The French are famous for their gastronomy. Their best-kept secret, however, is their sardines. The Parisians do them unbelievably well, but they keep them well away from the tourists. I am not a tourist, though. I am the newest Paris sardine.
I'm not, of course, talking about fish. I'm talking about public transport. The RER, as the suburban train system, is rarely used by the tourists who stay in the city centre. Instead they travel around on the metro, which, while it gets fairly full around peak hour, is still respectable and dignified. The tourists never see the chaos that occurs in Chatelet-Les Halles and Gare du Nord around peak hour.
It's like the running of the bulls in Spain. I've come to the conclusion that a good day is one in which you don't get killed. Don't get me wrong - as a general rule I love Paris public transport, and the fact that I can get from my apartment to uni in one hour through morning peak hour is great. The trains run every few minutes on both the metro and the RER, there's heaps of coverage throughout Paris and the suburbs, and the authorities actually do an amazing job of moving hundreds of thousands of people every day.
That said, moving that many people has its problems...like the people all want to be moved at once. When a train pulls up you nearly get trampled by everyone behind you who wants to get on the train. Even if you don't move to avoid trampling the person in front of you, you get squashed by the people behind until the whole thing's just ridiculous. The flux regulators, as they're called, have their work cut out for them trying to let an appropriate number of people onto each train and closing the doors to stop the trains getting too crowded. They take some flack for it, too, but it's an important job. After all, someone has to stop people being hooked in the throat by a cane (seen it), accidentally frogmarched into the gap between train and platform or just plain squished underfoot!
For me the biggest problem is my foot - my legs are slightly uneven thanks to the boot, so when standing still, which is an awkward exercise at best, I stand only on my left foot, and often stick my right foot out at an angle. It has the dual purpose of giving footsie a rest and also alerting others to my crippleness. This doesn't work so well when you're 10-deep in people and no-one can see your feet, of course...I'm terrified that one day someone's going to shove me while we're playing Sardines on the trains, and Peg-Leg Caelli will go tuuuuummmmmbling to the ground and get trampled. I can just imagine the headlines back home...
The other day I took the metro home from Sorbonne and changed at Chatelet-Les Halles to the RER. I've never done it in that direction before, and I don't think I will again. I like it on my way to uni, since it cuts out most of the long metro trip and still drops me just a short distance from Sorbonne, but doing it the other way means I catch all the stairs at Chatelet (instead of the escalators!) and I prefer to walk to Port-Royal RER and walk home from the station in Le Bourget. It's good exercise and I have the time to do it after class - plus, it saves me a side trip to the boulangerie on my way home!
The other fun public transport story I have comes from my trip home from Germany. At the station at Saarbrucken, in Germany right on the French border, I noticed a bunch of police without borders waiting for the train. It was only when I saw them on the train that I realised their uniforms said 'on', not 'without'...border patrol! This was the first time I've had my passport checked on an international trip - I've used it on trains before, but usually just as the required piece of ID to go with my ticket. One of the officers announced in French (oh, sweet, blessed language after two days of minimal comprehension in Germany!) that it was a border ID check and please prepare your passports, and he began at my end of the carriages while his mates checked the back.
The officer was pretty thorough, too. He looked at the information page of my passport and then flicked through to have a look at my visa. Given I might have been on a short holiday and not had a visa at all I was surprised and impressed that he checked, though why he insisted on performing the niceties in German (which I did understand, by the way) even though I replied in French I will never understand. Multilingual people are just strange.
Showing posts with label 5th arrondissement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5th arrondissement. Show all posts
Friday, 26 October 2012
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Sorbonne sketches
I am afraid, dear readers, that my posts are destined to become much fewer than they have been up to now. As time goes by, those things that were so novel at one time become more routine and less remarkable. That's not to say there aren't still innumerable little cultural observations to be made. I could, for example, write a short discourse on the topic of smoking, as it is viewed in France, and I'm sure at some point I shall.
Or perhaps language - it's remarkable the mixtures of languages and dialects that are used to communicate here. My friend Aida caught me after class yesterday, and it was good to see her again, along with her friend Pili. Aida and I were discussing how much we understood of what happens in class - an ever-increasing amount, though not as much as the French students, I'm sure - and suggesting that we should compare notes and help each other as much as we can. We speak mostly in French, as all the exchange students do, for it is our only mutual language, but more and more Aida and I inject Spanish into our conversations, for sometimes Aida doesn't know the French word and I recognise the Spanish one, and of course I'm always glad of a chance to practise with a native speaker. Being from Barcelona she also speaks Catalan, which fascinates me - it's like Spanish and yet not like Spanish, and she occasionally uses a word or two to amuse me. This is common among my friends - though French and English are the main languages, we insert German, Spanish, Portuguese or any other language as appropriate until we're all speaking some kind of Exchange Student Creole!
I also think I proved to my Miracles teacher yesterday after three weeks that I'm not the dumb fool that I might appear in class. I tend not to speak for fear of confirming the 'fool' part by my inferior French, and for the most part I have nothing to say anyway, since I don't know the methodologies, the texts or the literary context at all. At one point yesterday, though, the teacher was encouraging the class to make a connection with a certain passage in the text, and I struggled to explain that I recollected a Bible verse, likely from Matthew, that seemed to relate to the passage in question. After floundering for a minute it became clear this wasn't the answer the teacher was seeking and I stopped talking. Instead I pulled out the copy of the New Testament we all have for class and found the verse I was thinking of (Matthew, right enough!) and showed it to her at the end of class. The strong mutual references to lilies and glory in both the Bible verse and the passage in our text as well as the matching themes of the two seemed to please her with my grasp of intertextuality. Win for the Australian exchange student!
My new umbrella got a workout today - I went to the 5th half an hour early and took a wander to a cheap shop I remembered seeing there, where I picked up a nice little blue and green fold-up umbrella. It seems to rain every second day here, which is trying coming from a place where rain is unusual enough to be a novelty, but rain as often as it appears here is more of a trial - one's appearance is constantly disheveled, one's shoes are always soaked and one has a constant feeling of dampness until one can remove their coat and shoes. The umbrella was a wise choice - sure enough, it began raining during class and I had need of it on the way home.
I'm in the process of planning my next adventures around Europe over the next two months...indeed, my next one starts tomorrow! I won't say where I'm going, though...I'll save the surprise for the next exciting post from anther exotic location!
Or perhaps language - it's remarkable the mixtures of languages and dialects that are used to communicate here. My friend Aida caught me after class yesterday, and it was good to see her again, along with her friend Pili. Aida and I were discussing how much we understood of what happens in class - an ever-increasing amount, though not as much as the French students, I'm sure - and suggesting that we should compare notes and help each other as much as we can. We speak mostly in French, as all the exchange students do, for it is our only mutual language, but more and more Aida and I inject Spanish into our conversations, for sometimes Aida doesn't know the French word and I recognise the Spanish one, and of course I'm always glad of a chance to practise with a native speaker. Being from Barcelona she also speaks Catalan, which fascinates me - it's like Spanish and yet not like Spanish, and she occasionally uses a word or two to amuse me. This is common among my friends - though French and English are the main languages, we insert German, Spanish, Portuguese or any other language as appropriate until we're all speaking some kind of Exchange Student Creole!
I also think I proved to my Miracles teacher yesterday after three weeks that I'm not the dumb fool that I might appear in class. I tend not to speak for fear of confirming the 'fool' part by my inferior French, and for the most part I have nothing to say anyway, since I don't know the methodologies, the texts or the literary context at all. At one point yesterday, though, the teacher was encouraging the class to make a connection with a certain passage in the text, and I struggled to explain that I recollected a Bible verse, likely from Matthew, that seemed to relate to the passage in question. After floundering for a minute it became clear this wasn't the answer the teacher was seeking and I stopped talking. Instead I pulled out the copy of the New Testament we all have for class and found the verse I was thinking of (Matthew, right enough!) and showed it to her at the end of class. The strong mutual references to lilies and glory in both the Bible verse and the passage in our text as well as the matching themes of the two seemed to please her with my grasp of intertextuality. Win for the Australian exchange student!
My new umbrella got a workout today - I went to the 5th half an hour early and took a wander to a cheap shop I remembered seeing there, where I picked up a nice little blue and green fold-up umbrella. It seems to rain every second day here, which is trying coming from a place where rain is unusual enough to be a novelty, but rain as often as it appears here is more of a trial - one's appearance is constantly disheveled, one's shoes are always soaked and one has a constant feeling of dampness until one can remove their coat and shoes. The umbrella was a wise choice - sure enough, it began raining during class and I had need of it on the way home.
I'm in the process of planning my next adventures around Europe over the next two months...indeed, my next one starts tomorrow! I won't say where I'm going, though...I'll save the surprise for the next exciting post from anther exotic location!
Friday, 12 October 2012
Student life
So the other day I decided to do something different, just for a change. I have three ways of getting to Sorbonne: I can take a bus from my apartment to the metro at La Courneuve and ride line 7 to Censier-Daubenton near Sorbonne; I can walk to the station in Le Bourget, take the RER to Chatelet-Les Halles and change to line 7 for the trip to Censier; or I can take the RER all the way to Port-Royal and walk to Sorbonne from there. Until now I've been taking the metro all the way, since walking is minimal and it's very convenient, though a little time-consuming - travelling two-thirds of the line takes around 40 minutes.
I made a fortuitous discovery last weekend, though. When visiting my friends at Martin's house I discovered that it's only 20 minutes from Le Bourget to Denfert-Rochereau, making it less than that to Port-Royal or Luxembourg, the stations nearest Sorbonne. Accordingly, on Wednesday afternoon I walked the 10 minutes from my apartment to the station, bought a ticket and hopped on the next train into Paris.
Less than half an hour after I'd left my apartment, I was standing outside Port-Royal RER station in the south of Paris. All that left was to find my way to Sorbonne. It turned out to be a longer walk than expected - around half an hour, though that may decrease as my mobility increases. I found Sorbonne easily enough, but my next task will be to look out the shortest and easiest route there - I think next week I'll try walking south from Luxembourg rather than north from Port-Royal. I also tried option two yesterday, changing at Chatelet-Les Halles, but it's the biggest metro-type station in France and just walking between the two platforms took a good 10 minutes.
Classes are getting better - my brain is now more used to hearing three hours of chatter about the Bible and raising Lazarus from the dead in French, so I'm understanding more of my classes and the structure of the courses and as such feeling a little more comfortable all in all. I will say, though, that I will be eternally grateful that I did (most of) my degree in Australia and that I'm still officially an Australian student. Not a lot seems to happen in classes around here and how much learning gets done I still haven't figured out. At least during my insane number of contact hours at Monash a large amount of information was imparted into my brain. I'm beginning to see that organisation, efficiency and burearucracy are three things for which you should never hire a Frenchman. Anas is totally on my side, too. He's already wondering why he left Switzerland for this, which made him laugh when he remembered I spent a day and a half on planes and moved halfway round the world for this. Sigh.
History of French orthography is still my favourite class. Once I finally arrived today (bottleneck at Gare du Nord, my RER was held up for 45 minutes or so) we were discussing writing systems - Sumerian compared to Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew - and how they each expressed language, i.e. pictures versus representations of sound, and how well each system worked. This culminated in an explanation of why French is such a hard language to learn, specifically because every grapheme (written thing) has multiple pronunciations and every phoneme (spoken thing) has multiple transcriptions. It sounds very similar to history of English classes - "Our language is just generally screwed up!"
I had an argument with Paul today. It turns out that we both finish class at 11 on a Friday, and since I don't see any of my friends regularly anymore we took the opportunity to hang out. This ended in us agreeing to reserve judgement on which is the best Disney movie until we've each had time to view the other's nominees (I have to watch Robin Hood, he has to watch Tarzan and Beauty and the Beast). We also came to the conclusion that Paul's antipathy towards The Lion King may be due to the poorer quality of the German version, a theory we'll have to test. There may also have been some extensive quoting of Finding Nemo around this time. We ended up in the middle of a Park League soccer match, too - the bench we were sitting on at the park near Sorbonne was frequently looped as the kids chased the ball out from behind or underneath us - that is, when Horace doesn't take matters into his own hands and just bounce the ball back (yes, it did bounce off me once or twice). It was hilarious watching how intense these six-year-olds were and trying to figure out which tiny soccer star was playing for which team.
It's now definitely bedtime. Tomorrow I'm going into Gibert Jeune again for another textbook and hopefully meeting some friends for hot chocolate, not to mention starting to plan and book some of my trips over the next few months...I love having a four-and-two-half-days weekend!
I made a fortuitous discovery last weekend, though. When visiting my friends at Martin's house I discovered that it's only 20 minutes from Le Bourget to Denfert-Rochereau, making it less than that to Port-Royal or Luxembourg, the stations nearest Sorbonne. Accordingly, on Wednesday afternoon I walked the 10 minutes from my apartment to the station, bought a ticket and hopped on the next train into Paris.
Less than half an hour after I'd left my apartment, I was standing outside Port-Royal RER station in the south of Paris. All that left was to find my way to Sorbonne. It turned out to be a longer walk than expected - around half an hour, though that may decrease as my mobility increases. I found Sorbonne easily enough, but my next task will be to look out the shortest and easiest route there - I think next week I'll try walking south from Luxembourg rather than north from Port-Royal. I also tried option two yesterday, changing at Chatelet-Les Halles, but it's the biggest metro-type station in France and just walking between the two platforms took a good 10 minutes.
Classes are getting better - my brain is now more used to hearing three hours of chatter about the Bible and raising Lazarus from the dead in French, so I'm understanding more of my classes and the structure of the courses and as such feeling a little more comfortable all in all. I will say, though, that I will be eternally grateful that I did (most of) my degree in Australia and that I'm still officially an Australian student. Not a lot seems to happen in classes around here and how much learning gets done I still haven't figured out. At least during my insane number of contact hours at Monash a large amount of information was imparted into my brain. I'm beginning to see that organisation, efficiency and burearucracy are three things for which you should never hire a Frenchman. Anas is totally on my side, too. He's already wondering why he left Switzerland for this, which made him laugh when he remembered I spent a day and a half on planes and moved halfway round the world for this. Sigh.
History of French orthography is still my favourite class. Once I finally arrived today (bottleneck at Gare du Nord, my RER was held up for 45 minutes or so) we were discussing writing systems - Sumerian compared to Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Hebrew - and how they each expressed language, i.e. pictures versus representations of sound, and how well each system worked. This culminated in an explanation of why French is such a hard language to learn, specifically because every grapheme (written thing) has multiple pronunciations and every phoneme (spoken thing) has multiple transcriptions. It sounds very similar to history of English classes - "Our language is just generally screwed up!"
I had an argument with Paul today. It turns out that we both finish class at 11 on a Friday, and since I don't see any of my friends regularly anymore we took the opportunity to hang out. This ended in us agreeing to reserve judgement on which is the best Disney movie until we've each had time to view the other's nominees (I have to watch Robin Hood, he has to watch Tarzan and Beauty and the Beast). We also came to the conclusion that Paul's antipathy towards The Lion King may be due to the poorer quality of the German version, a theory we'll have to test. There may also have been some extensive quoting of Finding Nemo around this time. We ended up in the middle of a Park League soccer match, too - the bench we were sitting on at the park near Sorbonne was frequently looped as the kids chased the ball out from behind or underneath us - that is, when Horace doesn't take matters into his own hands and just bounce the ball back (yes, it did bounce off me once or twice). It was hilarious watching how intense these six-year-olds were and trying to figure out which tiny soccer star was playing for which team.
It's now definitely bedtime. Tomorrow I'm going into Gibert Jeune again for another textbook and hopefully meeting some friends for hot chocolate, not to mention starting to plan and book some of my trips over the next few months...I love having a four-and-two-half-days weekend!
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Studies of everything
So I'm writing this from my hotel room in Chartres, staring out the window at the city as I sit on the bed. I'm sure for most of you this then begs the question: what am I doing in a hotel room in Chartres? I'll get to that in a moment, but before I start in on the chaotic but momentous events of today, I need to provide an account of my first week of classes at Sorbonne, which is now a good day overdue (and not looking likely to happen unless I do it tonight!).
My uni week starts on a Wednesday afternoon. My free time so far, of which I admit I've had a fair bit, has mostly been given over to administrative tasks - shopping to stock up my wardrobe, kitchen and pantry; completing documentation for France or Sorbonne, slowly; and generally acquainting myself with the city, not to mention a good deal of cycling work. I put all this aside on mid-morning on Wednesday and headed into the 5th, since classrooms would be published in the foyer of Sorbonne during the first week. I checked my classroom and then headed across the road for lunch, since I was starving. I was also a few hours early. Given I have no idea how anything operates around here, I've deemed it wise to allow plenty of extra time for important things like trains and classes - where possible, at least.
I dropped into the bank to pick up my new bank card, visited a few shops that I'd been interested in around the 5th arrondissement, and still had an hour or so to kill, so I headed for my favourite hideout in the 5th, Saint-Medard, for a little while. Finally it was getting close to four o'clock, so I tripped back to Sorbonne and headed to the classroom number indicated. Of course, when I wrote my timetable in my notebook, I should really have noted the class NAMES next to the codes. I had no idea which class I was walking into!
It became evident pretty quickly that I was in the literature/culture class called 'Sacred Miracles, Profane Miracles' (yes, they explore the oddest concepts in their classes at Sorbonne - much more delightfully eccentric than Monash!) It also became evident that the girl next to me had as little idea as I did of what was going on - yes, an exchange student! Aida hails from Barcelona and had two other Spanish friends in the class too. But wait - there's more. It turns out the lovely Swedish-born Ana who studies in the US while her family lives in the UK was, obviously, an exchange student. I suspect there were more than just the five of us, too. We made it clear to the teacher that we were all exchange students (and therefore have mediocre French and little to no clue of what was going on), though the teacher was unyielding on the methodologies that the French students learned in earlier years of their degrees and which would be needed for our assessments. None discouraged, we all headed home, where I cooked up a late dinner (three-hour class finishing at 7pm means I get home a little after 8) and called it a day.
Thursday started a little earlier - classes started at 2pm. After my usual morning tasks I packed my bag and raced out the door so I wouldn't be late to class. It wasn't until I got to the metro that I realised my problem - having left at 11.40am would get me there by 1pm, not 2pm. I took the opportunity to head to the CROUS canteen and have a leisurely lunch by myself, re-reading Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride which I'd finished the day before (and yes, I'm aware I'm a very fast reader!) Stopping for a hot chocolate at the uni canteen, I was a little late for class, mostly because I wasn't sure which of the two Spanish classes was mine and I was a little too terrified to ask anyone - assuming, that is, that anyone I could have asked would have known anything.
Spanish class was kind of unexciting - the teacher spoke beautiful polished French for the first half of the class as he explained assessments, requirements and so on. When he finally did switch to Spanish, having described a curriculum that sounded like everything I covered in first year, he handed out a small excerpt from a Spanish novel that even I found a little difficult. Even in class here they send mixed messages. Again, I made sure to inform the teacher that I was an exchange student, etc., and though I'd imagined that this would be the one class where my French ability wouldn't matter, since we'd all be in the same boat (more or less) when it came to our Spanish, I guess my imagination needs a tweak. The grammar textbooks that he recommended were all based on French (hello, Schaums' grammars!) and even the vocab explanations were all given in French!
I ran into Lisanne as class ended - she was in the same Spanish level but the class after me. I had to run, though, since I had another class directly after, thankfully also on the third floor. I had finally found the room, or so I thought, when a face jumped out at me - Paul. I hadn't seen him for a week either, but I had no time to chat - I had to get to class. Upon finally realising that the door opened inwards (oops...) I was thankfully only a minute or two late, to be expected in the first week. At least I was doing better than the cinema kids who all wandered in thinking it was their class...
The teacher was lovely - one of those vibrant, happy people who just never seems to get down. She gave us a short quiz designed partly to give her some weekend reading material but also to see how much we knew about French literature (oh, the class was Contemporary Narrative Fiction, by the way). I wrote on my quiz that while I could hold my own on the topic of contemporary English-language or Australian literature, I knew nothing about contemporary French literature and was here to learn. I had a little trouble following a lot of what was said, maybe because I was feeling really tired and the lovely teacher really was speaking very fast. I gave her the standard speech after class about being an exchange student, not having a brilliant grasp of French and therefore being a slow reader, and Sabrinelle, who apparently has a very unique name even in France, seemed quite pleased to have an Australian student and was very sympathetic with my potential difficulties, telling me not to hesitate to raise my hand and ask for help if I was struggling. Reassured, it was home again for an early night before Friday morning's class.
Friday started at 7am, definitely not my favourite time to start the day. I was out the door by 10 to eight and on my way to uni, arriving with just enough time to check my classroom and be waiting when the preceding class finished and ours filed in (8am class? Really?). I liked this teacher almost from the get-go. She spoke very clearly and not too fast, and even as she outlined the course I was getting excited. History of the Orthography of the French Language, before I forget. It seemed surprisingly popular, too, as more and more people kept filing in until we ran out of chairs and tables. Our teacher seemed a little taken aback, but simply told us to make sure we were enrolled so that our marks would officially count. We got straight into it, examining a copy of a letter from George Sands to Gustave Flaubert in which Sands made three of the 'orthographic errors' about which he was so vocally critical in others! Also, you've got to love a class whether the teacher gets distracted and goes off on a tangent about regional accents in class, using students to give examples as well as incorporating the accent of her native region following a discussion about....I can't remember what. It was all fascinating to me, though, since I know the English-language equivalents of most things we discussed (like the first known written record of the language - the epic Beowulf in English, in French the Sermon de Strasbourg) but the French is a whole fascinating undiscovered country. This is definitely shaping up to be my favourite class.
I dropped into Carrefour again on my way home, picking up some things that I can get at Franprix in Le Bourget and some notebooks and folders for uni. Spending the afternoon in more of the administrative tasks (and preparations for Paris-Tours this weekend), I headed out again around 8.30pm for the RER station. Martin had invited some people over for pre-drinks before heading out to a party, and since his nearest metro station had turned out to be also an RER station that was 20 minutes away on my line, I wanted to catch up with my friends. The walk from the station felt as long as the train trip, though (but that could just have been because I had no idea where I was going) and I was nearly ready to kill Martin when I arrived at his building to be told his apartment was on the fifth floor up five flights of rickety wooden stairs!
I made it without dying, though, and I saw Paul and Lisanne as soon as I walked in the door. The other two people there quickly introduced themselves, Simone and Chris from - you guessed it - Germany! The language was therefore a strange hybrid of English, French and German - Martin in particular would speak in very rapid German, insert a three-word sentence in English without pausing and then use a French word for something else a minute later. They were also very amused by my gobsmackedness at how much they knew about random aspects of Australian or Anglophone culture - I'm aware that English-language music is very popular in Europe, but knowing Green Day and Oasis on the guitar or singing Red Hot Chili Peppers word perfect - really? The bit that really floored me was that Chris was acquainted with Waltzing Matilda - and then, before I could blink, he goes on to reference Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning! I feel so culturally ignorant only knowing Anglophone culture, music and history.
Now as towhy I'm in Chartres this evening and not catching up with the Germans at Nuit Blanche before the early night I always want but never get, it began with a phone call. Well, several phone calls, actually, which I slept through at 7am today. I was blissfully asleep until almost 9 o'clock, when I got out of bed and sat down at my computer with a bowl of cereal. I logged on to all the usual suspects - Hotmail, Facebook and Skype, for my morning convo with Down Under, though no-one seemed to notice I'd come online for our usual weekend phone call. I started reading my emails while I waited for them to return to the computer and accidentally came across what Mother had been calling to tell me.
On a whim, Mum had asked Jessi Braverman, Orica-GreenEDGE's press officer, if I could ride with Joachim the soigneur in the GreenEDGE team car for Paris-Tours as part of the official media contingent. Jessi consulted the GreenEDGE DS for Paris-Tours, Lionel Marie, and amazingly Jessi came back with a yes! The catch was that Lionel wanted me at the race start an hour early. Unfortunately Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais is nigh on inaccessible by public transport, hence I'd already dismissed the idea and was heading to the race finish at Tours. There were no buses from the nearest town, Chartres, before midday and in fact no trains to Chartres arriving before 9:30, either. This meant that I needed to stay the night in the area so I could make my way to Chateauneuf early Sunday morning. An examination of my press pack also revealed a list of team hotels, so with some quick internet work I lined up a train to Chartres, a room in the hotel where GreenEDGE would be staying, the bus tour I wanted for Monday morning in Tours (I already had a hostel booked for Sunday night) and a train ticket from Tours back to Paris.
Anyway, it took me too long to get to Gare Montparnasse and buy a ticket to make the 3pm train, but by then it was a short wait for the 4pm. One note on the trains - double. Decker. Wicked cool. Naturally I chose the upper level, crutches and all. After a misty ride through rainy, condensation-obscured Eure-et-Loire, I descended the train, to use the French term, at Chartres and headed for the bus stop. Successfully finding the right bus, I boarded, bought a ticket and got out at the stop the driver indicated, following the directions he'd given me to find the right street. The woman he was talking to was correct - it was a long walk, but the misting rain didn't bother me too much.
The hotel, when I found it, wasn't snazzy, but it's clean, perfectly adequate and warm and dry. Dinner was the ever-so-sophisticated Macca's next door - not fancy, I know, but it was close and they even did vegetarian for me! So far no sign of GreenEDGE, though I can see the Saxobank and BMC team trucks across the road from the hotel in a warehouse yard. Anyway, if not beforehand then I'll see them at the race start in Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais once I've picked up my official press pass! Keep your eyes peeled for a post from Tours tomorrow night or else the race report and/or articles to appear on Peloton Cafe the following morning!
My uni week starts on a Wednesday afternoon. My free time so far, of which I admit I've had a fair bit, has mostly been given over to administrative tasks - shopping to stock up my wardrobe, kitchen and pantry; completing documentation for France or Sorbonne, slowly; and generally acquainting myself with the city, not to mention a good deal of cycling work. I put all this aside on mid-morning on Wednesday and headed into the 5th, since classrooms would be published in the foyer of Sorbonne during the first week. I checked my classroom and then headed across the road for lunch, since I was starving. I was also a few hours early. Given I have no idea how anything operates around here, I've deemed it wise to allow plenty of extra time for important things like trains and classes - where possible, at least.
I dropped into the bank to pick up my new bank card, visited a few shops that I'd been interested in around the 5th arrondissement, and still had an hour or so to kill, so I headed for my favourite hideout in the 5th, Saint-Medard, for a little while. Finally it was getting close to four o'clock, so I tripped back to Sorbonne and headed to the classroom number indicated. Of course, when I wrote my timetable in my notebook, I should really have noted the class NAMES next to the codes. I had no idea which class I was walking into!
It became evident pretty quickly that I was in the literature/culture class called 'Sacred Miracles, Profane Miracles' (yes, they explore the oddest concepts in their classes at Sorbonne - much more delightfully eccentric than Monash!) It also became evident that the girl next to me had as little idea as I did of what was going on - yes, an exchange student! Aida hails from Barcelona and had two other Spanish friends in the class too. But wait - there's more. It turns out the lovely Swedish-born Ana who studies in the US while her family lives in the UK was, obviously, an exchange student. I suspect there were more than just the five of us, too. We made it clear to the teacher that we were all exchange students (and therefore have mediocre French and little to no clue of what was going on), though the teacher was unyielding on the methodologies that the French students learned in earlier years of their degrees and which would be needed for our assessments. None discouraged, we all headed home, where I cooked up a late dinner (three-hour class finishing at 7pm means I get home a little after 8) and called it a day.
Thursday started a little earlier - classes started at 2pm. After my usual morning tasks I packed my bag and raced out the door so I wouldn't be late to class. It wasn't until I got to the metro that I realised my problem - having left at 11.40am would get me there by 1pm, not 2pm. I took the opportunity to head to the CROUS canteen and have a leisurely lunch by myself, re-reading Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride which I'd finished the day before (and yes, I'm aware I'm a very fast reader!) Stopping for a hot chocolate at the uni canteen, I was a little late for class, mostly because I wasn't sure which of the two Spanish classes was mine and I was a little too terrified to ask anyone - assuming, that is, that anyone I could have asked would have known anything.
Spanish class was kind of unexciting - the teacher spoke beautiful polished French for the first half of the class as he explained assessments, requirements and so on. When he finally did switch to Spanish, having described a curriculum that sounded like everything I covered in first year, he handed out a small excerpt from a Spanish novel that even I found a little difficult. Even in class here they send mixed messages. Again, I made sure to inform the teacher that I was an exchange student, etc., and though I'd imagined that this would be the one class where my French ability wouldn't matter, since we'd all be in the same boat (more or less) when it came to our Spanish, I guess my imagination needs a tweak. The grammar textbooks that he recommended were all based on French (hello, Schaums' grammars!) and even the vocab explanations were all given in French!
I ran into Lisanne as class ended - she was in the same Spanish level but the class after me. I had to run, though, since I had another class directly after, thankfully also on the third floor. I had finally found the room, or so I thought, when a face jumped out at me - Paul. I hadn't seen him for a week either, but I had no time to chat - I had to get to class. Upon finally realising that the door opened inwards (oops...) I was thankfully only a minute or two late, to be expected in the first week. At least I was doing better than the cinema kids who all wandered in thinking it was their class...
The teacher was lovely - one of those vibrant, happy people who just never seems to get down. She gave us a short quiz designed partly to give her some weekend reading material but also to see how much we knew about French literature (oh, the class was Contemporary Narrative Fiction, by the way). I wrote on my quiz that while I could hold my own on the topic of contemporary English-language or Australian literature, I knew nothing about contemporary French literature and was here to learn. I had a little trouble following a lot of what was said, maybe because I was feeling really tired and the lovely teacher really was speaking very fast. I gave her the standard speech after class about being an exchange student, not having a brilliant grasp of French and therefore being a slow reader, and Sabrinelle, who apparently has a very unique name even in France, seemed quite pleased to have an Australian student and was very sympathetic with my potential difficulties, telling me not to hesitate to raise my hand and ask for help if I was struggling. Reassured, it was home again for an early night before Friday morning's class.
Friday started at 7am, definitely not my favourite time to start the day. I was out the door by 10 to eight and on my way to uni, arriving with just enough time to check my classroom and be waiting when the preceding class finished and ours filed in (8am class? Really?). I liked this teacher almost from the get-go. She spoke very clearly and not too fast, and even as she outlined the course I was getting excited. History of the Orthography of the French Language, before I forget. It seemed surprisingly popular, too, as more and more people kept filing in until we ran out of chairs and tables. Our teacher seemed a little taken aback, but simply told us to make sure we were enrolled so that our marks would officially count. We got straight into it, examining a copy of a letter from George Sands to Gustave Flaubert in which Sands made three of the 'orthographic errors' about which he was so vocally critical in others! Also, you've got to love a class whether the teacher gets distracted and goes off on a tangent about regional accents in class, using students to give examples as well as incorporating the accent of her native region following a discussion about....I can't remember what. It was all fascinating to me, though, since I know the English-language equivalents of most things we discussed (like the first known written record of the language - the epic Beowulf in English, in French the Sermon de Strasbourg) but the French is a whole fascinating undiscovered country. This is definitely shaping up to be my favourite class.
I dropped into Carrefour again on my way home, picking up some things that I can get at Franprix in Le Bourget and some notebooks and folders for uni. Spending the afternoon in more of the administrative tasks (and preparations for Paris-Tours this weekend), I headed out again around 8.30pm for the RER station. Martin had invited some people over for pre-drinks before heading out to a party, and since his nearest metro station had turned out to be also an RER station that was 20 minutes away on my line, I wanted to catch up with my friends. The walk from the station felt as long as the train trip, though (but that could just have been because I had no idea where I was going) and I was nearly ready to kill Martin when I arrived at his building to be told his apartment was on the fifth floor up five flights of rickety wooden stairs!
I made it without dying, though, and I saw Paul and Lisanne as soon as I walked in the door. The other two people there quickly introduced themselves, Simone and Chris from - you guessed it - Germany! The language was therefore a strange hybrid of English, French and German - Martin in particular would speak in very rapid German, insert a three-word sentence in English without pausing and then use a French word for something else a minute later. They were also very amused by my gobsmackedness at how much they knew about random aspects of Australian or Anglophone culture - I'm aware that English-language music is very popular in Europe, but knowing Green Day and Oasis on the guitar or singing Red Hot Chili Peppers word perfect - really? The bit that really floored me was that Chris was acquainted with Waltzing Matilda - and then, before I could blink, he goes on to reference Midnight Oil's Beds Are Burning! I feel so culturally ignorant only knowing Anglophone culture, music and history.
Now as towhy I'm in Chartres this evening and not catching up with the Germans at Nuit Blanche before the early night I always want but never get, it began with a phone call. Well, several phone calls, actually, which I slept through at 7am today. I was blissfully asleep until almost 9 o'clock, when I got out of bed and sat down at my computer with a bowl of cereal. I logged on to all the usual suspects - Hotmail, Facebook and Skype, for my morning convo with Down Under, though no-one seemed to notice I'd come online for our usual weekend phone call. I started reading my emails while I waited for them to return to the computer and accidentally came across what Mother had been calling to tell me.
On a whim, Mum had asked Jessi Braverman, Orica-GreenEDGE's press officer, if I could ride with Joachim the soigneur in the GreenEDGE team car for Paris-Tours as part of the official media contingent. Jessi consulted the GreenEDGE DS for Paris-Tours, Lionel Marie, and amazingly Jessi came back with a yes! The catch was that Lionel wanted me at the race start an hour early. Unfortunately Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais is nigh on inaccessible by public transport, hence I'd already dismissed the idea and was heading to the race finish at Tours. There were no buses from the nearest town, Chartres, before midday and in fact no trains to Chartres arriving before 9:30, either. This meant that I needed to stay the night in the area so I could make my way to Chateauneuf early Sunday morning. An examination of my press pack also revealed a list of team hotels, so with some quick internet work I lined up a train to Chartres, a room in the hotel where GreenEDGE would be staying, the bus tour I wanted for Monday morning in Tours (I already had a hostel booked for Sunday night) and a train ticket from Tours back to Paris.
Anyway, it took me too long to get to Gare Montparnasse and buy a ticket to make the 3pm train, but by then it was a short wait for the 4pm. One note on the trains - double. Decker. Wicked cool. Naturally I chose the upper level, crutches and all. After a misty ride through rainy, condensation-obscured Eure-et-Loire, I descended the train, to use the French term, at Chartres and headed for the bus stop. Successfully finding the right bus, I boarded, bought a ticket and got out at the stop the driver indicated, following the directions he'd given me to find the right street. The woman he was talking to was correct - it was a long walk, but the misting rain didn't bother me too much.
The hotel, when I found it, wasn't snazzy, but it's clean, perfectly adequate and warm and dry. Dinner was the ever-so-sophisticated Macca's next door - not fancy, I know, but it was close and they even did vegetarian for me! So far no sign of GreenEDGE, though I can see the Saxobank and BMC team trucks across the road from the hotel in a warehouse yard. Anyway, if not beforehand then I'll see them at the race start in Chateauneuf-en-Thymerais once I've picked up my official press pass! Keep your eyes peeled for a post from Tours tomorrow night or else the race report and/or articles to appear on Peloton Cafe the following morning!
Tuesday, 25 September 2012
Anecdotes
So I found out yesterday why Sorbonne Uni doesn't have a big fancy sign at the entrance. It does. The university building takes up the whole block, but most of the south side is currently undergoing renovations, and the main entrance to the uni is conveniently obscured by all the scaffolding in the courtyard out the front. It's actually quite a nice entrance, too - big letters saying 'SORBONNE UNIVERSITY', the EU and French flags and some pretty-coloured wall panels. I feel a little bit diddled now. Fingers crossed they finish building before I leave so I can get a photo for posterity's sake!
First trip to the Le Bourget post office yesterday - and I escaped alive! Strange, though - their post office is also its own bank! It wasn't too far to walk, either - I keep forgetting that Australia is BIG, and Paris is small, and therefore maps lie to me when they tell me how far things are. I re-learned this fact today (as I'm sure I will many, many times) when I headed for the post office in the 5th arrondissement, also nice and close. It's all so little!
My other handy discovery of yesterday - turns out my bank, which is a nice, two-minute walk from uni via the shortcut I've discovered, also has branches and ATMS in Le Bourget (between the pharmacy and the post office, I forget exactly where, but it's a short walk, naturally) and at Place du 8 mai 1945 in La Courneuve, where I change from the metro to the bus.
Speaking of buses, they're crazy around here! Even the bus drivers themselves fail to see the logic of a 20-minute wait at the terminus for three buses to then leave at once. My poor, unmathsy brain is also bamboozled by the way the trip to the metro in the morning (during peak hour, please note) takes the five to 10 minutes that it should to cover the relevant distance, yet said trip in the other direction at 3pm takes at least 20 minutes (from when I started counting...). It's actually faster at 5pm, I've found! They also build buses differently here - most of the centre of the bus is given over to standing room, which makes sense since every bus I've been on while here has been so full it was standing room only...
Our teacher mentioned something about the metro last week that I've noticed applies elsewhere as well. All rubbish bins in the Paris metro, and in many public areas around Paris (even footpaths in Le Bourget) are clear plastic bags hanging from a metal ring. Why? So that you can't hide a bomb in the rubbish. I kid you not. Paris rubbish bins are designed not to be conducive to terrosist attacks. It's a little sad that we live in a world where you have to think this way.
I've also discovered that, according to the popular opinion of my friends and Erasmus peers, group E is thought to be the top class is our French stage intensif. Apparently, A is the bottom and E is the top. Needless to say, I'm more than a little confused and concerned by this concept...though I'm equally concerned by the other way round!
Mind you, they told me this after I complained how bored I was because my class was really easy (today we conjugated the two most common verbs in the four most common tenses! Yay!). Hmmm......France makes NO sense at all.
First trip to the Le Bourget post office yesterday - and I escaped alive! Strange, though - their post office is also its own bank! It wasn't too far to walk, either - I keep forgetting that Australia is BIG, and Paris is small, and therefore maps lie to me when they tell me how far things are. I re-learned this fact today (as I'm sure I will many, many times) when I headed for the post office in the 5th arrondissement, also nice and close. It's all so little!
My other handy discovery of yesterday - turns out my bank, which is a nice, two-minute walk from uni via the shortcut I've discovered, also has branches and ATMS in Le Bourget (between the pharmacy and the post office, I forget exactly where, but it's a short walk, naturally) and at Place du 8 mai 1945 in La Courneuve, where I change from the metro to the bus.
Speaking of buses, they're crazy around here! Even the bus drivers themselves fail to see the logic of a 20-minute wait at the terminus for three buses to then leave at once. My poor, unmathsy brain is also bamboozled by the way the trip to the metro in the morning (during peak hour, please note) takes the five to 10 minutes that it should to cover the relevant distance, yet said trip in the other direction at 3pm takes at least 20 minutes (from when I started counting...). It's actually faster at 5pm, I've found! They also build buses differently here - most of the centre of the bus is given over to standing room, which makes sense since every bus I've been on while here has been so full it was standing room only...
Our teacher mentioned something about the metro last week that I've noticed applies elsewhere as well. All rubbish bins in the Paris metro, and in many public areas around Paris (even footpaths in Le Bourget) are clear plastic bags hanging from a metal ring. Why? So that you can't hide a bomb in the rubbish. I kid you not. Paris rubbish bins are designed not to be conducive to terrosist attacks. It's a little sad that we live in a world where you have to think this way.
I've also discovered that, according to the popular opinion of my friends and Erasmus peers, group E is thought to be the top class is our French stage intensif. Apparently, A is the bottom and E is the top. Needless to say, I'm more than a little confused and concerned by this concept...though I'm equally concerned by the other way round!
Mind you, they told me this after I complained how bored I was because my class was really easy (today we conjugated the two most common verbs in the four most common tenses! Yay!). Hmmm......France makes NO sense at all.
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| At the CROUS canteen - Rafael, Lisanne, Martin |
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| My chocolate mousse (and Luis Felipe's arm) |
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| ...then the world would be a much more sober place (pun intended) |
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| The bus stop in La Courneuve |
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| Sorbonne's library, which has a HUGE collection of Spanish and French literature... |
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| Wandering east through Le Bourget |
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| A new take on 'Beware of the Dog' ('mechant' means 'wicked')... |
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| The clear plastic bag bins - see story above. |
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| The west end of Rue Rigaud, looking east |
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| The clinic next door from the west side |
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| The bottom of Rue Santeuil (where Sorbonne is) |
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| Guess where...no, you'll never guess... |
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Schooldays
Life in Paris is slowly turning into a humdrum of morning classes at Sorbonne, time with friends, navigating bureaucracy, domestic chores, homework and Peloton Cafe posting. Every morning I'm up at 7am, out of the apartment by 7:45 and on the metro to uni by 8. If I'm lucky then I get to see Martin and Paul before class begins at 9.
Yesterday I had the delight of discovering that the girl who sits in front of me is the delightful Fia, of Tom and Fia's Parisian Adventure. The lovely Silician-Briton has an accent that I would literally die for and was the only person in my class who was as shocked as me when our teacher came out with the F-word, in English, during class (admittedly she was trying to explain a few cultural things to us, culminating in why you shouldn't mispronounce the word for 'kiss' in French as it comes out like...yeah, you get the idea). The other Aussie girl in my class, a fellow Monashian called Rebecca, was absent and missed all the fun.
I met up with the boys and Lisanne after class and Lisanne invited me to come along to lunch with the whole group, most of whom I didn't know. I followed them to a place a block from Sorbonne where I'd never been. Turns out they'd led me to the CROUS canteen/restaurant - CNOUS & CROUS are sort of like the government student welfare organisations (National and Regional) and they run a canteen thingy in the 5th arrondissement, amongst other things, with cheap healthy food for poor university students. A 6-point meal (a 4-point main and a 2-point dessert, for example) costs 3.10 euro - about four bucks. For a plate of green beans and potatoes au gratin and a thing of chocolate mousse with fresh fruit, that's not too bad.
I had a moment yesterday - one of those blissful moments when you look around yourself and think you've found heaven. Sitting at the end of a table in a crowded canteen in Paris, eating chocolate mousse out of a little glass while listening to your friends speaking Portuguese on your left and German on your right was mine. I could have sat and listened to the two languages and eaten chocolate mousse all day (OK, well not all day, it wasn't the best mousse I've ever had and I'd have felt sick after a while). All finally replete, we emptied out trays (for the record, Lisanne was carrying mine) and headed off. Martin had to go back to uni, and Paul was looking for a phone shop, so I walked back to the metro with Luis Felipe, one of the Portuguese-speaking Brasilians in Martin's class (and btw, I'm aware I spell Brasil the Spanish way. Can't help it. Plus, it looks prettier).
I dropped into the boulangerie on the way home to get a demi-baguette for dinner and a tarte aux fraises for afternoon tea - it's a strawberry tart. Despite everything I've said about the lack of fruit and veg, fresh strawberries and raspberries are as common as ants at a picnic, and much nicer (than the ants, I mean). As usual my evening was filled with Peloton Cafe work, my homework for class (so not worth it) reading and packing my bag for today's excursion to the bank with the international students group to open an account.
This morning was also going pretty well, until the part where I discovered that said bank excursion is actually next Wednesday. This left me in a pretty predicament. The bank excursion was next Wednesday, and I had an appointment for next Thursday at a different bank, but seeing as I need to be paying money by the first of October, leaving it til the 26th or 27th of September to open a bank account didn't exactly strike me as wise.
I toddled (hobbled) off to uni as usual, devoting the first hour or so of class (while everyone was discussing the tensions surrounding Islam in France at the moment thanks to some tasteless cartoons) planning out a novel in my notebook, and then the next hour doing actual work. By breaktime I was pretty hungry and a little annoyed I didn't have any food in my bag, so I headed downstairs to the cafe on the ground floor, where I found Lisanne and Paul talking with some friends. I grabbed a chausson aux pommes to munch on and walked back up to class with them. Martin wasn't there as he was 'tired and sick' (which tends to happen when you get home at 2am...I had no sympathy for him or Paul).
We spent the final hour of class discussing cultural cliches and stereotypes and their origins, the teacher illustrating their inaccuracy with some cliches from our own countries, including a reference to Australians having kangaroos outside their front doors. Unfortunately for her, as I said to Rebecca, in my case that's actually true...though it's usually the side door. Still, when you've named the local kangaroos and can tell them apart on sight...
After class I completely lost Paul and Lisanne, since I had no idea if their class had finished or not, and found myself in the company of the Australian guy from Sunday's picnic, Jono, and some of his English and Australian friends. Together we headed for the CROUS restaurant again, where I managed to bond with Perthian Joanna over the similarity of our surnames. I spose when you're 10 000 miles and more away from home you'll grasp for anything that gives you comfort.
After lunch I headed for the bank where Paul had opened an account a few days earlier to see if I could do the same. As it was they had a vacancy right then, I walked it and had a bank account 15 minutes later, a little shell-shocked at how easy it was. Unfortunately I've been having a look at the CAF and EDF tonight and it seemeth me that using the bank account won't be as easy as opening it...and given it's taken me a fortnight and much lost sleep to open it, that's saying something...
Yesterday I had the delight of discovering that the girl who sits in front of me is the delightful Fia, of Tom and Fia's Parisian Adventure. The lovely Silician-Briton has an accent that I would literally die for and was the only person in my class who was as shocked as me when our teacher came out with the F-word, in English, during class (admittedly she was trying to explain a few cultural things to us, culminating in why you shouldn't mispronounce the word for 'kiss' in French as it comes out like...yeah, you get the idea). The other Aussie girl in my class, a fellow Monashian called Rebecca, was absent and missed all the fun.
I met up with the boys and Lisanne after class and Lisanne invited me to come along to lunch with the whole group, most of whom I didn't know. I followed them to a place a block from Sorbonne where I'd never been. Turns out they'd led me to the CROUS canteen/restaurant - CNOUS & CROUS are sort of like the government student welfare organisations (National and Regional) and they run a canteen thingy in the 5th arrondissement, amongst other things, with cheap healthy food for poor university students. A 6-point meal (a 4-point main and a 2-point dessert, for example) costs 3.10 euro - about four bucks. For a plate of green beans and potatoes au gratin and a thing of chocolate mousse with fresh fruit, that's not too bad.
I had a moment yesterday - one of those blissful moments when you look around yourself and think you've found heaven. Sitting at the end of a table in a crowded canteen in Paris, eating chocolate mousse out of a little glass while listening to your friends speaking Portuguese on your left and German on your right was mine. I could have sat and listened to the two languages and eaten chocolate mousse all day (OK, well not all day, it wasn't the best mousse I've ever had and I'd have felt sick after a while). All finally replete, we emptied out trays (for the record, Lisanne was carrying mine) and headed off. Martin had to go back to uni, and Paul was looking for a phone shop, so I walked back to the metro with Luis Felipe, one of the Portuguese-speaking Brasilians in Martin's class (and btw, I'm aware I spell Brasil the Spanish way. Can't help it. Plus, it looks prettier).
I dropped into the boulangerie on the way home to get a demi-baguette for dinner and a tarte aux fraises for afternoon tea - it's a strawberry tart. Despite everything I've said about the lack of fruit and veg, fresh strawberries and raspberries are as common as ants at a picnic, and much nicer (than the ants, I mean). As usual my evening was filled with Peloton Cafe work, my homework for class (so not worth it) reading and packing my bag for today's excursion to the bank with the international students group to open an account.
This morning was also going pretty well, until the part where I discovered that said bank excursion is actually next Wednesday. This left me in a pretty predicament. The bank excursion was next Wednesday, and I had an appointment for next Thursday at a different bank, but seeing as I need to be paying money by the first of October, leaving it til the 26th or 27th of September to open a bank account didn't exactly strike me as wise.
I toddled (hobbled) off to uni as usual, devoting the first hour or so of class (while everyone was discussing the tensions surrounding Islam in France at the moment thanks to some tasteless cartoons) planning out a novel in my notebook, and then the next hour doing actual work. By breaktime I was pretty hungry and a little annoyed I didn't have any food in my bag, so I headed downstairs to the cafe on the ground floor, where I found Lisanne and Paul talking with some friends. I grabbed a chausson aux pommes to munch on and walked back up to class with them. Martin wasn't there as he was 'tired and sick' (which tends to happen when you get home at 2am...I had no sympathy for him or Paul).
We spent the final hour of class discussing cultural cliches and stereotypes and their origins, the teacher illustrating their inaccuracy with some cliches from our own countries, including a reference to Australians having kangaroos outside their front doors. Unfortunately for her, as I said to Rebecca, in my case that's actually true...though it's usually the side door. Still, when you've named the local kangaroos and can tell them apart on sight...
After class I completely lost Paul and Lisanne, since I had no idea if their class had finished or not, and found myself in the company of the Australian guy from Sunday's picnic, Jono, and some of his English and Australian friends. Together we headed for the CROUS restaurant again, where I managed to bond with Perthian Joanna over the similarity of our surnames. I spose when you're 10 000 miles and more away from home you'll grasp for anything that gives you comfort.
After lunch I headed for the bank where Paul had opened an account a few days earlier to see if I could do the same. As it was they had a vacancy right then, I walked it and had a bank account 15 minutes later, a little shell-shocked at how easy it was. Unfortunately I've been having a look at the CAF and EDF tonight and it seemeth me that using the bank account won't be as easy as opening it...and given it's taken me a fortnight and much lost sleep to open it, that's saying something...
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Sorbonne stories, sojourns and schoolfellows
(Sunday) It
was, quite literally, a beautiful day today. It really is still the
end of summer here, and we couldn't have chosen a better day for our
"brunch" (picnic) with the Erasmus/international kids. Parc Monceau is
on metro line 2, not far from Montmartre, but I was still a couple of
stations from Monceau when I met the gaze of a girl on the train and we
both did a double-take - Louise, one of the French students organising
the event. We hobbled up the metro steps together to find ourselves
right next to the Erasmus group which was congregating outside the
park. My friend Martin had just arrived, and it had been a WHOLE 40
HOURS or something since we'd last seen each other, so we had a lot of
catching up to do (actually, we did). Anas decided to be annoying and
didn't bother showing - ah well, his loss, we had fun.
We essentially staked out a nice piece of grass (yes, grass, it exists in France!) and sat there for four or so hours, eating large amounts of French cuisine, most of it in supermarket packaging, and lazing around in the warm, bright sun. Like a good Australian I had sunscreen in my bag, which I applied (because nothing could be more embarassing than being the Australian in Paris with a September sunburn) but for once I wasn't the only Australian! There was another guy there who caused quite a stir when he mentioned his country of origin, as everyone knew where I was from (and had probably heard my laments about being the only non-European there that day) and immediately turned to me to tell me I was no longer alone! After a brief conversation establishing nothing more than our cities of origin, though, he left to sit with his friends and disappeared sometime after. Fine with me, really - I came to France to make friends with Europeans (well, Frenchies), not more Aussies!
Despite today being the second of the Journees du Patrimoine, and one or two people having expressed interest in the nearby monuments that I'd mentioned, the heat of the summer sun made us all lazy, and instead Martin and I sat and talked for ages with some German girls who were there (So. Many. Bloody. Germans! And some Italians this time, too) and messed around with my juggling balls and Aussie flag (we're converting Martin to an Australian - I have photos with the flag. Next time he has to bring his German one for me!) We eventually headed home around five, you know, before I fell asleep right there on the lawn, which I did debate doing. But I had an hour-long trip home and with the bus strike still on I figured the earlier, the better. That, and some catching up to do with posting for Peloton Cafe (since Jarrod's on holidays and I'm actually in the right time zone to post the European stuff from the World Championships promptly).
(Tuesday) I've just got back from my first trip to the laverie - the building laundromat. The new washing machines are now installed and working, but not so the dryers...suffice to say, my bathroom - nay, my APARTMENT - now looks like a Chinese laundry. I've got the windows wide open in the hopes that everything might dry before morning, even though it's a little chilly in here now.
Yesterday was my final day of freedom before I started my stage intensif - my two-week French crash course at Sorbonne. I therefore headed down to the Carrefour to frivolously spend my euros on totally needless items. I now have a full set of crockery and cutlery - knives, forks, spoons, teaspoons, bowls, plates and mugs for four - in my still purple-and-green kitchen, and a clock radio with iPod connectivity for my bedhead. It's beginning to look less like a transient hotel around here and more like my actual place of residence for the next year of my life.
I then hopped on the metro and headed down to Sorbonne to meet Martin for lunch - hey, not a lot else to do, so why not see my friends? Martin, however, had gotten himself screwed by Sorbonne again. Just like his and Anas's enrolment in European studies last week, Martin had rocked up yesterday for his English-speaking world enrolment only to be told it was today, even though our list of enrolment dates clearly says...yeah, whatever. I'm learning that you pretty much ignore anything you're 'officially' told around here, and before you say it, Dad, I doubt getting things in writing would help. Knowing this place, they'd probably look at it and swear black and blue that they can't help, they don't speak French!
Martin having gone home, I had a leisurely late lunch by myself and paid a visit to a couple of offices at Sorbonne - both closed, of course - before returning to the metro and heading back home. I'd picked up some green beans at the Carrefour earlier and wanted to go to the supermarket for some ingredients to cook an actual meal. Fresh veg seems to be a rarity in France - they seem to favour bulk-buy frozen, and what there is in the Fruit & Veg section in limited and not great quality. I never thought I'd say this, but...I miss Coles.
With another full backpack of stuff only I could accumulate, I headed home to put my newly-purchased chopping board to work (oh! Right. Forgot to mention that. I have a chopping board!). Despite my body's gastronomic apathy, the plan was pasta with veggies in white sauce and that's exactly what I did. I'll be making risottos in no time, I'm sure. I packed my bag for tomorrow (today, Tuesday, whatever), set the alarm on my nice new alarm clock and finished reading 'Anne of the Island' in bed.
Today started off pretty well - though my alarm clock failed to go off (apparently it was set for 8am, not 7), both my body and my phone alarms certainly did. Up, shower, dressed, breakfast and out the door by quarter to eight. It wasn't until I was standing in the metro station purchasing my ticket that my worst nightmare, the thing I panic about every day came true. There are many things which, if I'd forgotten them, I could have dismissed with a shrug, but forgetting your wallet can prove a little more troublesome, especially when it leaves you without enough money for a metro ticket.
A frantic dash home on my already sore and sweaty hands nearly caused me a panic attack. If my wallet wasn't in my bag and it wasn't on my desk then someone MUST have stolen it! A rare moment of clarity saved my sanity, and I meekly fished it out of my dirty clothes bag, where I left it last night after an abortive attempt at clothes-washing. I put enough money for my metro ticket in easy reach and then raced (I'm not kidding. It was a Paralympian effort) back to the metro station. But the damage was already done. I was definitely going to be late.
Arriving at Sorbonne just past 10 minutes late, it struck me as ironic that the one day I'm late is the one day Sorbonne is actually on time. My friends were nowhere to be seen, and things were about to get worse. No-one knew where my class was! Everyone I asked assumed I was part of DELF/DULF (please don't ask me, I still don't know) and tried sending me to the DULF testing in the main amphitheatres. As I got more panicked and distressed my teary eyes and choked-up voice elicited some sympathy from the people I asked, and half an hour later, now 45 minutes late, I found myself on the third floor staring at the class lists for the stage intensif. Despite what Martin had told me I wasn't in the same class as Paul, but I set off anyway for room 302.
It was empty.
The teacher cornered me as I turned to go back up the corridor. "You're very late," she chastised.
"I got...I was been....lost, I...I'm really sorry, can I come in now?"
Thankfully she let me into a classroom on the OTHER side of the corridor, gave me a seat and the class notes and went back to giving everyone the listening test answers. I think I redeemed myself in her eyes a little five minutes later when I was able to tell her that department 93 was Seine-Saint-Denis while she was writing down all the Ile-de-France departments for us. I failed to mention the fact that I live there, though.
I'm aware that I was a) largely asleep, and b) not trying very hard when I did that French ability test last Thursday, but I still didn't think that I did too badly on it. I was still of that opinion when I sat down in class this morning. One would assume that 'E' would be either the top or bottom group, and since I know I'm not good enough to be in the top group that meant E was the bottom. This belies, however, the fact that my friend Paul in group D doesn't have very good French and was terrified by the work my class did this morning which I found pretty basic. Coupled with the fact that my out-loud reading had only one pronunciation error (and I think I can be forgiven for not knowing that in French you pronounce the 'p' in 'psychiatrique') and I only had two errors in dictation, I am definitely beginning to think I'm in the wrong class (tomorrow we're doing Coco Chanel and 'fashion' - yay! :P). This is, of course, assuming there is any logic whatsoever to the way the classes have been put together, which I'm beginning to think there isn't. If I sneak a French language copy of 'Around the World in 80 Days' from the library into class and read it under the desk, do you think the teacher will notice?
After class Lisanne and Martin were boring and bailed (Lisanne had...something to do, and Martin was expecting the Internet connection guy that afternoon), so Paul and I had lunch and then headed for the library. We have a library on campus and I had no idea! He surfed the Internet looking for answers to his home Internetconnection problems while I hobbled between the aisles, almost overcome with emotion at the sight of a library dedicated almost wholly to foreign-language literature (Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda, here I come!) and French linguistics (grammar of mediaeval French? Yes please!). Paul has now learned why no-one takes me into libraries anymore...or bookshops...there's one across the street.
He had an appointment at the bank at three, so we made our way south from Sorbonne to find the bank. Having nothing better to do, and given Paul's French isn't so crash-hot, I came along for company and translation. When the bank guy realised I was explaining the details to Paul in English after he said them in French, though, he volunteered to switch to English since it was Paul's stronger language. One painless half-hour later and Paul is one attestation d'hebergement (proof of housing) away from having a bank account. Needless to say I'm also getting my rear into gear on that account (pun intended :D).
We'd seen a beautiful church just a few blocks from Sorbonne on our way to the bank, and Paul was happy enough to detour a little on our way back to the metro. Needless to say, it was gorgeous. Eglise Saint-Medard (Wikipedia it, it exists) is not too big and beautifully built. I think I just found my new hiding place.
I'll add a few photos before I go to bed - it's getting late and Anne of Windy Poplars really is good reading. Just pray that I don't have any homework for tomorrow's class - actually, if there is, I can probably do it while the teacher calls the roll, unless...anyone know the average monthly wage in Australia? (If you're wondering, it's 1300euro/m in France, 1000/m in Italy and 300/m in Croatia...and I'm doing this class why?)
We essentially staked out a nice piece of grass (yes, grass, it exists in France!) and sat there for four or so hours, eating large amounts of French cuisine, most of it in supermarket packaging, and lazing around in the warm, bright sun. Like a good Australian I had sunscreen in my bag, which I applied (because nothing could be more embarassing than being the Australian in Paris with a September sunburn) but for once I wasn't the only Australian! There was another guy there who caused quite a stir when he mentioned his country of origin, as everyone knew where I was from (and had probably heard my laments about being the only non-European there that day) and immediately turned to me to tell me I was no longer alone! After a brief conversation establishing nothing more than our cities of origin, though, he left to sit with his friends and disappeared sometime after. Fine with me, really - I came to France to make friends with Europeans (well, Frenchies), not more Aussies!
Despite today being the second of the Journees du Patrimoine, and one or two people having expressed interest in the nearby monuments that I'd mentioned, the heat of the summer sun made us all lazy, and instead Martin and I sat and talked for ages with some German girls who were there (So. Many. Bloody. Germans! And some Italians this time, too) and messed around with my juggling balls and Aussie flag (we're converting Martin to an Australian - I have photos with the flag. Next time he has to bring his German one for me!) We eventually headed home around five, you know, before I fell asleep right there on the lawn, which I did debate doing. But I had an hour-long trip home and with the bus strike still on I figured the earlier, the better. That, and some catching up to do with posting for Peloton Cafe (since Jarrod's on holidays and I'm actually in the right time zone to post the European stuff from the World Championships promptly).
(Tuesday) I've just got back from my first trip to the laverie - the building laundromat. The new washing machines are now installed and working, but not so the dryers...suffice to say, my bathroom - nay, my APARTMENT - now looks like a Chinese laundry. I've got the windows wide open in the hopes that everything might dry before morning, even though it's a little chilly in here now.
Yesterday was my final day of freedom before I started my stage intensif - my two-week French crash course at Sorbonne. I therefore headed down to the Carrefour to frivolously spend my euros on totally needless items. I now have a full set of crockery and cutlery - knives, forks, spoons, teaspoons, bowls, plates and mugs for four - in my still purple-and-green kitchen, and a clock radio with iPod connectivity for my bedhead. It's beginning to look less like a transient hotel around here and more like my actual place of residence for the next year of my life.
I then hopped on the metro and headed down to Sorbonne to meet Martin for lunch - hey, not a lot else to do, so why not see my friends? Martin, however, had gotten himself screwed by Sorbonne again. Just like his and Anas's enrolment in European studies last week, Martin had rocked up yesterday for his English-speaking world enrolment only to be told it was today, even though our list of enrolment dates clearly says...yeah, whatever. I'm learning that you pretty much ignore anything you're 'officially' told around here, and before you say it, Dad, I doubt getting things in writing would help. Knowing this place, they'd probably look at it and swear black and blue that they can't help, they don't speak French!
Martin having gone home, I had a leisurely late lunch by myself and paid a visit to a couple of offices at Sorbonne - both closed, of course - before returning to the metro and heading back home. I'd picked up some green beans at the Carrefour earlier and wanted to go to the supermarket for some ingredients to cook an actual meal. Fresh veg seems to be a rarity in France - they seem to favour bulk-buy frozen, and what there is in the Fruit & Veg section in limited and not great quality. I never thought I'd say this, but...I miss Coles.
With another full backpack of stuff only I could accumulate, I headed home to put my newly-purchased chopping board to work (oh! Right. Forgot to mention that. I have a chopping board!). Despite my body's gastronomic apathy, the plan was pasta with veggies in white sauce and that's exactly what I did. I'll be making risottos in no time, I'm sure. I packed my bag for tomorrow (today, Tuesday, whatever), set the alarm on my nice new alarm clock and finished reading 'Anne of the Island' in bed.
Today started off pretty well - though my alarm clock failed to go off (apparently it was set for 8am, not 7), both my body and my phone alarms certainly did. Up, shower, dressed, breakfast and out the door by quarter to eight. It wasn't until I was standing in the metro station purchasing my ticket that my worst nightmare, the thing I panic about every day came true. There are many things which, if I'd forgotten them, I could have dismissed with a shrug, but forgetting your wallet can prove a little more troublesome, especially when it leaves you without enough money for a metro ticket.
A frantic dash home on my already sore and sweaty hands nearly caused me a panic attack. If my wallet wasn't in my bag and it wasn't on my desk then someone MUST have stolen it! A rare moment of clarity saved my sanity, and I meekly fished it out of my dirty clothes bag, where I left it last night after an abortive attempt at clothes-washing. I put enough money for my metro ticket in easy reach and then raced (I'm not kidding. It was a Paralympian effort) back to the metro station. But the damage was already done. I was definitely going to be late.
Arriving at Sorbonne just past 10 minutes late, it struck me as ironic that the one day I'm late is the one day Sorbonne is actually on time. My friends were nowhere to be seen, and things were about to get worse. No-one knew where my class was! Everyone I asked assumed I was part of DELF/DULF (please don't ask me, I still don't know) and tried sending me to the DULF testing in the main amphitheatres. As I got more panicked and distressed my teary eyes and choked-up voice elicited some sympathy from the people I asked, and half an hour later, now 45 minutes late, I found myself on the third floor staring at the class lists for the stage intensif. Despite what Martin had told me I wasn't in the same class as Paul, but I set off anyway for room 302.
It was empty.
The teacher cornered me as I turned to go back up the corridor. "You're very late," she chastised.
"I got...I was been....lost, I...I'm really sorry, can I come in now?"
Thankfully she let me into a classroom on the OTHER side of the corridor, gave me a seat and the class notes and went back to giving everyone the listening test answers. I think I redeemed myself in her eyes a little five minutes later when I was able to tell her that department 93 was Seine-Saint-Denis while she was writing down all the Ile-de-France departments for us. I failed to mention the fact that I live there, though.
I'm aware that I was a) largely asleep, and b) not trying very hard when I did that French ability test last Thursday, but I still didn't think that I did too badly on it. I was still of that opinion when I sat down in class this morning. One would assume that 'E' would be either the top or bottom group, and since I know I'm not good enough to be in the top group that meant E was the bottom. This belies, however, the fact that my friend Paul in group D doesn't have very good French and was terrified by the work my class did this morning which I found pretty basic. Coupled with the fact that my out-loud reading had only one pronunciation error (and I think I can be forgiven for not knowing that in French you pronounce the 'p' in 'psychiatrique') and I only had two errors in dictation, I am definitely beginning to think I'm in the wrong class (tomorrow we're doing Coco Chanel and 'fashion' - yay! :P). This is, of course, assuming there is any logic whatsoever to the way the classes have been put together, which I'm beginning to think there isn't. If I sneak a French language copy of 'Around the World in 80 Days' from the library into class and read it under the desk, do you think the teacher will notice?
After class Lisanne and Martin were boring and bailed (Lisanne had...something to do, and Martin was expecting the Internet connection guy that afternoon), so Paul and I had lunch and then headed for the library. We have a library on campus and I had no idea! He surfed the Internet looking for answers to his home Internetconnection problems while I hobbled between the aisles, almost overcome with emotion at the sight of a library dedicated almost wholly to foreign-language literature (Victor Hugo, Jules Verne, Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda, here I come!) and French linguistics (grammar of mediaeval French? Yes please!). Paul has now learned why no-one takes me into libraries anymore...or bookshops...there's one across the street.
He had an appointment at the bank at three, so we made our way south from Sorbonne to find the bank. Having nothing better to do, and given Paul's French isn't so crash-hot, I came along for company and translation. When the bank guy realised I was explaining the details to Paul in English after he said them in French, though, he volunteered to switch to English since it was Paul's stronger language. One painless half-hour later and Paul is one attestation d'hebergement (proof of housing) away from having a bank account. Needless to say I'm also getting my rear into gear on that account (pun intended :D).
We'd seen a beautiful church just a few blocks from Sorbonne on our way to the bank, and Paul was happy enough to detour a little on our way back to the metro. Needless to say, it was gorgeous. Eglise Saint-Medard (Wikipedia it, it exists) is not too big and beautifully built. I think I just found my new hiding place.
I'll add a few photos before I go to bed - it's getting late and Anne of Windy Poplars really is good reading. Just pray that I don't have any homework for tomorrow's class - actually, if there is, I can probably do it while the teacher calls the roll, unless...anyone know the average monthly wage in Australia? (If you're wondering, it's 1300euro/m in France, 1000/m in Italy and 300/m in Croatia...and I'm doing this class why?)
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| The Metro at Stalingrad - line two is partly above-ground |
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| Parc Monceau in Montmartre (and Belgian Rob making faces) |
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| Me exploiting Martin's camera-shyness |
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| Our newest convert! Now for the Vegemite... |
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| French pique-nique/brunch/food |
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| Sorbonne girls! Of course, she's German :P |
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| Though she's not - Italians have funny rolling accents in French! |
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| More sunsets from my window |
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| The cafe near Sorbonne that Martin, Anas and I frequent |
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| Censier-Daubenton Metro station |
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| First 'cooked' dinner at my place! |
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| My purple and green theme - like it? |
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| So many Victor Hugos, so little time... |
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| Pont-Neuf metro is also called 'Le Monnaie' |
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| Tonight's sunset - this makes up for not seeing every sunrise |
Friday, 7 September 2012
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.
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| My first French crepe. |
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| 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.
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| The local boulangerie. |
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.
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| A map of metro line 7 on the train. |
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| Near my uni... |
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| Apartments in the Quartier Latin... |
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.
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| The only signs saying Sorbonne Uni... |
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| Directions to the departments. |
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.
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.
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| My croissant lunch, sans pigeons. |
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| Yes, Mum, I've been to Goblin-town! |
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.
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