Paris Day 1, snow, The Spartan Cube

After missing my flight at Arlanda/Stockholm airport to Charles de Gaulle/Paris airport, I managed to rebook the ticket to a later flight the same afternoon. I have to admit that the thought “nothing can stop me know” run threw my head; whatever will meet me in Paris, I will take it for what it is. This was proven to be easier said than done.

After getting my luggage – last of all as usual – I finally manage to find my self out of the Charles de Gaulle terminal 1 maze, but to find the commuter trains was even harder. As I arrived quite late, there wasn’t that much people left at the airport, but at last I found a French woman who could express her clear enough, that I had to take bus 2 in order to reach the train station. I went out in the heavy snowy weather, and after a while I fetched the bus. After a considerably long bus trip I arrived at the train station – between the lines I can admit that I had great difficulties to finding the trains even though the bus stopped just outside the train station, at last I found my way, due to the gigantic queue to the one and only open ticket counter (is that something typically French?). After queuing some 30 minutes, I had my ticket, and after some shivering in the coldness I sat on the commuter train. – zero degrees in Paris definitely feels colder than minus five degrees in Stockholm. One good thing with the train is that it goes directly from the airport to Cité Universitaire where I am living. Around 10 p.m. I arrived at the Foundation des Etats-Unis – the US student housing where I am going to spend my first month. At the reception it went very smoothly – too smoothly? – I just got the key to my room, without paying anything or registering or getting any kind of information. Stepping out of the elevator, full with expectation, I find to my joy my room rather quickly. It was just across the elevator. Now afterwards I cannot remember why, but I thought: Great! that’s a good thing being near to the elevator and the flight of stairs.

I opened the door and there it was: the Cube. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film with the same name – I am sure it was recorded in this room. Three meters wide, three meters broad and three meters high. The door was marked 442 – does this mean I can pass to this room? (You have to have seen the film in order to understand that joke!) Living in a cube is not a bad thing though. Living in a Cube with Spartan interior, with stone floor, ceiling and walls, warmed up to 31 degrees Celsius (without possibility to turn down the heating. Also I quite fast recognized that living near to the elevators and stairs is a really bad thing, when people starts to running outside, especially when people wear high heals, especially noisy it becomes if you have a 2 centimetres gap under your door. However, the worst thing was not the noise outside the door, even worse was the noise for traffic on the boulevard outside the window, and worst of all was the noise from the railway across the boulevard.

After opening the balcony doors for 2 minutes (no I don’t have a balcony, just balcony doors – a so called French balcony) letting in some colder air, I fell a sleep exhausted, and woke up five hours later again, when the train started moving again.