To Europe for the Classic

“Hi, okay, you American, I just almost froze to death during that half-hour, but that’s totally fine.”

“Yeah, right, really sorry, you need to toughen up anyway, though,” I replied nervously. I rather changed the topic immediately: “Look – it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“It’s as ugly as hell! At night, maybe, when they light it up, but like this? Let’s go somewhere else.”

I had never thought someone could dislike the Eiffel tower so much. Lukáš, my friend from high school, proved me wrong when we met “for a coffee” right under it during one day in January. When I suggested that it might be interesting to get the beer right there, in a restaurant underneath the monument, he replied that the lowest price of a menu there is a hundred. My naïve statement that it’s not that bad was swept by his words: “Euros, Marek. A hundred Euros.” And so we moved to a different district of Paris.

As I suggested in my last post, I had decided to spend this semester in Paris. There is a study abroad center of Columbia University here with a really neatly organized academic program for students from different American universities. During these five months, I take five courses, in two of which I work on improving my French, two of them are cultural courses (French colonization and French-American relations) and the fifth one is philosophy – all of them are taught in French, of course. Except for the last one mentioned, I take all of these courses at Reid Hall, the building of Columbia University in the center of the city. The philosophy course, more specifically “Philosophy of Action,” is one that I take at the famous Sorbonne. I chose it because I am interested in philosophy – and, of course, simply because learning philosophy in French at Sorbonne is unbelievably cool and hardly ever does one have such an opportunity. I have already written my first two-hours-long essay and several exams in other classes and I would say that not even in the humanities do I fall that much behind my American peers.

I do not take any science course here, which makes this semester a more relaxing one for me. All the more do I try to immerse myself into the French culture, especially by trying to find a part-time job here. That, however, has shown to be an almost accomplishable task – after my first attempt to get a position in the local American hospital (only later was I told that without diploma, only students of French medicine can work in hospitals here as a part of their practical studies), I tried various cafés, pubs, babysitting and even administration, but I have been unsuccessful so far. Thus, I just keep walking around the city with a stack of copies of my CV, trying my luck at various places.

Paris has been very cold so far, and so I have been spending most of my time at home or in one of the countless local museums – the most interesting one so far was probably the one of Rodin, although a considerable part of the exposition was outside. (I noted, then, that even the famous Thinker must have been crouching down with cold, actually.) I am, therefore, waiting for spring to come, when I will be finally able to enjoy the beauty of this city. In my next post, then, I hope to give a better testimony of what it is like to fully enjoy Paris.