Fun with Paris - my Mom and I were there in April of 1976 and she wanted to see the Eiffel Tower - absolute classic tourist stuff.
So after we did the tour we were walking down the promenade and saw some poor German tourist trying to get something from a French cop, the cop spoke french. The tourist spoke German. My Mom speaks German and English, I speak English and French. So we tag team translated directions to get to the Louvre from the Eiffel Tower. We had a blast, and amused a bunch of people gathered around us watching.
[Almost as much fun as sitting in a cafe watching the Paris fire department doing some sort of drill with a pumper truck, the Seine river and inadvertantly backing the pumper into the river. :eek::D]
I will say that I never experienced any issues with the French being rude, but then again I always spoke in Canadian accented French before switching to English when I ran across people wanting to practice English.
When I was doing Consular work, the passport was confiscated and a special single use passport was issued to get the person back into the US. Times may have changed since then as it’s been six years or so since I was a Consular officer. And I’m currently posted Stateside so I can’t wander down to the Consular section to ask…
Missed the edit window. As I said, it’s been a while but I do know that the DoS doesn’t actively pursue people who don’t repay the loans. There are no wage garnishments or anything like that. But you certainly can’t get a new passport until it’s repaid.
And I won’t make excuses for the bad service people have gotten in this thread. We have bad people just like any other company. But I used to bend over backwards for the AMCITs that came to the Consular section despite my moniker.
