Katie O’Donnell: Toulouser with nothing Toulouse…

When you picture the south of France, you imagine good food, Bordeaux wine and endless sunny days. My first experiences have been decidedly less glamorous.

In hindsight, I probably should have prepared more than a list of geographical puns before moving to France for my semester abroad. The whole “moving to university” thing is new to me; I went to high school in St Andrews so I breezed through Freshers Week with a smug, knowledgeable smile on my face as others struggled to navigate the three streets. So when it came to moving to France, I was very positive; it’s Europe, I (almost) speak the language, and there will be plenty of others in the same boat. Surely things would just fall into place, and I would be sipping an apéro in the sun with Pierre and Marie in no time.

In fact, it turns out that setting up life in a new country is really difficult. I had taken on the challenge of finding accommodation when I arrived, hoping to avoid living with hundreds of anglophones in university residences. Flat-hunting in Toulouse moves so quickly, if you phone up about an advert posted yesterday, chances are it’s already gone. Most of my plans were hindered by a kind of chain reaction, it’s difficult to describe eloquently but basically I couldn’t get a phone number until I had a bank account, I couldn’t get a bank account until I had an address, and I couldn’t get an address because I couldn’t call any landlords! Thankfully, after a week of living out of a suitcase and stalking around outside McDonald’s in a bid to steal some free wifi, I’ve landed on my feet with a room in a beautiful house (with a pool.) Jackpot.

This just left me to deal with French admin. Coming from a British university with meticulous systems and regulations, I had expected a similar amount of hand-holding and civilised queuing to guide us through the first steps of life in the Midi-Pyrenées. No such luck. Our first week at Université de Toulouse-II Jean Jaurès involved a lot of blind wandering around, nobody entirely certain of where we were supposed to be or what we were meant to do. There’s no signing up online for tutorials, you have to find the correct timetable posted on the correct wall; then you just turn up unannounced to the class. If you’re lucky, there’s room, and the professor tells you to take a seat. If not, you’ll be sent packing, hopefully without a shouting match (it happens), to change your timetable for the fifth time this week.

At the end of the day though, it’s all going well. Nobody has been left homeless (although one guy apparently lives with a couple who film porn in their living room) and everyone has made it to some kind of class, even if it wasn’t the right one and they were just too scared to leave. I wish I could say that we celebrated our first week in France with a uniquely Toulousain experience, but actually, we watched the All-Ireland hurling final, pint of Guinness in hand, at De Danù’s Irish pub. We’ll try harder next time.

A bientôt!