I wanted to write on Day 1, and I hoped to write on Day 2. Day 3 has to satisfy my inability to write on both.
Well, I arrived at CDG on Saturday, after nearly missing my flight because a gentleman at LHR overheard my mother and I speaking his language, and drank a toast to us, with us (rosé champagne). I almost immediately figured out the first piece of advice:
Always check your public transport options and routes before you take your flight, if it is your intention to take public transport after you take your flight.
Because yours truly ended up panicking with regards to all the exits and entrances and directions and stuff and resprted to taking an Uber that cost just over 60€, which, whilst it got me and my mother to my landlady’s on time and was extremely comfortable, it was definitely not student pricing.
Nevertheless, we arrived, we met my landlady, who is lovely, and has a background in linguistics, like me, so these lodgings are as if made in heaven.
On Day 2, we figured out piece of advice 2:
France has stricter Sunday trading laws.
Most places close at 1pm.
And 3:
Fix up roaming or a foreign SIM as soon as possible.
I was kind of stranded if I’m honest. I relied off my mum’s phone. We had to stick together. I had to ask for directions the old fashioned way on occasion. It wasn’t bad, if we weren’t in a digital age, in a foreign country. No, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either.
4:
If you look like a genuine customer, some places on the Champs Elysées will offer you a glass of champagne on the house.
I decline to say where. I decline to say that I was also looking at handbags that were more than twice the value of my fortune. I don’t to say that I had the greatest fun window-shopping I’ve had in a while, and that I genuinely do need a new handbag, but either my fortune must grow, or my expectations need to stop flying so close to the sun. I decline to settle for the latter, so I’m going to just have to make some financial masterplan.
On Day 2, I have two reviews to make – a restaurant review, and a theatre review, but as I am typing this on my phone, in a garret, conscious of the fact that I have a very important rendez-vous tomorrow with my desk and ever increasing Post-It to-do list (one is already one too many), the reviews do not make it into this post. I also have photos to add. I do nothing by halves, distinguished friends. Well, occasionally, but I really try not to. But these I must reserve, you know, for a brilliant weekend. Suffice to say, you are promised a review of the Brasserie Mollard from an observer’s point of view, and Edmond at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal from an experiencer’s point of view.
Day 3 was today – my first day at work. I arrived early, thanks to my own early start at 6.50am. Advice no.5:
Paris commuting is as insane as it sounds.
I was supposed to be there at 9.30am. I took the bus at 8.15ish. I arrived shortly after 9.20. As an Oxonian, I am shocked and disappointed. I can’t walk to the other side of town in half an hour. I feel powerless. I feel small. I feel like Londoner. This’ll take some getting used to.
It actually is reasonable, given the distance and rush hour, just tough on a determined walker.
Work is lovely. I’m an administrative assistant for an international clinical research organisation. My manager and colleagues seem really nice and helpful. The neighbourhood has many shops, restaurants, and banks, and lovely wrought-iron-balconied stone houses, with nice gardens.
The mention of banks makes me realise that I ought, really, to make another post, a handy resource for some future intern, about how French banking is vastly different to UK banking.
But, it’s late, Timothy is staring disapprovingly at me through the suitcase I still haven’t unpacked, and the Post-It note is laughing away to itself in my desk. Tomorrow also just looks like it’ll be a beautiful day in many regards. If I wake up happy, which I should.
At Least Afloat 