Clair Whitmer has lived here long enough to get settled...but she hasn't forgotten what it feels like to be fresh off the plane. This series covers typical reactions to the experience of moving to France, based on her own experience and lots of email from expats all over France.

One of the things I notice about expat 'success' stories, the people who make a home and feel at home in France, is that they've learned to love the Système D.

The Système D; D is for débrouillard(e), also a verb, se débrouiller, or in noun form débrouillardise. It's tricky to translate but débrouiller means 'to unscramble' and se débrouiller refers to thinking on your feet, figuring things out without help or instruction. In the imperative: Débrouillez vous! Make no mistake: being told you are débrouillard is a compliment.

I've heard it most often used when someone has been explaining to me how to get around some seemingly insurmountable rule or regulation. The Système D is needed and accepted because, as for you the incoming foreigner, the Administration and its endless red tape, la paparasserie, is the enemy: a source of frequent frustration and a consistent time-suck.

The Système D is the collective set of workarounds, both know-how and who-you-know. It includes everything you can think off that will help you get around the rules, but get around them through superior cleverness, not through outright illegality, which is how some people misinterpret it. Cheating is not the same thing as the Système D in the same way that cutting in line is not the same thing as breaking-and-entering.

On the contrary, the French respect for the law is nearly absolute, that's how they've ended up with so much of it. But the result is a labyrinth of paperwork that would be absolutely all-consuming—except for the Système D. 

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