Drawing first blood

Finally here. I flew from Copenhagen to Lyon and from there I took the bus to Grenoble. I took a taxi from the bus station and asked the driver to take me to my hotel, but I also asked him if we could take a detour so that I could see where my school was. He smiled at me and pointed out the window. The school was just behind the station. And to make things even better, my hotel was on the main street and you can actually see the school from my flat! The school was well within a walking distance from the hotel. Yay.

I checked in (the concierge looked _exactly_ like Morgan Freeman, I’ll post a picture if you don’t believe me), got all my stuff to my room and started examining my room. It was actually better than I expected because I was really expecting the worst. I even have a small French (duh!) balcony and there’s a niceish view to the main street. The bed is too small though and the shower is your typical French “squat if you wanna wash your hair!”-type solution. Sucks. And this being France, the room is cold as hell. I had to really tuck myself in tight and put an extra blanket on my feet since it was so cold. Since electricity is paid for in the rent I’m considering buying some sort of thermo-nuclear heating device to ease my transition.

Before I went to bed, though, I went out for a quick stroll. The main street seemed nice, lots of ethnic food places around. I found a small boulangerie (a pastry shop) and bought me a baguette. I walked for a small while and bumped into a small butcher’s shop. I bought me a huge pile of rosetta beef for just 80 cents and a chunk of goat cheese for 50 cents. Dirt cheap. I have to pay close attention to my eating habits, otherwise I might finally break that all elusive 0,1 ton barrier. But the bread was really good, the salami tasty as hell and the cheese really crowned it. Mmmmm.

Next day was the first day of orientation. I was very surprised by how modern and stylish the school looked like. It’s a private school so I guess that explains it - corporations are putting up hefty donations annually. First there was this reception breakfast with these pastries that were so sweet that they were almost inedible. Me and Laura (the girl who came with me from our school) met some of the other exchange students and got to talking with them. 13 of the 25 foreign exchange students taking part in the French exchange program (the English program has the majority of the exchange students) had turned up, the rest would probably show up the next day or before the lectures actually start. There were at least 5 others like me who had come to Grenoble mainly for the skiing opportunities. Turns out one German student has his mom’s BMW with him for the whole semester and he plans to go skiing – a lot. It was almost comical how none of the exchange students seemed to have any academic ambitions. It seems that Grenoble’s reputation as an ultra-easy after-ski school has reached international proportions. Too bad the dean wasn’t there to hear all this, he would have been proud.

I’ll tell more about the city in my next post. Tills den.