Ah, Paris. The City of Love. During my ten months there I fell in love with the pastries, the crêpes, and temporarily (but on a thrice-daily basis, at minimum), the beautiful men on the Métro. I admit that falling deeply in this transient love with men using public transport is not specific to Paris for me, but I was definitely doing it with alarming frequency while I was there. I've left France now (currently in Geneva, almost back in London) and I have decided to go back to my initial "Year Abroad Bucket List" post and talk you through what I did and didn't do, and give some little anecdotes about the points. My original goal was to tick off at least 25 out of the 35 goals, so hopefully I succeeded. Allons-y!
Look, I'm gonna say I visited a cute café but if I'm honest I just made friends with some Starbucks workers near uni, so that probably doesn't count but I'm pretending it does.
Side note: did you know that McDonalds do macarons in France? Absolutely wild.
This I must have done approximately 344652 times, give or take a few.
I did this time and time again. The best thing about living in a foreign country is that you can take advantage of the benefits of being a tourist and of having a permanent residence there. For example, we once were given a "tourist ticket" for a club that had just charged French people 30€ each for entry and cloakroom just because they had heard us speaking English. Beautiful. Then we had our own apartment to go home to at the end of the night, which is just so satisfying after you've had a night out.
Before I left I thought I'd be having a concert-less academic year but alas, I attended five in Paris alone, and every single one of them was with my friend Claire-Elise.
I mean, I definitely took photos while it was raining many times, plus at the beginning of the year one of my flatmates took photos of us by the Louvre in the pouring rain.
I went to Disney at Halloween, which pretty much beats any other time EVER.
This is definitely ambiguous to anyone reading but I did indeed find the address for and visit this spot a few times, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know.
Little did I know when writing this list that I would become a professional at climbing this hill, and would one day reach the top in a record time of just under seven minutes (just FYI, Google Maps says it takes twelve minutes). Inevitably, upon summiting I would always feel on the verge of an asthma attack (and I haven't needed any medication for asthma since I was about five), but the view was NICE. I lived right at the foot of the hill so it was a pretty frequent occurrence to head up to the top.
I know I did this inadvertently a few times, but on my final morning I did it, well, advertently (?) (the red wiggly line underneath this says that it is not a real word but I think it should be so I'm keeping it in). My flatmate Lucie and I woke up inhumanly early and walked up aforementioned hill to try and catch the sun rising over my very last day in Paris. Luckily our efforts were not futile, and the sun rose in a sky of red and orange and I felt like I was in the Lion King and "naaaazabenyaaa" should've been playing over speakers somewhere.
11. Go on a day trip out to Monet's lily pond.
Yeah, I didn't do this, I wanted to save it for when the gardens were in bloom but ended up never getting around to it.
This is pretty much a given. I think it's impossible to spend time attending a French university and not improve even just a little bit. I've always been used to hearing French spoken around me in a casual context on the street or in shops or whatever (thank you, growing-up-in-Switzerland) but having to truly focus on understanding the, quite frankly, INTENSE French spoken by lecturers at university was definitely new and definitely beneficial.
I can't count the number of times Lucie and I would sit in the kitchen and talk for hours while drinking tea, and it's actually such a big part of my experience in Paris. I'm not kidding, on the first night I didn't really speak to anyone, but the next day I started talking to Lucie in the kitchen and we were sat there for nearly six hours. Six. Hours. I think that's when I knew we'd get along.
14. Visit London (or anywhere, really!) with aforementioned friends.
Considering Lucie was from London I don't think this would've been such a big thing, and Abby (my other flatmate) had her own cool trips around Europe that she was doing either solo or with her family throughout the year, so visiting London town with the two of them didn't happen.
15. Earn some money. €€€
Ah yes. This did not happen. I have no excuse or story for it, it just didn't happen.
If I'm honest this isn't the complete truth but ultimately it came down to passing full modules and not specific essays (averages and all that), and I did pass every single module I took, thank the Lord. Some modules in my second semester, dare I say it, I did well in. Like, similar-grades-to-the-French-students kinda thing. If that's not proof of my improvement then I don't know what is.
I'm gonna worm my way into crossing this off my list by saying that I visited friends in the UK. That shouldn't count but honestly, I had so little money that going back home (and thus avoiding accommodation and food costs by staying with people I know) seemed the most logical place to go.
I did this and I am glad I did, because I am back in London in a few weeks and it would majorly suck if I had no friends.
I still don't love wine, but that worked to my advantage, as I have absolutely no concept of what is "good" or "bad". I definitely appreciated the fact that you could get drunk on a 1€ bottle of wine that truly tasted the same to me as most other wine I have ever had. I've always liked cheese well enough (...again, I grew up in Switzerland, which is occasionally known as Cheeseland) but I did enjoy drinking coffee, and if it was a good cup I was okay with drinking it black, which I think is a thing you're "meant" to do. I'll be honest, I don't think the cheese and coffee appreciation was specific to living in France, and more just "I'm older now so I figure I'm supposed to eat and drink more of it".
I didn't visit Lyon but I did go to Lille with my friends, so this counts as a success.
I could talk about my favourite crêperie but I'll do that later...instead I'll talk about my second favourite crêperie. A few times I went to this crêpe place near the Pompidou that had some snazzy savoury and sweet options and for a full meal (i.e.: a savoury crêpe, a sweet crêpe and a drink) it wasn't expensive. (Probably because the bulk of the meal was made of flour, milk and eggs, but still.)
I already spoke about watching the sunrise and chatting for hours with Lucie (sorry, are we a married couple?) but I have not yet mentioned our baking. We were basically Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (I hope they don't read my blog, they may be offended by this comparison), and our signature piece was a single gooey brownie that we wouldn't even cut up or take out of its container. We just used spoons and a lack of dignity.
I just checked Photos on my laptop and, while many of them I'm sure are selfies/ugly screenshots/photos of Harry Styles, in total there were 6,600+ between September and June. I'd say that's fairly substantially "loads of photos". It definitely helped that in February or March I bought myself a new camera with my inheritance money. I wanted something good but not as bulky or heavy as my DSLR, and ended up with an Olympus E-PL7 if you're interested. (I also got it for £300 instead of £400...I'm JUST SAYING.)
Now I will talk about my favourite crêperie. There was this tiny crêpe stall near my uni that a friend and I came upon by accident one time and then just kept going back to. They did the cheapest Nutella crêpes in Paris (2,30€ for a Nutella crêpe? Don't mind if I do) and I fell in love. I mean, I didn't personally sample every Nutella crêpe in Paris (though I can tell you I certainly did my very best to) but it was definitely the lowest price I found. Also, the lady who worked there was maybe my best friend in Paris. I don't know if she knew that or would agree, but she was.
Red lipstick? Ha, ANY LIPSTICK. In the past year my lipstick collection has grown exponentially. I'm actually mildly concerned.
I struggled with this at first but I'd like to think that by the end I just either got over making mistakes, or started making much fewer mistakes anyway.
Thank you Paris for what you did to my style. I'm excited to go back to London and not feel judged for wearing a pair of red tartan leggings, but at least I had a year of being snazzy.
"Make sure you don't make friends with only English-speaking people" - they say.
"Make sure to befriend the French students!" - they suggest.
Easier said than done, I'm afraid. Don't worry, you don't have to feel sorry for me, I did make friends, but they were either English-speaking or, at the very least, foreign like me. Everyone I spoke to found it incredibly difficult to make friends with the French students (understandably so - it wasn't because they were unfriendly as such, but just that we are literally the most slow-talking, boring people ever in another language and it's kind of tragic), so all the Erasmus students ended up somehow finding each other and wallowing in our struggles together. Kind of poetic, really. However, I can't go without mentioning Claire-Elise, who did (does) also attend Paris IV but was in the year below...and I met her on the Internet, so I feel like it sort of shouldn't count, but whatever.
Compared to other people I didn't go back to London that much, but I went back in October for my aunt's wedding and then in January and April. In January I got to visit and see a lot of my friends (and it was literally just one long weekend so I have no idea how I did it) so that was fun. I always looked forward to my trips back to London an unhealthy amount.
Not a lot to say here really, is there?
31. Buy a coat you actually like and will wear.
This has been a goal of mine for probably about four years, so I'm not surprised at all that I didn't do it.
The Métro is exactly the same system as the Tube so there isn't much to "get used to", really. I had to get used to the fact that you have to physically open some of the doors yourself, and the fact that if you sit on the fold-down chairs during rush hour you have to prepare yourself to later stand up in order to make more room. Also, there are a lot of people asking for money on the Métro, and often quite forcefully, so I had to learn to take that as the norm, because it's super rare for that to happen on the Tube. Most importantly, I would like to give an honorary mention to the fact that I learnt exactly where to stand on the platforms on my journey to and from university in order to be right by a door that would later open onto the exit I needed to take (if that makes sense). Ah, yes, that was my great success of my year abroad.
I'm making a tenuous suggestion here but I got really good at making single-serving crêpes. I'd say that was a hobby. I definitely did it frequently enough to turn it into a hobby. Oh, and I started making vlog-kinda videos on iMovie.
I did this somewhat grudgingly at times (hello, "monthly favourites") but ultimately I did write some posts here and there during my time in Paris.
I had some struggles and some low points, definitely, but overall, I had a pretty good time. Thanks Paris for your hospitality, you were beautiful and stylish. I am glad I do not have to deal with French bureaucracy anymore (aside from my landlady's illegal withholding of our security deposit, but that's another story) but I'll miss the crêpes a lot. Oh, and my friends...but mostly the crêpes, I won't lie to you.
See you next time!
Georgia
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