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<p>Let me preface this by saying that it pales in comparison to the real disasters elsewhere.</p>
<p>Well. S arrived in Boston 2 hours before his appt at the consulate on Monday morning, and went straight there. They apparently took him right away, and he had his interview. They asked for an additional piece of documentation that was not on their 10-point exhaustive list–a copy of his Dartmouth diploma–and expressed concern that he had not visited the prefecture while in France, saying that it would “count against him” and any positive documentation would help. (Note that people on a tourist visa, which he was, are not supposed to do this, so we assumed that he should wait until he had the long term student visa. I’m quite sure that if he had shown up at the prefecture in France, they would have regarded him with astonished hauteur and demanded to know why he had bothered them, since he was on a tourist visa.) He then made his way back to North Station to get the “last train out of Boston”–aka “last plane out of Warsaw/Saigon”-at 1 pm. He got on the train. The train left North Station and got about 1/2 hour north of Boston before being stopped by down power lines across the tracks. (The Amtrak trains are diesel, but cant drive through power lines.) They sat there for several hours, during which the Downeaster management tried to arrange for a bus to meet the train at a stop to which the train could back up. In the meantime, the Maine Turnpike was closed, so no dice. The train backed up all the way to North Station and disgorged its 30 passengers and crew. By this time, the public transportation in Boston had ceased to run. S was now in Boston with $16, no raincoat, no phone, and no phone numbers of any of the many friends and relatives with whom he could stay. He called from a phone booth, and an elaborate game of phone tag ensued, which ended up with a collect call that cost $20!! Ultimately, after venturing out in search of an internet cafe and so forth, H’s bright idea :rolleyes: --during which he was drenched to the skin and almost physically blown off the Charlestown Bridge–he caught a cab to the Somerville home of a friend of mine. She ended up paying for the cab, since the cabbie could not follow the directions provided, his GPS wasn’t working, and he got lost, exceeding S’s $16. 
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<p>May I add that during all of this we lost our power in the late afternoon, and since S was incommunicado, I simply met the train that he was on in hopes that he would appear, only to be given the bad news of its stranding by the Amtrak desk lady, who is a true gem. She not only checked the records to find that he was indeed on the train, but called the conductor and asked him to have S call me on the conductor’s phone! I am going to write a letter to management commending her on her superior customer service and all-around good nature.</p>
<p>S eventually was able to get a bus from Boston to Portland today around noon. Our power was out for about 24 hours. We went to an excellent symphony concert tonight. We are attempting to adopt a zen attitude to the visa process.</p>
<p>My niece in Fairfield, CT was without power last I heard. (She never lost power last year during Goodnight Irene and Stowtober.) So was my mother in Wilton, CT. If worse comes to worse, we have an unised generator sitting in our garage and I can drive down to CT with it and find an electrician to install it.</p>
Ultimately, the consulate did deign to put a notice up that they were closing and would contact people to reschedule. I like to think that it was because of my call(s), but I hope they swill not punish him for it out of spite. At this point, I believe anything of them.</p>![http://i.imgur.com/FbYl5.jpg[/url]](http://i.imgur.com/FbYl5.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
