Fool the burglars
Before you go, take advantage of the free service offered by your local gendarmerie in July and August. They’ll ask you to fill in a form, and ask you when you are going away and when you’ll be back, what arrangements you’ve made with neighbours for taking in post or feeding your goldfish or parrot, and who to contact and their phone number in the event of any problem. They’ll make regular patrols of your house and garden to make sure all is well while you’re gone.

Organise your healthcare
If your holiday is within the European Union, ask the CPAM for this card at least two weeks before you leave. It’s valid for one year and you don’t need any special documentation to obtain it. Each family member needs their own card, including children under 16 years old, and the holder is entitled to the same conditions regarding reimbursement as in his or her country of residence. However, only the necessary medical care to enable the insured person to return to his/her own country of residence to be cared for is covered.

Healthcare outside the EU
If you need medical care outside of the EU, contact the consul or ambassador of your own country who will put you in touch with approved doctors who can speak English. Normally you won’t be entitled to any reimbursement, so it would be wise to take out holiday insurance. Nevertheless, keep all your invoices and when you return ask the CPAM if they will reimburse. They will then consult the medical council who’ll decide whether your situation was urgent and therefore reimbursable. Some French debit cards include medical assistance and reimbursment. Check your contract to see if yours does.

Taking a child of French nationality abroad
Not quite so complicated as an animal, but the requirements depend on where you are going, the family situation and the age of the child.
Any child, no matter how young, may obtain an individual passport, with the authorisation of its legal guardian, and this is enough to allow the child to cross the frontier. In fact it’s now obligatory for a child to have its own passport – they cannot be included in their parents’ passports. Childrens’ passports are valid for five years and are free for under-15- year-olds.
If a child is accompanied by an adult with parental authority, it can travel if an identity card has been applied for, or if it has a passport that has expired less than five years ago. This doesn’t apply to Britain, Denmark or Finland.
However, if the child travels alone or with another person, he or she must obtain an attestation from the maire of his commune, valid from one month up to five years. If the maire is in any way doubtful (perhaps in the case of a divorced person who might be trying to take the child away from its other parent), he can ask the police or the préfecture if there’s any opposition to the child travelling abroad.
Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland and Italy allow under- 15-year-olds to travel without passport, identity card or attestation to leave the territory if their parent or guardian obtains a pass for them from the préfecture. This is valid for several journeys and for three months from date of issue.

Your pet is coming too
Check well in advance with the consul or embassy in France of the country or countries you are visiting to make sure you are allowed to take your pet with you. Some countries don’t allow it, or impose quarantine conditions. Then see your vet who will tell you what vaccinations and certificates are needed. Note that animals under three months old are not allowed to enter or leave France, and a rabies certificate is required for bringing an animal back into France.

Customs formalities
Whether you are travelling within or outside the EU, certain goods and objects must be declared:
works of art, protected flora and fauna, live animals and animal products, arms and munitions, drugs (you need to produce a prescription if you are being treated with narcotics), alcohol and tobacco, just to name a few.
If you want to return with certain goods such as cameras, sports gear, jewellery, recording equipment, televisions or musical instruments that you have taken with you out of the country, make sure you have either invoices proving you bought them in France, or receipts or a carte de libre circulation (free-circulation card) from customs. Obtaining this card, which is valid for 10 years and renewable, will save you having to carry around a load of paperwork every time you travel with declarable items you need to take regularly.

You are arrested or imprisoned abroad
You are entitled to ask the local authorities to put you in touch with your consul or ambassador who will attest that you are under their protection. They’ll find out why you were arrested, arrange the right to visit you, and make sure you are being held under correct detention conditions.
If necessary, they’ll arrange a lawyer or represent you themselves (at your expense), and if you’re condemned they’ll try to negotiate a reduced sentence. You can ask your insurance company if they offer protection juridique or legal insurance. Even the most innocent can be unlucky, and situations can develop when you are not familiar with the customs of a country.

Road accidents
The first thing to do after the initial shock has worn off, and the vehicles are not endangering other traffic, is either fill in a friendly report with the other driver, or if this is difficult or impossible because of language problems, make sure you have his name, address, registration number of the vehicle, and details of his insurance company.
Call your assistance service if you need anything urgently, like spare parts or repatriation, and phone your help office (numbers for each country on the back of your green international insurance card) if you were partly or wholly responsible for the accident.
Call your insurance company within five days of the accident. If you have a protection juridique insurance, they will take care of legal expenses, otherwise you’ll have to pay for them yourself.
Keep all invoices for repairs, spare parts and medical certificates.
If the culprit isn’t insured, he has to declare the accident to the central French office in the country where the accident occurred, which will take care of costs and be reimbursed by the automobile guarantee funds who have legal rights over the uninsured party.
For more info contact: Centre de documentation de d’information de l’assurance (CDIA), 26 bd Haussmann, 75311 Paris Cedex 09 or visit www.ffsa.fr

Your bank card is lost or stolen
Phone 08 92 70 57 05 urgently to stop any monies being charged to your card. The service is in both English and French, and is charged at €0.34 a minute, so just follow the instructions. It’s imperative that you do this within two days of discovering your loss, otherwise you’ll be liable for all bills charged to your card, as opposed to the €150 you’d pay otherwise. You also have to confirm the loss or theft to your bank by LR/AR and inform the local police.
If sums have been charged by someone else to your card while you are in possession of it, you have 70 days to write and inform your bank, who will verify the facts and then reimburse you within one month of your letter for all monies fraudulently charged to your account.

Death abroad
If you peg out abroad, of course it’s not your problem, but someone has to take care of the formalities and under additionally distressing conditions. All deaths must be registered locally – a local doctor issues the death certificate and registers it at the town hall – but contact the British consul who will know what steps to take regarding the British and French authorities. They’ll need the name, date of birth, passport number and where and when it was issued, and the next of kin. It’s important to tell the authorities if the deceased was suffering from an infectious condition such as hepatitis or HIV virus. The consul will contact the family of the deceased to find out whether they would prefer the body or the ashes to be returned, whether there is any insurance cover for this, and will then take care of any formalities. The family has to pay for either returning the body or its burial.
Check with www.britishembassy.gov.uk/france or phone 01 44 51 32 81 for more detailed info.

CHECKLIST
Make sure to take with you
• Passports and ID cards
• International car insurance papers
• Vaccination certificates – both human and pet varieties where applicable (Check with your doctor in case you need specific jabs for the countries you’ll be visiting, and your vet to make sure you can take your pet and what’s required)
• European health cover card (see above)
• Medical prescriptions and enough of any regular essential medication to last through the holiday
• A list of your bank, credit card and passport numbers – keep it safe in case of loss or theft.
• Your mobile phone (see article on Holiday phoning for information), and don’t forget 112 is the European emergency help number
• A carte de libre circulation from Customs for any goods you are bringing in and out of the country

If you want to calculate your travelling costs before you leave, compare fuel prices on
www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ and for autoroute prices visit www.route.equipement.gouv.fr/article.php3?id_article=53
And there’s a lot of good info on European travel
on http://europa.eu/abc/travel/index_fr.htm

Maybe you’ll need a little break before your holiday to recover from all this preparation, but have a good time anyway.

Foreign calls

Holidays should mean getting away from it all, but not necessarily being out of contact. So can we still use our mobiles abroad, and what will it cost?

These days, to ensure the best coverage and quality of service, the three main operators have agreements with several or all of the operators in some 180 countries. Orange, SFR and Bouyges Telecom all have a free service to enable you to phone to and from abroad, but make sure you ask for this at the start of a new forfait (flat rate contract). Their international services are called Orange sans frontière, SFR monde and service voyage de Bouyges Telecom.

Secret codes
In some countries you’ll need a secret four-figure code to access your messages, so don’t forget to register this before you leave France.
For Orange, compose 888, choose ‘option two’ then follow the instructions.
For Bouyges Telecom, call your message service, choose 'personalisation du répondeur’ and tap in your code.
For SFR, tap in 123 if the network allows you to, or +33611 folowed by the first six digits of your SFR call number, including the first zero. You can either personalise this code or use the automatic number one followed by the last five digits of your call number.

Zones
Each operator has lists of countries grouped in zones for invoicing purposes. There are three types of international calls:
1) Calls from abroad to France
2) Calls from abroad to countries other than France
3) Calls from France to abroad

Rates
Whichever your operator, you can call from France to any country, but overseas calls are charged extra to your main forfait.
Check these links for prices and zones: www.meilleurmobile.com/documents/international/tarifs.jsp

www.sim4travel.net,
www.storytelecom.com,
www.onecompare.com/internationalroaming