Bonjour! After spending two months in Alaska and a few weeks back home in Finland, I am now in Paris, doing my Erasmus exchange and learning the French language. So far, I have only been studying the French bureaucracy by personal experience: how you first need to have a bank account to get a cell phone contract, and to get a bank account, you need an address and a document to prove that you live there. Also at the university, I have been queuing for hours to different offices to do my 'inscription administrative' and 'inscription pédagogique' (enrollment for courses). Sometimes they close the office and tell you to come back the next day. I will definitely learn a lot of patience here! Actually, I already have: this week I noticed that I do not get so irritated anymore. "C'est normal!" (It's normal) seems to be the answer to everything that does not work. The enrollment - at least of the Erasmus students - is done on paper, not online, and people at the university want to meet you personally in their offices instead of replying to your emails. The trick to survival is to be active, hang around at the university, talk to other people... That is how I accidentally found out that I have a tutor! He is really nice and helpful, he even speaks some Finnish!
As inspiring as it is to be in Paris, it sometimes gets quite exhausting. Everything is new and I have to find out how things work and how to navigate in this metropolis. I have felt uncertain, insecure, frustrated... But I just cannot regret coming here because Paris is sooooooo beautiful! And once I get into routines, life will be much easier. I thought I hated routines but now I seem to miss them...
I was lucky to find a reasonably priced and beautiful room in Montmartre, an area preferred by artists and famous for the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and Moulin Rouge. I felt good about the place so I decided to take the room even though it was only for two months and then I have to find a new home. I am actually living in the living room, but my flat mate, a 26-year-old Dutch girl, is so nice that I have adapted very well and do not really mind the lack of privacy. Photos of my room:
And this is how my street looks like:
Last weekend, when I had hardly settled to Paris, I traveled to Milan to see my boyfriend who was there on a business trip. First date (during my Erasmus time) in Milan, not bad! I had not booked any flights and was unable to figure out how to buy a ticket to a night train, so I was very happy to find a shared ride through Covoiturage.fr. The drive through Switzerland was beautiful, but long. But I got to Milan and met my boyfriend. I had booked us a small apartment through Airbnb. It was the first time I used the website and I can say everything went fine. Asser and I spent our time by sleeping late, eating well, walking through the fashion streets and visiting Duomo, the cathedral church of Milan:
...and the beautiful shopping mall called Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II:
Back in Paris, I needed one day to recover from traveling back from Italy in the night train. And then I have gone through the chaos of signing up for courses. Tuesday evening, there was an event called Vogue Fashion Night Out. I did not participate but decided to check it out as a tourist, so on my way home, I walked through the street rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, cited (according to Wikipedia) as being one of the most fashionable streets in the world, thanks to the presence of virtually every major global fashion house. Unfortunately it was raining, as it - based on my short experience - often does here. I felt sorry for the finely dressed people queuing to the stores...
http://fashionsnightout.vogue.fr/
Oh, I must also tell you about Vélib', a bicycle sharing system run by the Paris Town Hall! There are stations all around the city, you take a bike, ride it where ever you need to go and leave it at another station. It's great! (Or well, nothing is perfect: sometimes the stations are empty when you need to get a bike, or full when you need to return one.) At first, I got lost several times - which is sometimes nice, but not when you are in a hurry! Now I have learned to take the boulevards - they have bicycle lanes and make navigating easier. Yes, in this mosaic of small streets I have sometimes missed the boring but clear American grid plan of Anchorage, Alaska, with its A, B, C etc. streets!
Yesterday, I visited The Louvre with another Erasmus student. It is such an enormous museum! Of course, we went to see Mona Lisa. But in the internet you find better photos of it than the one I took, so instead, I chose you the photo above showing the crowd that had come to see the famous painting. And here's just a picture of another young woman that appealed to me:
Tomorrow, I finally start my studies, which will be keeping me very busy... I came here to study and really learn to speak French, not to party... But at least tomorrow evening, I will drop by (for the third time!) at the CouchSurfing Weekly Meeting to say hi to my new friends.
