PARIS II
Timing, greeting, meeting French students and living in France.
During the first week at university in Paris, I already noticed some differences. At EBS Paris, the business school I study at, the Erasmus students are mixed with the regular French students. I thought that the mixture of nationalities would be really interesting. On the welcome day, the coordinators from the international office and the students who organized everything were very welcoming. My fellow French students were kind of hesitant to meet the internationals. Inside the group of international students’ people who come from the same countries quickly formed groups, stopped speaking English and started speaking in their native language. There were groups of Spanish, Germans, and Italians. This made it difficult to join these groups.
For the courses, the teachers’ pay a lot of attention to being punctual to attend the courses. However, the French students are always late, especially for the morning classes. And even if there is no break included in a two-hour lesson, they will always ask for a ten-minute break. The break usually lasts longer than ten minutes. During the class, they are always talking a lot, which makes it hard to follow the teacher. In the morning the French students greet each other by fist bumping. Outside of class you see the Parisians, especially young adults, do the classic French kiss for greeting each other a lot. Back at home, we are usually punctual, I respect the schedule and I greet my fellow students by saying good morning. We also pay attention at class and are not on our phones all the time, like the French students do.
Due to the fact, that my classes are mixed with French students I thought it would be easy getting to know locals. It turned out to be more difficult than that. Unfortunately, these students are not very interested in the international students and stay in their groups most of the time. I think, they should see it as an opportunity to connect to people, who live where they will potentially go in the future, since they must go abroad during their studies. I feel like back at home we are really excited about meeting foreigners and speaking English with them, but the French prefer staying in their comfort zone. I still had the chance to talk to some of them and they offered their help for any situation immediately. It turned out to be easier to meet Parisians while going out or participating in events organized for Erasmus students. That way I was able to get more tips for places to visit and how to handle life in Paris.
Living in Paris has been quite a challenge from the beginning on. The first trip to the supermarket was kind of confusing. After a few days I found good stores and discovered products that are right for me. It was challenging to find my way through the variety of products, compared to the rather small stores back home. In relation to my housing situation: Luckily, I got an apartment in a student’s residence last minute. There, it was required to set up your own electricity contract. I signed up a week before arriving and the electricity was supposed to be turned on the day I moved in. After calls with the electricity company, I decided to change to a different company and after five days without any electricity I finally was able to turn the lights on. Sadly, during that process the manager of the residence did not help at all since it is “one of my personal issues”. Another problem occurred when it got colder at the end of September and the residence refused to turn the heating on. Still until today, after a lot of discussions and creating a petition, they will not turn it on. On October 15th they are obligated to turn it on, so I will have to wait until then. Due to these situations, I realized that many French people are not very helpful in any kind of daily problems. I feel like they want everyone to mind their own business and they do not want to be bothered by other people’s problems. I guess at home this would be different and I would have many places where I could ask for help.
Even though I had to face all these challenges, I am very happy to be in Paris and have already met so many amazing people from all over the world. I loved to experience all that because I believe situations like this are essential for my personal development. I am excited about the next months and all the fantastic things I will get to experience.
Tanja Berchtel, October 2021