Beg, borrow and steal.

Aix-en-Provence is really not the easiest of places to live without a job unless you were either born with a silver spoon in your mouth or you won the lottery a few years ago and are happily cruising on the cumulative interest on your bank account. It's a place where rich people go to die in provençal rental apartment heaven and where students actually look like they've made an effort in the morning; there are no jogger pants and last night's t-shirts here i'm afraid.... (Gotta say I love that feeling when you roll into uni feeling like shit but know everyone else is the same too).

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I am pretty fucking penniless right now. And still waiting for my Erasmus grant which ill give me enough money to live comfortably until January when I get my nxt student loan payment. It sucks.

On the plus side, it has made me work out how to be a bit more frugal and not just sit in bed shovelling Viennoiseries down my throat all day and then wondering where my money went. I miss cake so much.

So imagine my elation when a friend suggested we all get together to cook curries to celebrate Diwali? There turned out to be around 15 of us who wanted to join in, so we all bought vegetables, spices, rice as well as wine on the cheap and then split the cost for everyone who was eating. Worked to be about 2€ each to make enough for everyone 3 times over; about four big vats of curry and shitloads of rice to add to that. There was an aubergine and chickpea curry as well as chicken coconut curry which everyone kept trying to nick tastes of behind the cook's backs and some others which i've forgotten the ingredients of but oh my god I need the recipe because they were so damn tasty.


As I was writing this, I decided I definitely needed to finally buy some food before I die of starvation.  I just spent my last few euros on a few baguettes, some fruit and soft cheese so hopefully I should be able to snack my days away until my bursary comes through! Definitely considering living on Nutella sandwiches....

Life in the ghetto is pretty damn good, actually.

Despite hearing a multitude of horror stories about Cuques (specifically the unrenovated halls with communal showers and toilets), I decided to take a room here. Anyone who has ever tried to find an apartment here for the same low low price as halls will understand my pain and several month's worth of wracking my brain as how to find the money to cover the obscenely high rent and living costs in Aix, and Provence in general.

So my place is basic, it's a single bed 'dorm room' in halls. We share toilets and showers on a floor of people.....which isn't as bad as it sounds: There are plenty showers and toilets for a whole lot of people to get naked and wet at the same time and they're cleaned and maintained by the staff here, twice a week I think. At least I don't have to scrub toilets......I'm getting every penny's worth out of my rent in  reality! The rooms have mini-fridges, biiig windows with shutters and plenty of storage space for all of those photo frames with pictures of you and your cat that you so desperately needed to bring with you to Provence.

Kitting my room out cost me around 130€ for everything including kitchen stuff and food and some more clothes and most importantly, lots of bedsheets and comfy pillows. The rooms here are given as just that. A desk, a chair, a fridge, cupboards, bathroom area and a mattress for your bed. No blankets or quilts or any 'luxury' items come for free here....

Also, this academic semester in France is the first time i've ever lived in halls, and it's a great experience as well as a great way of saving money (which I want to use to travel more). It's also, of course, an enormously good way of throwing myself head first into social situations and ways of learning the language with real natives: Erasmus students here are an enormous percentage, seemingly, of the student body, so finding French students with decent banter is of course imperative. I found myself some casual alcoholics. They're awesome.

The first night I was here, as I already said in my previous blogs, I was invited out to the hill at Cuques, and from then on met tons of people and my boyfriend too. It was a great night and living in halls really is good for that sort of situation. I recommend finding your Erasmus group for halls anywhere in Europe. The groups here work quite well and it's from there/that that I met the casual alcoholics who I see almost every night now.

However i've noticed that it's very work-orientated here. There doesn't seem to be such the same social-leaning to French halls as to UK halls. My direct neighbours here are phantoms who I never see, although I have met an awesome Spanish guy called Jorge who lives right next to me, and a guy called Raphael with the best taste in music ever. I'm trying not to generalise too much, but it's a lot quieter here than compared with UK halls. I don't mind that at all though...one of the reasons I didn't want to live in halls in UK was for fear of just losing myself in a mad frenzy of drink and drugs. (of course I didn't need halls for me to do all those things either ;) )

So for anyone coming to study in Provence, take heed. Cuques is good.... as long as you don't mind being asked for a cheeky tenner off your neighbour because his girlfriend wants to buy some crack cocaine. True story, bro.

Aix-en-Provence

Aix is lovely, quite a mid-sized city with enough to see for months and months ahead but not as intimidating as Marseille; although that being said I really haven't seen too much of Aix itself yet, but more of the student residences and some of the shopping areas. It seems perfectly lovely from here.

I'm living in Cuques halls in Aix en Provence, which is just on the south side of Aix and it's been nice so far. My room is pretty basic and relatively small, although I do have my own fridge, corner washroom with a sink and....a bidet. So continental. I've read loads of blogs about Cuques and how manky it is: It really does depend what sort of room you get, there are renovated studio apartments or single bed rooms with shared facilities. Sharing toilets, showers and the kitchen isn't ideal by any means but I think after a while anyone would get used to it

In all fairness, I wouldn't care how trashed or fucking run-into-the-ground the place was, it costs 155€/month, which for Aix is probably the cheapest you will ever find a room. That works out to be around £120, which then translates to around £30 a week. That's fucking cheap. And that's without the CAF government subsidising/benefits for students and those without an income.
I honestly challenge you to find somewhere in Provence that costs so little, but is in such a beautiful city......most T1 studio apartments here start from 400€ bare minimum and then they were just as shabby as halls can be.

I've been meeting a hell of a lot of really nice people from here too, and in fact the first night I was here I was invited straight out to 'la colline': the little hill next to halls to drink and get brutally fucked up with pastis. I didn't have any energy after travelling from Sanary, via Marseille and via getting lost in Aix with a bag of fucking everything with me, but it was an awesome night. We ended up getting 'forcibly removed' for creating too much noise so we went to someone's apartment and danced to Call Me Maybe all night long. I still cannot for the life of me even remember whose apartment that was. I was ofc enormously drunk....

I'm finding it quite hard to understand everything in a conversation, but that's mostly down to the speed and my lack of vocabulary. I've been taking in quite a lot of the local patois provençal and really familiar language which we were never taught at school: dégun, tarpin, dégueulasse etc etc. By the end of the year I am determined to sound like a local and not like some dodgy Englishman who has just taken up French or so.

Anyways, I haven't taken any photos of Aix and stuff yet because i've been too busy, but I'm gonna go on a long wander of the town soon enough and hopefully see as much of the beautiful provençal city as  possible.

"holla, city of squalor!"

Okay, so major breakthroughs. I was offered une chambre simple [simple room] at Cuques halls in Aix-en-Provence for 155€/month by the uni.

After a good 10 days of deliberation of whether or not I can live with a a whole host of potentially sketchy Euro-tramps in the extreme south of France, or whether I really do value my own [expensive rental] space, I still had no idea what to do.....

- Friends suggested I just move into halls for 'the experience'  (NB i'm a total halls virgin...I've lived with friends and partners so far through uni.)

- My mother suggested I find a cheap apartment, even if it's in a sketchy area miles out from the city centre.

- previous Erasmus students from my uni suggested not living in halls, for one reason or another; cramped conditions, other students etc

...but as the deadline approached I had to be more adult about the decision. I'm not often adult, or mature so this was a big thing for me....

The fact I had nothing sorted yet was quite a scary concept, and I took the room in halls.
I'm quite nervous about it all really...but still open minded.

I pay 155€ a month for a room, and i'm planning on travelling a whole hell lot more than I would have been while paying expensive rent as well. So really, I'm quite excited for the opportunity!

At least i'm not an SDF [sans domicile fixe / homeless].......

Oh and stay tuned for my plans to casually backpack around the South of France for a week and a half before uni......