second time for the exchange, right? (I am also 99% sure that only governments are capable of issuing apostilles, but that's a side issue)
2. I downloaded an online version of my driving record and a DMV compliance summary saying I haven't had my license suspended or revoked. Has anyone had success using printed-out online docs for this? They don't look as official as I would have liked them to (given that this is France), and I'm not sure if I'm going to run into problems if the sous-prefecture wants the "originals", since they look no more original than a photocopy. To be fair, I'm not sure that I would get better copies if I asked my parents to go wait in line at the DMV, since they may very well print the exact same thing.
Thanks for any clarification or personal experiences!
L