In the beginning

So - day 1 in France.  After a lovely refreshing 10 hours sleep, I woke at 7am to a cloudy Paris sky outside.  I was praying for a sunny day for my first full day in France.  Luckily, Mother Nature obliged.

My first French crepe.

With no more food than some noodles and herbal tea, and no money for the vending machines downstairs, first on the agenda was finding some breakfast.  My residence is just 100 metres off the main street of Le Bourget, so that was where I headed to look for a boulangerie - a French bakery.  After a short five-minute walk along the street I concluded that my best bet was the supermarket, so I went in and did a quick grocery shop for breakfast.  It was kind of like a cross between a supermarket and corner store - small, but fairly well-stocked.  I grabbed some milk, fruit and pain au choc (chocolate croissants) as well as my favourite Orangina to compose brekky and headed home.  Excursion number two of the day was a trip to the bank, Credit Agricole, to ask about opening a bank account, followed by another visit to the supermarket to carry home another backpack full of groceries, including a brush and shovel and some cloths to start cleaning and unpacking my apartment.

The Le Bourget library.

I headed out for lunch again to a nearby cafe, where I had my first French crepe filled with cherry jam as I watched the scene on Avenue de la Division Leclerc.  Despite my professed desire for a quiet afternoon at home , cleaning and unpacking, I decided to go for a little exploratory walk around the neighbourhood to see what was there.  Passing another little pizza-place, I found the bibliotheque (library - yay!) which looked quite nice, and the hotel de ville - town hall.  The other side of the street was less exciting, though I spotted a newsagent, and it was only when I ventured down a side-street that I inadvertently saw what I'd been looking for - the local boulangerie, or French bakery!

No girl on crutches ever moved faster.  I stared at everything in the shop with increasing awe, before walking away with a grillet pomme, some kind of cross between an apple slice and a huge wedge of apple pie.  With my treasure in my backpack, I headed home again, attracting the customary stares for the girl with crutches and a giant rainbow-stickered boot.  I then proceeded to spend my afternoon cleaning and unpacking while watching numerous episodes of Castle.

The local boulangerie.

Despite my weariness, I dragged myself off the bed and away from the Kindle around 7.30pm to go seek dinner.  I headed for the pizza place I'd found earlier in the day.  Ordering a marguerita with an Orangina and tiramisu for dessert, the serving guy clearly thought I was kind of cool once I mentioned I was from Australia.  The scariest part was when I noticed what they were showing on the giant TV on the wall.  When dubbed in French, Two and a Half Men ('Mon oncle Charlie', or 'My uncle Charlie') sounds almost like decent viewing.  Having heard sirens for most of the day, I also saw my first sapeurs-pompiers de Paris over dinner - a French fire truck.  Strange-looking thing it was too.

Day 2 - began with eating my grillet pomme for breakfast (I'd been too full to eat it the day before).  Then a nice long conversation with Rony, the site manager, about the intricacies of living in France, during which I discovered the wonderful catch-22 of needing an electricity bill (EDF) to get a bank account, but needing a bank account to set up your electricity bill, and which culminated in Rony saying (edited for PG rating) that French bureaucracy is screwed up.  Yep, got that memo loud and clear, thanks.

A map of metro line 7 on the train.

Near my uni...

Then it was onto the next bus and off to the metro station to head into Paris.  Ticketing is strange, and I have a feeling I needed four tickets for my day's journey...no, make that five - 1 per journey per piece of transport.  It's weird and annoying.  Can't wait until I get my public transport card set up.  Anyway, made it to Place de la 8 mai 1945 on the bus, and found my way to metro station La Courneuve - 8 mai 1945, passing a boulangerie on the way, handy for those uni days when I don't have time for breakfast.  There was a train waiting and it was about a 40-minute journey to Censier-Daubenton, the station nearest Sorbonne which is conveniently on the same metro line - ligne 7.  The metro itself was fairly unexciting - it was like riding through the City Loop for 40 minutes.  Boring.

Apartments in the Quartier Latin...

I climbed out of the metro station in the 5th arrondissement, conquering yet another set of stairs (I'm getting really good at those things, they're everywhere).  A quick consult of the map and I set off towards rue Santeuil, where Sorbonne's Censier Centre, my new uni, is located.  Following the confusing, twisted streets, I spotted a phone shop and dashed inside, only to discover that they didn't have SIM cards, instead receiving directions to a shop in Les Gobelins, the next suburb down.  I headed outside to continue on my way, only to find myself back where I started!

The strangely labelled French streets had got me, so I started again and this time made it to Rue Censier, looking for Rue Santeuil, which I eventually did after walking right past it to the next crossroad.  Annoying (please remember I'm still on crutches for all of this...).  I finally found Sorbonne - a fairly plain building that makes the Menzies look attractive with only a pair of small signs to distinguish it.  Given how beautiful the rest of the Quartier Latin is, it was fairly anomalous.

The only signs saying Sorbonne Uni...

Directions to the departments.

It's unassuming, too.  I walked in, and it was completely functional as well.  No reception desk, no indication that this was the entrance to (a campus of) one of THE premier universities of Europe.  Doorways to a couple of amphitheatres, some vending machines and the entrance to a small cafe, and that was it.  A sign on the wall said that the international department and Spanish studies were on the 3rd floor, and linguistics and literature on the 4th, so I headed for the doors.  Only able to see the stairs, I was looking around for the lift when someone saw me and told me there wasn't one.  Just the stairs.  Um, OK.  I headed for the stairs.

 

Six flights later and feeling hotter than Uluru, I began to think this wasn't such a good idea.  I wandered around the 3rd floor for a while, having completely forgotten all the relevant room numbers, before beginning the long trek back down and getting myself a cold drink.  I decided to defer my excursion to the Australian embassy and instead headed for the metro again to take line 7 to Les Gobelins to seek out the phone shop I'd been told of.

My croissant lunch, sans pigeons.

Yes, Mum, I've been to Goblin-town!

Well, I found myself some lost American tourists (and sent them towards their hotel) but no sign of the SFR shop.  I stopped to grab a croissant for lunch at a nearby boulangerie,  pleasing the Paris pigeons with the half that crumbled onto the ground.  I eventually asked directions from a nearby shop, and was there in two minutes.  My limited French was enough for me to buy one prepaid French SIM card before heading to the metro, all worn out for the day.  I needed a small supermarket detour to obtain the necessary coins for my ticket (these French are crazy!) but home I got and hopefully won't have to leave again.  Crutches really are exhausting, but..ah well.

Tomorrow, with luck (or not!) I'll be up way early to take a train to Soissons, just north or Paris, to see the start of Paris-Brussels.  It'll take a bit of work on the public transport...we'll see how I go.