Not quite Sex and the City: Life in Paris
A year in Paris has its ups and its downs
Ah Paris! The city that invented chic, the home of romance and glamour. I set off on my year abroad filled with excitement and apprehension in equal measure. I had been planning how to spend my year away from university for what felt like an eternity, but I soon realised that even the best-laid plans can turn to dust in the face of hard Parisian reality.
Having secured an internship with a top international recruitment agency, I must admit that I was feeling pretty smug, especially since I was lucky enough to be paid more than the usual rate of a third of the minimum wage. I arrived in Paris a week before I was due to begin work, in order to look for a flat. Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to find somewhere?
It wasn’t quite the ‘Sex and the City’ cocktail-sipping, Jimmy Choo-wearing lifestyle I had fantasized about
I set about scouring the internet for flat-shares and trying to arrange apartment viewings in my less than perfect French. But despite all my best efforts, the weeks passed and I failed to find anything. It wasn’t for want of trying; I visited several apartments that I would happily have lived in, only to be told by the other tenants that they had already seen twenty or more prospective flatmates and were expecting more. My heart sank. Individual studios were no better.
The Parisian studio is a law unto itself, inconceivable to those who have not experienced this phenomenon first hand. Generally, they are the size of a cardboard box, with a sofa bed, kitchen and shower all crammed into one room. And when I say kitchen, I mean a microwave if you’re lucky, and a little camping stove. I seriously contemplated renting one such delight, and paying 600 Euros per month for the privilege, and was only saved from this depressing fate when a friend of my parents offered me her own empty apartment for half the usual price. It was a lucky escape indeed from an existence that would undoubtedly have had me sprinting back to Britain within weeks.
And so I ended up living in the tenth arrondissement, half way between Gare de L’Est and La Fayette, and within easy walking distance of Montmartre. I could not have found a more perfect location if I had tried. I was (finally) living the dream. Ok, it wasn’t quite the ‘Sex and the City’ cocktail-sipping, Jimmy Choo-wearing lifestyle I had fantasized about, but hey – beggars (and poor students) can’t be choosers.
Life quickly settled into a less than glamorous pattern, involving a mad metro dash to work each morning, a day of mindless data inputting, followed by a mad metro dash home again. The nine-to-five ‘adult’ lifestyle was actually rather dull. I reminisced fondly of messy mid-week student nights out, and days when my lectures didn’t start until 2pm. Working in a foreign country was certainly an unforgettable experience, even if it wasn’t the laugh-a-minute existence I’d hoped for. I went through every emotion possible: excitement, frustration, disappointment, elation and loneliness. This was an aspect of the year abroad that I hadn’t really considered in the pre-departure meetings.
Determined to get the most out of my experience, I made a conscious effort to embrace all things français, watching French television, reading French newspapers and spending my days working with French people. But despite this, I remained in many ways resolutely British, and strangely drawn to all things home-like. A weekend in Paris was not complete without a trip or two to Starbucks (I know it’s expensive and I don’t care. I like it!) And my favourite night out with friends? Burger and chips, followed by a few drinks in our favourite Irish bar. Travelling is all about exploring new places, meeting new people and embracing a different way of life. But some things in life are just unbeatable, so why try?
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