Bonjour France!
If you’ve read my earlier blogs about South Korea and USA
trips, you know how good my travelling events can get. I believe now it is
customary for me to have some crazy thing happening during my travel to a new
continent and Europe did not disappoint!
Heritage: Erasmus Mundus Partnership program provided me
with an opportunity to study at Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Nantes, France as an
exchange student for a period of six months. With inexplicable excitement, the
time had come to big goodbye to Friends and Family and scratch off a few things
from my checklist as the Euro trip was going to begin! After bidding goodbye to
IIT Guwahati, I flew to Kuwait to visit my family after a really long time.
Those 13 days with family passed faster than I could say “I wanna stay more”.
It was a 15 day trip as such but as I said something interesting always needs
to happen, I realized all international flights to Delhi were getting delayed
or cancelled due to the Delhi fog and weather conditions. I was supposed to
reach Delhi on 31st Feb at 8:30 pm and catch my flight for Paris
departing on 1st Feb at 2 am from Delhi. It was a tight schedule and
as concerned as family members always are, they told me change my tickets to
reach Delhi 2 days earlier. With a lot of calls, calculations and friends help
I finally got my tickets changed to the 29th of January. It was
going to be 2 nights and 3 days in Delhi alone. Frankly, the 2 nights in Delhi
experience was nothing less than a 3 month internship experience abroad. Having
heard so much about the capital it was surely intimidating to be there alone.
However, the experience in Delhi was great! Sometimes we really underestimate
the pleasure of being alone. I used to think travelling alone was depressing
and lonely however it turned out to be great. It actually can be great
everytime if you allow yourself to enjoy your own company now and then.
Visiting the malls of Gurgaon and looking at various people, the way they were
dressed and their way of life sure makes you ponder about a lot of things. It made
me think about the diversity of India with beggars on one side and shopping
malls on the other all being reflected in its justly called capital Delhi.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport has always been
special! My first international trip (to Kuwait), my sophomore internship (to
South Korea) and the latest, the exchange semester trip to France, all have
been through the IGI airport. I had never flown through Air France before and I
had got mixed reviews about this airline. I must say after flying with Qatar
Airways, your expectations from the airlines really increases and it was but
obvious that Air France was disappointing. It began with the luggage check-in.
My check-in bag was exactly 23 kilos and there was absolutely no problem with
that one. The Air France personnel was about to print my boarding card when
suddenly a random person who was apparently their team leader tapped me on my
shoulder from behind and told me to weight my laptop bag along with the hand
bang. It was 2 kilos extra than allowance and god they pained me for that for 2
hrs! I mean who checks the handbags unless you are very unlucky! Thank god I
had gone to the airport quite early. Had to throw away my dear food packets and
reduce the weight before they allowed me to check in. I started hating Air
France from that moment onwards. 2 kilos considering a student should have been
allowed given that other flights allow an extra 10 kilos for etudiants.
In the 9 hour flight to Paris I thought I would sleep as the
flight was from 2 am as such however, kids always ruin travel! One sweet
looking kid showed his true colours as soon as the flight took off! The
constant squeaky, cancerous, piercing sound of the kid’s cries royally screwed
my sleep. With a bursting head I landed at Paris. Oh wait! Paris!! Who cares
about the headache! I was in Europe!! It was too much to accept in that moment.
The CdG Paris airport was huge! The way pAris was written was beautiful with
the Eiffel Tower drawn in the “A” of Paris. It was raining outside and it was
definitely cold! The excitement with which I removed my new winter wear clothes
was like that of a kid removing the shiny wrapper of Kinder chocolate! The
winter wear would be so exciting I had no clue. I am usually the ‘wear nothing
but shorts’ kinda guy. Well that’s the reason I love summers more than winters
however I was in love with winter wear like an infatuated teenager. With a few
hours of wait I was on board for Nantes!
With just 45 minutes of flight and awesome chocolate cookies
being served I became a little considerate to Air France finally. FYI It’s
always the chocolates to change my mood :D I landed in Nantes and the ACCENTS (A Club of CEntrale Nantes for Travelling Students) member Audurey was there at
the airport to pick me up with a tram ticket to travel to my accommodation.
This is the most amazing club for social service I have seen. She gave me
general information about Nantes and welcome kit with a bag of EC Nantes.
Helped me with my luggage and I finally reached my accommodation. 59 Rue de
Nancy, Nantes was going to be my abode for 6 months here.
Thomas Monganne, my landlord is pretty cool for a 40 something
French guy. Thin and tall like almost any French guy he was very welcoming and
made me feel at home. His English was comprehensible and I realized there
wouldn’t be a lot of communication gap. The house was beautiful 80 meter square
apartment with four rooms on the top floor and the kitchen and bathroom below.
Interestingly the other 3 rooms are occupied by French, Spanish and Russian
girls!! My landlord left me with this information and a humorous wink.
Nantes is a beautiful city. The most beautiful aspect of
this student university town was it’s helpful people. I was told otherwise
about French being helpful to foreigners however the exceptional case is Nantes
and I am glad I am here. The first instance of help began with my trip to LiDL:
The supermarket. In Nantes here, and I assume in other parts of France and may
be even Europe, the shopping carts need 1 Euro to be inserted which you get back
after you park the cart. I never knew about the fact that we could get back the
coin so just like any other student on budget I decided not to take the cart. I
went inside the market and after idling away in the isles for quite some time I
approached one guy to ask him about salt and pepper. Accompanied by the guy was
an old lady, Michelle, who spoke English really well and these two people were
the sweetest people I have met. They asked me about the cart and I explained my
predicament. After a good laugh, she handed over to me a fake euro coin which
could be used for the carts out of her purse. It was a very small gesture but
it touched me greatly. After shopping for a while I was in the queue for the
bill and she told me to save the 20 cents for the bag and removed a bag and gave
it to me. I had shopped a lot and the stuff was heavy. The most surprising
thing that happened was they walked me back till rue de Nancy with my stuff.
The lady was definitely 60+ and her gesture had categorically helped me realize
how Nantes as a place was going to be.
Trotting in Nantes has its own sweet pleasure. The seven
degree temperature, light rains and wind could either annoy you or make you
feel ecstatic depending upon which day of the week it is. On Fridays and
weekends when you decide to aimlessly walk in downtown you feel elated with
such a weather. On weekdays during college you will curse the same. The
European culture and architecture was visible through the streets of Nantes.
The small windowed houses and streets with intricate façade makes one feel
Europe in it's true essence. The beautiful Cathedrals, Restaurants, Historical
places and Museums deserve hours and hours to be spent on them. It’s
breathtakingly beautiful. I have to still see the Elephant of Nantes and I guess
it’s gonna be very soon.
Ecole Centrale de Nantes for a student from IIT Guwahati turned out to be very small. The university is small however the place is really happening. There are some other universities too juxtaposed with ECN and you can see only students around there. The good part is you can speak in English and find many who can respond well. One interesting aspect that I discovered for myself are the cheap vending machines in college with Moccachinos and Hot chocolate in just 40 cents which is not bad at all.
I met Antonio Manco, a fellow Heritage Erasmus Mundus student who is as crazy as me. Friday night in Nantes turned out to be awesome with him. Have made a good bunch of Italian and Spanish friends here. Hope to strengthen our bonds over time.
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| Antonio and me |
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| New Italian Friends |
I also got the opportunity to meet Prathamesh Joshi, a DD from IIT Bombay. Pretty cool guy, very quiet as compared to me but a fun guy to travel Nantes with. He stays close by to my location and I thank god for that. Will explain the accommodation issue with Heritage later. For me it's mostly with Prathamesh for cooking, travelling and bakaring etc. Chu says he has no enthu for taking pics! I told him if he is with me, there will be pics :P
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| and that's Prathamesh! |
I am just waiting for my bank card to arrive after which I will finally get a cell phone connection and most importantly the Eurail Pass. Can’t wait to begin the travel! Hoping for the best, let’s see what these 6 months have in store. Hope to learn some French. Till then Au Revoir!
