Our Man in Paris

Arrival of an Englishman in Paris

So I've finally arrived! I got to the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Télécommunications (Télécom Paris) at 8.30am, before the reception of the Maisel (Maison des Eleves) opened. I sat in a café killing time, and making the most of being in a country where one is allowed (and it is socially acceptable) to order a beer at that time in the morning.

The journey was a pretty ordinary affair; I decided to take the coach from Portmouth to London, stopping for a lovely dinner with Lucy in a Spanish place near Victoria Coach Station. At 9pm I then proceeded towards Dover, when I slept until we climbed the plateau which forms the backbone of the White Cliffs. The last time I had sailed from Dover was the last time I went to Paris, for three days with a school trip in 1999.
I had a couple of pints of Murphy's on the ferry with the guy who sat next to me on the coach, a 24-year-old Japanese student of transport studies called So. This broke the ice, and we learnt quite a bit about each other. The journey was eventless until arrival at 6.45am in Euroline's Coach Station in Bagnolet, a bland suburb of Paris which reminded me of White City.
At this point, I was tired, hungry, felt shit, and had no idea where to go. A rather surreal god-send was that this underground coach-park had a café which was open at this hour. I ordered a coffee and a panini, and set about working out how to get to my hall of residence! Eventually, the bloke in the café came to my rescue. I worked out a route, said my goodbyes and exchanged details with So (who had since found me and joined me for a coffee), and made my way to Corvisart Metro.
Having survived the Metro in rush-hour, the walk up the hill to the School, and the beer in the café, I checked in. This was a rather tedious, but fairly harmless process. After filling in countless forms, I was relieved to find that I did actually have a room in this foreign city, and even more relieved to find that (given it's on the 8th floor) there's a lift. When I arrived at my room, I bumped into Dan, a guy from Imperial who's also studying at Télécom Paris, who's staying in the room next door!
Through the day, we explored the local area, and did our best to outwit the bureaucrats who found more and more hurdles for us to overcome. Attempting to take out a French bank account, for example, was one of the most surreal experiences... in order to actually get into the branch, Dan and I had to make our way through something resembling a spaceship's air-lock, presumably designed to prevent crime. We then went down into this pokey office, where two clerks were serving customers. When it was our turn, the clerk frequently had to come out from behind the desk, walk past us, and up the stairs to speak to the Manager. Eventually, he told us to come back next Thursday at 10am with a whole host of documents to speak to the Manager.
Almost as bizarre was our attempt to get a Proof of Residence letter from the "Maisel" (Hall) management. We asked a lady whom we had interrupted from one of many courses of a lunch which appeared to consist solely of yoghurt in different containers. She asked us to write our names and room numbers down and come back later. We did so; nothing had been done, so the guy at the desk got us to fill in another form, put down our names and room numbers and come back later. At no point was it ever made clear to us when we were to come back; on enquiring, it turned out that all these forms had to be stamped. It appeared that the man who stamps the forms is based in the adjoining office, obviously too important to be in public view, and too busy to be disturbed to stamp the forms of the likes of us.
The room is nice, big, slightly old-fashioned, and, broadly speaking, clean. I know it much better now that I have filled in my inventory, discovering French words I never knew I wanted to know. The only problem with the Hall is that the kitchen is ridiculously far away, and there are no cupboards in it; I get the impression it doesn't get much use!

posted by Rorkey @ 11:01 PM