And wonderfully she's gone ahead and been writing up her own journal and taking her own iPhone photos and emailing them over, and so with her permission here it is for the internet :)
Strasbourg, Saturday, September 7, 2013
It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, the first time I’ve had some downtime and not been tired since I left San Francisco. I spent a couple of days with Teddy in Boston. Monday we walked (and walked and walked) from Brookline to the North End where we had dinner. Tuesday I had lunch with Celina Valadao, who used to be a rep for Continental, and is now a fundraiser for the Huntington Theater near Berklee. Hopefully we will stay in contact.
I arrived at Logan around 6:30 pm Tuesday for my 9:00 flight on Aer Lingus. Turns out they were overbooked and offered me $650 to give up my seat. I declined saying I had to be in Paris the next morning. So then they asked if I could go on Air France, which left at 10:30 pm but arrived in Paris an hour earlier (no changing planes in Dublin). This was acceptable, the exchange was made, I bought a suspense paperback to read on the plane and waited til boarding at ten. The flight was very comfortable, I had an aisle seat in a middle row with two empty seats next to me and was served champagne with dinner (no extra charge). I finally slept for a couple of hours, and when I woke up we were about to land at CDG.
After passport control I taxied from CDG to the Gare de l”Est, and it was there, as expected, that I encountered my first issue with the luggage. Pulling the medium sized roller, the small roller, and the backpack heavy with electronics, I had to go up 5 steps to get to the station. Seeing my struggles, a Frenchman pulled them up for me. After that I managed reasonably well, but was always grateful for offers of assistance. These came from people other than the French. A couple of nice African girls helped me download the bags from the train at Strasbourg, and a Tunisian young man helped me tour around the station looking for the taxi stand (on exiting I had made a left instead of a right).
Made it to the hotel. The room is tiny, but adequate, with plenty of outlets for electronics. After setting up the machines I realized my mouse wasn’t working which was embêtant. In French bête means stupid, and embêtant means pain in the neck. But I can’t think of an English translation using one single word, so I like this word and you will see me using it a lot. Bottom line is I had to use the touchpad. Got settled, had dinner, fell asleep at midnight and woke up at 4 am Thursday morning wide awake. During the previous 39 hours I had had a total of 6 hours of sleep.
My orientation meeting was at 10 am in Salle 4307 at the Patio (pronounced pash-she-o). The campus wasn’t hard to get to, about a 12 minute walk from the hotel. Finding the room was something else altogether. As I eventually found out, the number means building 4, third floor, room 7. Fortunately I had left the hotel early, so I had plenty of time to wander from pillar to post asking questions. Got to the meeting in time, met my director, and after spending the two full hours there, determined that I should really be at the meeting the next day. Saw my director later on that afternoon with more questions, answers to which I did not fully understand.
As I have said several times, the program I am registered in is entitled Roman and Neo-Hellenic World Survey of Iberian and Latin-America Studies. Within this program are divisions, sub-divisions, and sub sub-divisions, with names like formation, parcours, specialites, and composantes. I have yet to find out what these words really mean. For example Carole Egger is my Directeur de Parcours, and another lady is my Directeur de Specialités, but Carole is the one I will be most in contact with. The Thursday meeting was for people who want to teach, and since I don’t want to teach I should be in EMOS (Etudes Mediterraneennes Orientales et Slaves) which I think stands for Mediterranean Eastern and Slavic Languages. That orientation meeting was on Friday morning so I was there Friday as well.
The “curriculum” for two years is printed on three 8-1/2” x 11” papers, folded in half, to resemble a small booklet with a colored cover entitled “Guide Pedagogique”, etc. It could have been printed by one of the faculty members, although I doubt it, since they all seem more interested in their vacations than tending to business. Half of the classes for M1 S1 (first year, first semester) have names like Théatralités, Documents Iconographiques, and Methodologie de la Recherche, and one can only wonder how much Spanish is involved. The departments seem enclaves unto themselves, with very little connection with, or even understanding of who is actually running, the university.
I still don’t know how much this is going to cost. Rick did some preliminary checking for me and the information he got was 760 euros or thereabouts, which seems incredible. I have to go to the Secretariat and pay my 249.10 euros entrance fee. At that time I can get some more administrative information, find out how to get on the school internet, and hopefully determine what the cost will be for the semester. The Secretariat is closed on Mondays and Fridays. I guess by now you must be getting some idea of how they do things (or not) at the University of Strasbourg.
Classes start Monday afternoon. I will be asking more questions and hopefully get a little more understanding of what I’m supposed to be doing. At the meeting on Friday the word “obligatoire” was used several times. There is an EMOS website, which we were all exhorted to telecharger (download). I guess that’s a start.
The rest of Thursday and Friday was spent doing laundry and trying to open a bank account. I say trying because It is not easy. You can’t just walk into a bank and say you want to open up an account, you have to make an appointment first. I finally had an appointment with BNP Paribas, one of the largest banks in France. I spent quite a lot of time with Mlle. Michel, going over my documentation and the various options available to verify my address. One cannot open an account without this verification, so I was prepared to wait a few days for this last requirement to be completed. After some 45 minutes and having selected one of the address verification options, Mlle. Walked off with a handful of papers only to return a few minutes later informing me she was desolee, but I could not open an account with BNP Paribas because I had no regular income. I was stunned.
Mlle. Referred me to a bank across the street whose requirements I guess are less stringent. I have an appointment with them Monday morning. I am to arrive with a document they gave me, signed by Mme Marques (the lady I am staying with for two weeks) stating that she has the honour to “heberger Mlle. Marie Sheridan” at such and such an address, that she will advise whoever when this arrangement changes, and that if the contents of this attestation are inexact, she is liable for punishment of up to a year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros.
This morning was spent on electronics. First I went to the “Orange” store to get a cell phone number. After a contentious encounter with some burly tech behind a counter who refused to talk to me, kept waving his arms in the air and saying “no English, no English” (I wasn’t about to speak to him in French, he was so brutally rude), one of the customers told me in English I had to register first. Which I did. Ten minutes later I was sitting down with one of the more civilized techs who set up a cell phone number for me for one month. I have to recharge it every month. I cannot get a subscription for more than one month. Impossible. I don’t have a bank account.
Next I went to FNAC, sort of a Best Buy. My first inquiry had to do with my wireless mouse which no longer worked. After hearing my story and thinking about it for a few minutes, this nice young man took the battery out and replaced it, removed the pin from the USB port in my PC and reinserted it, and showed me how to turn off the mouse to save battery life. The mouse works fine now. This is one of the nicer things that have happened to me in the last few days.
Then I bought a transformateur. All the communication devices have dual voltage, so all you need is an adapter to plug into the wall. But my electric toothbrush (or hair dryer, water-pik, or some other personal care device) has only 110, so if you just plugged it into the wall with an adapter it would fry. The transformer, which is also an adapter, takes in the 220 volts in France, and outputs 110 volts for my non dual voltage device.
I have spoken to Mme Cazenave, and tomorrow at 11:00 I arrive at her doorstep via taxi with all my luggage. The next stage begins and I have to start seriously looking for an apartment.
My French gets better every day. I understand everything I read in the newspapers, and even if there is a word or two that I’m not familiar with, I can figure out what it means from the context. Then when I try and verify it in my 50 year old Larousse, it may or may not be there. I had thought that everyone in Strasbourg who serves the tourists spoke some English, but this is not the case. Consequently I am speaking in French with). the bankers, the techs at Orange and FNAC, and people on the street from whom I ask directions. If the conversation gets too technical I ask them to slow down and explain a word to me in French. I also speak French to the faculty at the University. But I’m not yet ready to ask them to slow down and explain a particular word to me, so I just have to wing it. Thus I’m getting more and more comfortable with the language. This was my goal, and I am content.
There is a Mass at the Cathedral is about 20 minutes, and I will be going there. It is abour 50 meters away, facing my hotel. The Cathedral is as I remember it, truly awesome (and I use that word in its original meaning) The sound and light show is over for the season, too bad.
