A Few Days in Poitiers
I arrived in Poitiers two days ago, but it feels like at least a month already. I couldn’t be happier with the town itself. It’s a town of about 85 000, often called the biggest of the small cities, or the smallest of the big cities in France, and is certainly a refreshing change from Moscow. The town sits on the top of a hill, with the river Clain running right through it. I’m living right in the center of town, about a five minute walk away from everything. In the center of town is the large Hôtel de Ville, or Town Hall, and a square with everything on it from small, independent boulangeries to the large department store Printemps. Off of the central square begins a series of little, pedestrian streets with shopping, restaurants and cafés. As you twist and turn around these streets, you eventually come to the main market square, with a large daily indoor market and an outdoor market on the weekends. On market square stands Notre-Dame-la-Grande, a huge beautiful church with intricate carvings all over its walls. From here, you can turn off onto some of the real streets, and suddenly you know you couldn’t be anywhere except Europe. Each street seems hardly wide enough to walk along, let alone drive on, and they’re all one-way, although I can’t for the life of me figure out how the French know which one way is the right way. I wandered these streets for a while, and every time I turned a corner, I saw a new cathedral sticking out over the buildings, or right in front of my face, or down the street and in the distance.
The university campus is out on the edge of town, about a 20 minute bus ride from the center. We spent most of the day yesterday on campus, getting registered and figuring out class schedules and such. The one thing that makes me very excited is that the university feels like a real campus. It’s not squished in between two blocks in a big city;everything is laid out with green space in between, with the science buildings on one side, and the language or arts buildings on another. Although they say it is pretty dead at nights or on the weekends, because all of the French students live in town, while I was there during the day, it felt like a true college campus. Kids were hanging out and talking to each other in the hallways or cafes (eating chocolate croissants and drinking coffee, of course). The campus seemed truly alive and I could really see myself making friends and feeling comfortable while I’m there. It’ll be a nice change from Russia, I think, and I'm already looking forward to classes starting on Monday.
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