The city of dog poo

Two more weeks in Poitiers...and people are still not cleaning up after their dogs...walking to uni is like making your way through a minefield...Despite that and surprisingly enough, I am still loving it. Ithought that by now I would be desperate to go to Starbucks or hold a newspaper in a language I actually understand - but actually, I am not fussed at all. Instead it makes me ridiculously happy to continuously run into the same people and talk about exactly the same things every day in this lovely and charming little French town. As soon as I set a foot out of the door I am more or less prepared to socialize - something like an anonymous stroll in the park is out of the question.
Life is simple and good in Poitiers...and I feel people are taking really good care of one another - maybe it has something to do with the fact that there aren't so many around- beggars can't be choosers ; ) But no, I don't really think that's the case. It's more of a "We are all in this together" feeling and it's a bit as if we have established a little "International Marketing Communications Family" by now - that's my vary romanticized view of it anyways. Living in Poitiers can be described as the more intense version of "Big Brother" - only that nobody can be bothered to film us all the time.

We are faced with some truly mind-boggling challenges however...for instance: What to do when you have been to the two good bars in town and have already watched the movie that is showing at the local cinema...This is followed by the full comprehension as to how truly limited the entertainment options in Poitiers are. At this point the sensation of panic enters most individuals. It is then necessary to map out an effective strategy in order to overcome those fears...My approach was to start appreciating how truly liberating it is not to have many options for once...In London I was constantly missing out on stuff left, right and center...never doing anyone or anything justice. Whereas here, even if I wanted to - I just wouldn't manage. On the downside, you can't say you are busy as an excuse...since it is obvious that you are not ; )

So what did I do the last 2 weeks after I went to the cinema and the legendary 2 good bars?!

Well, my highlights were the following:

a.) spending an entire day in my bathrobe
b.) throwing a house party

Well, a.) actually happened after b.) coming to think of it....Anyways, the night before the bathrobe day was absolutely fantastic!!! It started out innocent enough with my house mate Darina and me going to the local super market and buying a few drinks and snacks - thinking we would only stay at mine for a couple of hours and then go clubbing. But I think as soon as Jens brought some loudspeakers and people started dancing, it became obvious we wouldn't go anywhere else that night. I was filled with pride that my little studio managed to accommodate 30 odd people and entirely grateful that my neighbours did not file a noise complaint. Even though in my head I had already budgeted in the 150 Euro fine and was wondering whether French cops were cute or not...




But yeah, full on success - and I blushed a little when I was told: best house party so far...kinda thought in order to have a good house party one person has to get mildly injured (to add some emotional distress) and another few have to be found shagging somewhere (to create a certain sensation of sexual excitement)...but apparently that was just the recipe for our New Year's Eve party last year ; )

So yeah, that was a fun weekend - the best thing about it is, that I can still remember everything...whereas this weekend I kinda turned into an overexcited teenager again and thought it was fun to engage in some ridiculous binge drinking. Note to myself: Don't challenge a man twice your size to down drinks with you...Where the hell did that urge come from? Drinking is a discipline where one ought not to be competitive...I learned that the hard way ; )But again, everyone was really sweet and I was taken good care of. The day after I didn't touch anything even mildly alcoholic - but I had the best of times with one of my course mates, chatting away in a coffee shop for all of 6 hours. Time flies when you are happy. And Poitiers seems to be a time for cool friendships, great living quality and a bit of general awesomeness...but just as in Big Brother - it's like a bubble. However, before it bursts, I am gonna soak up as much fun as possible - starting with breaking free of Poitiers and going to Bordeaux this week...

A detailed description of Poitiers' awesomeness...

It's been such an awesome week!!! Whoop!! Whoop!!! It started off with the most entertaining lectures ever...the first professor we had, spoke as well English as I speak French...meaning he was by no means equipped to teach a class. He nonetheless really made an effort and at the end of his 3 hour slot he sounded totally exhausted when he announced: "You do this theories alone and tomorrow, we game!" Bless him...This was followed by a very different type of lecture in the afternoon...Robert works as freelance brand management consultant and seemed to have an endless amount of contemporary business examples and lots of other tricks up his sleeve...He did by no means fail to impress us with his extensive knowledge and interesting way of telling us about his clients, campaigns and work experiences...However, the really entertaining bit was that he seemed to totally mistake us for small school children. In the first lesson he "caught" someone with a phone...and "threatened" to collect it. I was already expecting him to ask me to spit out my chewing gum before I enter the class room. But instead of that he said a few even more ridiculous things...When one of my course mates stood up to go to the restroom he asked her where she thought she was going. Really, she should be able to control her bodily functions better...Yes - that's a quote! Followed by the question (also quote) whether she at least had an excuse: "Do you have diarrhea?" And then to make things even better - he asked her to please bring a bucket to class from now on! I was gobsmacked...I first didn't know whether to laugh or cry...but quickly opted for the first! How hilarious! We could have filled him in at that point in time that the majority of us was in their mid-or late twenties and had taken out a student loan worth the equivalent of buying a small flat outside of London...but actually, being treated like school kids for an entire week was much more fun!!! This way we also got away with giggling away when he told us that the reason Pampers Kandoo moist toilet paper for children smells of sweets comes down to Freud...according to Psychoanalysis, establishing an association between oral and anal aspects is key in order to successfully market to toddlers...Well, not sure about that one...but it surely was an interesting concept!
So classes were extraordinary entertaining as well as really educating (in various ways...) and most importantly: lots of fun! Since this stay in France costs me an arm & a leg on top of irreversible damage to my bladder, I better enjoy it ; )

Strict teachers' aside, people remain to be extraordinary helpful. One girl in my class researched which gym was nearest to my house and send me an email with various suggestions, another French guy from uni helped me to fill out numerous documents that I needed in order to satisfy France' strong appetite for bureaucracy and somebody from the library came running after me cause she had been told by a colleague that a blonde German girl had been looking for some books she could practice her French with...and since there is only so many blonde Germans walking down the corridors of ESCEM she found me straight away&offered her help.
Really cool - after the rather harsh treatment everybody has to get used to when living in London - this university feels kinda cuddly : )

My other highlights included the beautiful February sunshine (it actually looked reasonable to run around with sun glasses & not stupid+pretentious as normally for this time of the year) and my run in with the French boys...They could very well be Italian if you asked me...one of them pulled it off to invite me to come with him to Paris and ask another girl for her number at approximately the same point in time. I am not sure whether that is supposed to represent good or bad time management skills. Either way, I was quite amazed ; ) And then there was the invitation we received from the mayor of Poitiers himself...All the international students were invited to a reception at the town hall - we are seemingly the VIPs of Poitiers! If that isn't something! But what a sweet gesture - even though the cocktails they had promised turned out to be mixed fruit juices.


But my biggest highlight out of this action-packed week was the massive parcel I received from Germany...which included lots of chocolate, comics, a game, a really cozy bath robe and most of all - lots of love from the best friend one could ever imagine. Sorry to get a little tacky and tearful here...but I can't help it! That parcel will go down in history for being the coolest parcel ever and could have only been topped by Sascha actually being in it!



Just one last revelation of France and the French...they use unisex toilets! I don't know why - but I hadn't be aware of that at all...It's the best thing ever - if you wanna make some friends just hang out at in the restroom at a bar! The only downside - it makes sex in public toilets kinda less of a challenge ; )

Vive la France

Wow...it's been quite a week. A week of "firsts" for me...



1.) The first time "paranoid-me" didn't check the departure times 5 times in advance and almost missed the train to Paris.
2.) The first time "sleep-deprived" me got close to having her entire luggage stolen...(usually it's only been my wallet)
3.) The first time in a long time that I didn't have Internet access for a week and felt I had dropped from the digital surface of existence.
4.) The first time I spent a good 60 hours inside the university building.
5.) The first time that I failed an assignment without even standing a chance to pass or caring much about the consequences.
6.) The first time I asked whether credit cards are accepted in French...
7.) The first time I went clubbing in France.
8.) The first time I paid 3 Euros for a small coffee to go.
9.) The first time I ate nothing but junk food for an entire week (and that despite spending 3 months in the States)
10.) The first time I bought a broomstick.

Well, a weird mix but you get the idea - it felt like an awful lot of firsts considering I moved into a small French city where not much seems to happen...

After celebrating the most awesome birthday ever (true in comparison to last year it didn't take much to make it a success - but man, I loved every minute of it) I was already a bit sad to leave. It didn't help much that Uli and Lollo didn't leave my side and came to pick me up from work to celebrate my last weekend in London with me and the "Beerhouse family". With no deadlines or uni work for once I got the chance to just be for a bit and I very much enjoyed this carefree weekend around awesome people. In fact, I enjoyed this newly-gained carefree state so much that I almost forgot all about my departure on Sunday morning. After a mere hour of sleep and realizing that I had to check-in 30 minutes before departure in order to get on the Eurostar I kissed the inhabitants of Kiver Road a rushed goodbye and jumped into a cab.
I have no idea what exactly I was thinking - but a few minutes later I found myself with all my luggage - backpack, suitcase, laptop bag, traveling bag and hand bag in front of St. Pancras. I basically had the word "victim" written across my forehead...but I managed to get on the train alright - nobody tried to take advantage of my helplessness until I got to Paris. And even there I succeeded in fighting off the guy who had his eyes on a few of my many bags. To be honest - I don't even blame him, I was practically asking for trouble.

I made it all the way to Poitiers - only to find three staircases in front of me...this was around the time where I finally gave up on the idea that all of my books and my printer would make it to the apartment in one piece. But I needn't have worried - since a French guy came to my rescue...I am almost sure it was the same guy that offered me a new plastic bag after he saw me collecting my entire shopping from the floor a few days later...Poitiers is small after all and there are only so many cute French guys that made it their hobby to get me out of awkward situations I believe.

Anyways, so I was standing in front of the train station not quite knowing what to expect when this really nice lady arrived, chatting away to me in French. From what I could make out she was Monsieur Moreau's wife - so my landlady for the next 4 months and she had just bought lots of new crockery for me. She also seemed to evaluate just how sane I was judging from the amount of luggage I had been trying and failing to carry by myself...Even the two of us had problems to get everything up the small staircase and into my new home. And what a new home it was...there was practically still a price tag on the toilet seat - everything was brand new, clean, modern and BEAUTIFUL. What a pleasant surprise! The pessimist in me took the fact that I didn't get to see any pictures of the place in advance as a bad sign but I couldn't have been more wrong! The only downside - the studio came without any warm-hearted & chatty housemates...as soon as Mme Moreau closed the door it was awfully quiet.

And it has remained this way. Poitiers in general is quiet. I thought it would depress the hell out of me. But to be honest it is such an extreme contrast to huzzling&buzzling London that I am kinda loving it...for now anyways.

The historic city centre is a 10 minute walk away, the university 15 minutes...And on the way I am always running into at least 3 people. There's 60 people on my course - and with not many other place to got to, chances are you meet at least one of them in the supermarket and another one at the bakery.

What I find hilarious is to see all these people running around with baguettes...it is so clichee that I am somewhat expecting the Tourism bureau to be paying for this as a light form of entertainment dedicated to Poitiers' 3 tourists. Anyways, Poitiers is lovely&small and as French as it can get. Even though there are lots of international students and 30.000 students in total, only a minority of people speak English. Without the help offered by the university, opening a bank account and buying a new sim card would not have been a lot of fun...but especially the French people I am studying with are really making an effort to make us feel comfortable and help us to settle in quickly. One of my course mates invited us to his at the weekend and was literally driving back and forth 3 times to get everyone to his house - what a kind and awesome gesture.

Apart from all these new and mostly pleasant new impressions the first week at uni was utter hell. We were doing a business simulation. A task that was extremely time-consuming and involved an awful lot of spread sheets, tables and numbers...We really spent the entire day, starting at 9 and finishing at 9, trying to evaluate market trends, trying to develop pricing strategies, trying to understand what our competitors are getting up to...I say trying because we failed miserably. The good thing was that in my group nobody knew what was going on and for that reason we didn't have a single argument during the entire week. The bad news was - we totally failed. When I realized that there was no way around this I kind of took it in my stride. It's not as if I didn't know that I really suck at numbers beforehand. I just bloody hope that this course will move away from the finance-side of things quickly and we do more marcomms stuff soon. I don't reckon I will fail this strategic brand management course entirely either because luckily enough we were asked to evaluate the advertising strategy of the business simulation and present the results as a second form of assessment. And even though we don't have the results yet I am sure that it went well - that was basically like asking me to do a presentation about what happened in Sex in the City...there are few things I know more about. The other groups had topics like market share, pricing strategy etc. - so yeah, our topic was a godsend!

After this rather stressful week at uni we had the entire weekend to ourselves - with nothing to do but settling into Poitiers, meet up for drinks and go for a walk in the park...a weekend regime I really don't mind getting used to. Unfortunately, Poitiers is a lot more expensive than expected - une biere - six euros s'il vous-plait! Merde!!! Aw well,that means less drinking and more studying I guess...

But all in all - I don't hate the quiet! If only I could fill it with the BBC News once in a while... ; )

Bisous from France*