"Yeah, feels good just to walk, these streets of nowhere"... Lesson 1: Always wander aimlessly.

NB:  Yes, I have inadvertently opted for the ultimate cliché of using song lyrics for the titles of each of my posts.  Some of these lyrics will probably be from obscure songs by little known bands.  Others will be from overly cheesy pop songs.  For this, I can only apologise!


During my second week here in Montpellier, things have been a little less hectic.  I actually have somewhere to live, and aside from attempting to get the ERASMUS office to actually sign the million and one forms that Holloway insist upon having, I didn't really need to do much.  That might seem simple but it somehow took them five days to complete a one page form detailing the tasks of my work experience placement.  I have also succeeded in filling some of my time with a translation course at the uni.  With only two and a half days of work a week I thought I should probably find something a little productive to do with the rest of my free time.  Unfortunately, one of these translation classes starts at 08:15 on a Tuesday morning... I think I've finally lost my mind.  It's not even compulsory for me to be doing this to myself!  Oh well, it's all in the name of improving 'mon français'.


Apart from tying up a few loose ends, the majority of my time this week has been spent wandering.  Exploring, if you will.  Not that I have really gone far.  Anyone who puts the word 'Montpellier' into a Google Images search can't fail to see that it is a typical French city; filled with sunshine, cafes, and beautiful architecture.  I still have a lot to see and do but I'm here for another three months so to be perfectly honest, I'm in no great hurry.  For the most part I've just accidentally stumbled across things.  One day in particular, there were problems with 'ligne 1' of the trams (much like the London Underground, this is proving not to be uncommon).  I decided to walk from the central square, Comédie, to the nearest place where 'ligne 2' stops, namely Corum.  This should have been no more than about a five/ten minute walk.  I say should have been, because it is a five/ten minute walk providing you don't accidentally walk up the wrong stairs when faced with the huge Corum building that you are trying to get to the other side of.  The set of stairs that I opted for led me to a rooftop that gives a panoramic view of virtually the entire city:

The rooftop itself isn't anything particularly romantic or special, but the view definitely makes up for that tenfold.  So much so, that I was by no means the only one up there at six in the evening - the odd couple and a few small groups of French teenagers had also found solace up there.  There was even one guy in the corner practising juggling, while a couple next to him were practising some kind of dance/acrobatics, presumably for a performance.

Another afternoon I had walked from the tram stop at Comédie to the Post Office (about a five minute walk), and I was slowly making my way back, often finding myself distracted by some of the narrow little back streets.  Lurking in one of those back streets I found the one thing I was least expecting to find in a Southern French town...

You have no idea how excited I was to have found a Vegetarian Restaurant, let alone one that sells Earl Grey tea! Albeit, Early Grey tea at €3,50 a cup, but still... Earl Grey tea!  Sadly I had already had lunch, but I have absolutely no doubt that I will find my way back there several times before Christmas.

There are several other stories I could tell about my aimless wanderings and what I have seen and accidentally stumbled across.  Every now and again in life it would seem that having an appalling sense of direction actually pays off.  I'm beginning to realise that this is actually my life for the next three months, in a beautiful French town filled with all its own little quirks.  I must admit that my wandering has been a little lonely; discovering new things is exciting but lacks a certain "je ne sais quoi" when you have nobody to share it with.  I probably shouldn't grumble though.  It's thirty degrees outside and I have plenty more of this city still to get lost in.

"Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world"... La première semaine

OK, so the list of things to do in my first week here was mostly taken up by 'find somewhere to live', amongst other smaller tasks like 'buy a French SIM card', 'find a supermarket' and 'meet my work experience co-ordinator'.  It all sounds relatively straightforward but those seven days were probably amongst the most stressful, emotional, scary and exhausting days of my life.  You might think I'm exaggerating (even I'm beginning to think I'm exaggerating), but I'm fairly certain I'm not.

On my first day I managed to buy a student tram card, buy a SIM card, and attend a meeting with my work experience co-ordinator.  Pretty productive!  And really not bad considering the fact that I was finding my way around by taking photos on my phone of Google maps, and then writing down the directions in my little purple filofax (<3 Google Maps so much). I might add though that this first day hadn't been without its hiccups.  I am beginning to discover that the French are technologically and organisationally quite backwards by comparison to the UK.  The tram card that I bought is very similar to an Oyster card in London, allowing you to travel on all of the trams and buses.  To obtain said card, I had to queue for over an hour and a half.  No, you can't buy it online.  Yes, you really can only purchase it from one office in the whole of Montpellier with six cashiers, of which only four were open.  My meeting with my work experience co-ordinator went reasonably well - he told me what my placement would entail, but he had no idea which twenty hours of the week I would be able to work.  We could sort that out next week.  I mean, its not like he'd been aware that I would be arriving in Montpellier in September for approximately six months or anything...


This brings me to apartment hunting.  I had read many blogs written by year abroad students that insisted that it would be so much more profitable to live with French people than to go into halls.  So, I dutifully followed their words of wisdom, and armed with nothing but grim determination, went on the hunt for a "colocation" (aka flat-share).  For the most part I relied on appartager.com - a website where those with rooms to let and those looking for rooms can create profiles and adverts.  Each profile consists of age, gender, occupation etc, and those wanting a room can narrow their searches based on those criteria.  Members are then able to message eachother and exchange contact details.


The first flat that I managed to organise a viewing for seemed fairly good on the face of things.  According to the profile, the guy was a twenty-five year old student named Pierre, living in a three bedroomed flat, of which one bedroom was available.  That was a lie.  Pierre was a sixty year old man with a two bedroomed flat, of which one bedroom was his.  Creepy doesn't even begin to cover it.  The whole place smelt weird.  He did some bizarre palm reading on me, and then refused to let go of my hand/arm after that.  Luckily, I had set up a 'get out of jail free card' and ten minutes after I had arrived at the apartment I got a phone call from England. Swiftly following that I was able to make an excuse that I really had to leave immediately; 

"Je suis désolée mais il y a une problème avec l’hôtel et il est nécessaire que je rentre à l’hôtel immédiatement!"  

Despite his pleas for me to stay for dinner I fought him off with the weak claim that I had already eaten, and got out of there sharpish.  Following that ordeal we repeated the precautions we'd taken when I'd gone off to meet Creepy-Pete each time I saw an new flat - I prank called my parents when I was just about to go in, they'd launch the offensive at Dover ready for 'D-Day Deux' should things not be quite as they seemed, and then they'd phone ten minutes later to check I was OK.


By Thursday I still didn't have anywhere to live, the ERASMUS office at the university had offered me a place in halls with lots of other UK year abroad students, and yet I remained downright stubborn/stupid and persevered.  By Friday afternoon it had paid off.  I had sent countless messages on appartager, to which only a handful had actually replied, and was really losing hope when I found myself messaging Marco - a 25 year old shop assistant living with his partner.  By this, I mean I was looking at living with two gay guys and their cat!  I went round to visit and he was just as his profile had said.  The room was perfectly adequate, they were lovely, and at €350 a month including all bills, it really was a steal!  Problem finally solved.  On Sunday, Marco's partner Francis came to collect me and my oversized suitcase from the hotel, and on Monday I arrived, key in hand, with the rest of my belongings.


One stressful week; bucket loads of tears; two parents who nearly flew to Montpellier to drag me home; many considerations that I should accept defeat and turn-tail back to Dorset; several microwave meals; countless emails; tens of photos of Google Maps; some well deserved Saturday night drinks with some RoHo girls who I didn't realise were here; a disturbing ordeal; and at least three sleepless nights later... I was finally somewhere I could call home.

Saturday night, out celebrating having somewhere to live!

"Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn"... Well, Best Hôtel and Etap.

The first week that I spent here in Montpellier wasn't exactly the stuff of dreams.  With nowhere to live, I stayed at the aforementioned Centre Millénaire Hôtel Etap from Tuesday night through until Saturday morning.  I moved to the rather ironically named Best Hôtel, also in the Millénaire area, on Saturday and stayed there until I finally moved into an apartment on Monday morning.


The Etap hotel, for my first 'home' in Montpellier, really wasn't too bad.  Freshly decorated, with a modest breakfast buffet and access to a microwave, things could have been worse.  I even managed to make friends with the cleaning lady after our run-in on my third morning there: I wanted to pay to stay for an extra night; she wanted me to leave so that she could clean my room.  After we finally straightened out the slight miscommunication, I was able to go downstairs and pay for another night. Having done so, she was quite happy to leave me to my own devices with my fresh towels and empty bin.  In fact, by my final morning there she was so accustomed to the slightly strange English girl who seemed to have taken up residence in room 226 that she left cleaning my room until last, and was most apologetic when she had to ask me to vacate at half past eleven.

Having lived off of nothing but pesto pasta from home (2 days), microwave meals (2 days), and eating anything that vaguely resembles dinner but can be eaten cold (1 day) I'd like to think I have some words of wisdom to share on Vegetarian hotel dining:

1. Pesto pasta keeps well for up to 3 days in a cool bag!
2. Goats cheese and spinach lasagne may sound yummy.  It is not.
3. Microwave tortellini is fairly horrid too.  On the other hand, microwave pizza is surprisingly good, if a little soggy.
4. Mozzarella and tomato pastries are yummy cold, even when the instructions say they should be eaten warm. Cous cous with extra vegetables is a good option when your body is screaming at you for some trace of vitamin C.

Best Hôtel was a little less impressive.  It was a little shabbier round the edges, with a distinct lack of lift (the look on the receptionist's face when he realised he had to carry my suitcase up the stairs more than made up for that though), and a faint smell of stale smoke meant it didn't quite live up to the Etap standards.  On the plus side, the bed was slightly more comfortable - less like the solid stone mattress of the Etap, and a little more like one made of pebbles... Still fairly solid, but with a little more give in it.  Moving between the two hotels was a most hellish walk, with all of my luggage, plus 5 litres of water that I thought I'd be really clever and buy cheaply from the supermarket the day before.  Buying the water was in fact very sensible, as bottled water from high street shops costs €2 for just your standard 500ml.  However, buying it the day before I moved hotels was less intelligent.

Both hotels were about a 10 minute walk away from the Millénaire tram stop on ligne 1.  There are two tram lines that create a kind of 'X' shape across the city, rather inspirationally named 'ligne 1' et 'ligne 2'.  They make travelling across the city simple, cheap and fairly quick.  Millénaire is on the east side of the city, and it only took about 10/12 minutes on the tram to get to the centre.  I was also a mere 5 minute tram ride from the huge shopping centre, Odysseum, that houses a 'Casino Géant'.  No, I haven't taken up gambling - it's the name for one of the French supermarkets.  As it happens, I also became the proud owner of a €1 Casino Géant re-usable shopping bag when I went off to purchase my microwaveable goods... I had completely forgotten that for the most part the French don't give out carrier bags in supermarkets, at all, ever.  Helpful.

Needless to say, I was pretty relieved when I finally arrived at my apartment on Monday morning (more on that later).  Nonetheless, I will probably spend the next few months looking at Millénaire with a certain sense of fondness when I pass the tram stop on my travels.

"Let's start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start."

The 20th September.  D-day had finally arrived.  After months of living in denial and a fleeting couple of weeks when I finally accepted my fate and began organising, here I was - Gillingham train station.  Perhaps not the most glamorous of starts to a journey to the South of France, but nonetheless, I was there at 09:18 with a jar of marmite, 80 Twinings tea bags, two stolen Boursin sandwiches (much to Mummy Hunt's disdain) and an eleven hour journey ahead of me:

Departing Gillingham (Dorset) at 09:18 - Arriving London Waterloo at 11:19

Departing London St Pancras at 12:28 - Arriving Paris Nord at 15:50

Departing Paris Gare de Lyon at 17:20 - Arriving Montpellier at 20:45

Th first part of the journey I did with my Mum.  With a rucksack half the size of me and a suitcase that is quite frankly twice the size of me, I didn't fancy taking my chances with the London Underground by myself.  We had just over an hour to get from Waterloo to St Pancras, but what they fail to tell you when you book online is that they actually want you to check in for the Eurostar half an hour before it departs.  I arrived at the Eurostar terminal to find that boarding for my train was closing... PANIC!! The signs were of course lying and people were getting on the train even after me with seemingly no hassle.  So, the very fleeting goodbye that I was forced to say to Mummy Hunt didn't actually have to be quite so fleeting.  Then again, it was probably a blessing in disguise - Standing at the barriers at St Pancras saying goodbye to your Mum for 3 months as you toddle off to a foreign country with no where to live, all of your worldly possessions crammed into two bags, and nothing but €100 in your back pocket isn't exactly easy.

Next stop: Paris.  Now, although I had opted for assistance across London, I had little choice but to go it alone in Paris.  It turns out that the Parisians are actually quite helpful when they see a 5'7" English girl quite clearly out of her depth, struggling with two bags.  Either that, or they're quite helpful when said girl and her bags are blocking their way and they're in a hurry to get somewhere.  With hindsight, it was probably the latter, but at the time, it was nice to have so many people showing a little bit of kindness/pity.  After a small mishap with a lift (I definitely stopped at all floors in Paris Nord station), and an argument with an underground barrier (me and my luggage definitely won that one), I arrived at Gare de Lyon and boarded the train for Montpellier...

One issue of Cosmopolitan read cover to cover, one issue of More! read cover to cover (yes, I'm quite the academic), and a short nap later, I arrived in Montpellier.  It was dark.  I was ushered into a taxi by a seemingly nice cab driver, who regretted ushering me over the moment he saw the size of my bags!  We drove through the city and all I remember being able to make out in the dark were palm trees.  He was driving in a left had drive vehicle on the right hand side of the road, through a city I had never been to, passing signs that were all in French.  We could have been going anywhere.  We weren't going anywhere though, we were going to the Centre Millénaire Hôtel Etap, for €50 a night with free Wifi.

Finally, I had arrived and the long awaited year abroad had begun.

Gare Saint-Roch.   Not my photo - I was far too exhausted and emotional to take photos that night!

The Year Abroad

The Year Abroad.  The phrase that has been thrown around for the past two years of my degree with a mixture of excitement, trepidation and all-out terror.  One year of your degree.  Abroad.  Sounds simple, right?!  Well I'm about to find out as I embark on the third year of my European Studies degree.


This is for anyone who knows me, wants to keep in touch with me, wants to find out why they haven't heard from me, or simply wants warning on when I'm coming back to England!  Its also for anyone who doesn't know me but wants to know what a year abroad in Montpellier might be like.  I can't guarantee that I'll be able to give you any great words of wisdom, or provide you with quick-fix answers to all of your worries and doubts, but I can be honest.


They claim that your year abroad is the best thing that you'll do in the entire of your academic career...  We'll see about that.