A working life
Exchange year
Posts written during my Erasmus stay in Toulouse, France 2008-2009
C’EST QUOI ÇA?
May 18th
17th of May parade in front of Capitole
A french man asked me on the street yesterday: “C’est quoi ça?” It’s the celebration of the Norwegian national day!
This year I celebrated May 17th in the streets of Toulouse. In Norway, everyone dresses up in their finest outfit and celebrate the Norwegian constitution (of 1814). In Norway, there are flags everywhere, people are walking togehter in parades with marching bands and everyone’s singing.
The Norwegian celebration of the national holiday is unique, and we’re not stopped by being abroad. In Toulouse about 150 Norwegians gathered on Place Capitole at noon to have a parade to Université de Toulouse 1, where we later had cake, sandwiches, drinks and games!
Many Norwegians parading in Toulouse
It was during the parade a French man asked me the question above, a fair question – it’s not often you see people in France going in parade without manifesting their discontent with the government (or something else). :)
On the evening 17th we had a superb dinner at Bistro Romain on Place Wilson. More than 90 Norwegians found their way to the restaurant to celebrate our day! Happy birthday, Norway!
Apart from the national day of Norway, the weekend has been filled with Beer World Cup, basically a second round of Beer Olympics, but with less concequences and more people! Tom and I were title defenders in Beer Pong but lost our first match and were out of the competition. On the other hand I won Dizzy bat and I had great team members in Flip Cup so we won that one too! 2 out of 3 possible!
It’s a lot of school going on, so I have to stop this post here. Later!
TEMPORARY RADIO SILENCE
May 12th
I have loads to do now-a-days and will have to stay off blogging for 2 weeks or so.
I hope to see you around when I return!
WEEKENDS IN MAY
May 6th
Airshow over Porto (Photo: Unknown)
They are long, specially this year.
May 1st, 8th and 22nd all count as holidays here in France, the two first are Fridays, meaning three day weekends! The last one is a Thursday, but INSA don’t give courses on Friday 23rd. How convenient!
Last weekend I visited Torbjørn in Antibes, this weekend I’m going with Juha, Cate, Geir, Tom and Roberto to Porto in Portugal to visit Joao and Tiago!
The timing of our stay is well planned as we are visiting during Porto’s student festival.
I’ve been working lots with the multidiciplinary project the past few days, now I’m off to my apartment to pack my things and meet the others heading for Porto.
50 minutes left!
WEEKEND TRIP: CÔTE D'AZUR
May 3rd
Nice as seen from La colline du château
This weekend I’ve been visiting Torbjørn, a friend of my from the university in Norway. Torbjørn is studying at the Eurecom institute near Antibes and is staying there for a year.
Antibes is situated between Cannes and Nice (Google Maps), which is pretty far away from Toulouse. So, Thursday afternoon at 17h I got on the train. 7 hours and a train swap (in Marseilles) later I arrived in Antibes where Torbjørn picked me up.
Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress, my camera and me heading for Antibes
It took 15 minutes to get to Torbjørn’s apartment near the school campus. The apartment is pretty much identical to mine here in Toulouse. Because of the bad bus connection to the school campus, Torbjørn bought a car a few weeks ago!
So, Friday morning, we got up around 8 o’clock and drove to Nice!
Torbjørn and his monster car at Carrefour
I’ve been to Nice once before, but that was during sixth form (“lycée” in French, “videregående” in Norwegian). We parked just next to the local marked, a place I visited last time as well. Nice is such a beautiful city!
We didn’t stay for a long time, but we saw the Promenade des Anglais, the beautiful view from La colline du château and we enjoyed a coffee in Place Rosetti. During our coffee I was lucky enough to get pooped on by a bird. It hit me on the head, on the shoulders and almost hit my camera. Not the most pleasant of experiences, but everything has a first I guess.
Me, Torbjørn, coffee, card writing (and bird poo) in Place Rosetti
We then headed for Cannes where we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, chilling out and playing beach volley.
The same night we met up with Kristoffer, the other Norwegian studying at Eurecom. We had dinner together, I had Calzone pizza for 9€, coffee for 2€ and expensive Crème Brulée Ice cream for 8€. We ended the evening with a couple of pints of Guinness the Irish pub the Hop Store. I am amazed by the number of Australians in Antibes. Surely, Antibes is a city based on tourism, but Australian-English was more common than French in some areas.
Saturday we got up late, bought baguettes and ate our breakfast on a fortified wall overlooking the crazy big yachts in the marina. We stayed there for a few hours because of the great view and marvellous weather!
Torbjørn and me in front of crazy big yachts! (Photo: Kristoffer)
After an ice cream in down town Antibes we headed for the beach in Juan-les-pins where we tried to find some friends of Kristoffer and Torbjørn’s. We couldn’t find them and ate our lunch on our own. We played a bit of beach volley and Torbjørn and I even took a swim in the Mediterranean!
Chilling on the beach in Juan-les-Pins (Kristoffer and Torbjørn)
We ate home made dinner in Torbjørn’s apartment before I took the train back on Saturday at 21h16. I left Saturday already because the two others were leaving for a one week cruise in the Mediterranean Sunday morning. It’s been a great weekend, Côte d’Azur is fantastic!
QUOI DE NEUF?
Apr 27th
Or as they say in English, “What’s up?”
I haven’t blogged about everyday stuff for a long time, so I thought I should update you all on what’s happening here in Toulouse, besides not being in Toulouse (also known as travelling).
Last update from Toulouse was the fact that I’ve got new glasses, but that’s a long time ago, at least it feels that way.
So what is new?
I had two exams just over Easter, one in the complicated course Electronique du solide 2, and the other in the somewhat less complicated course Electronique. The exams went pretty much as expected, nothing truly exiting to write about.
What annoys me though is the “French way” of having exams. I say “French way”, because I haven’t heard of any other nation that allows exams in such a way as they do here in France.
The worst thing is how easy it is to ask others, share answers and in general to cheat. In the examination room we normally sit next to each other and it seems like the professors (at least some of them) don’t care if students collaborate during the exam.
Another thing I find weird is how the exercises we get was identical to a TD (traveaux dirigé, meaning exercises solved with help from the professor). This was the case of the Electronics exam where we additionally were allowed to bring all the TDs with us to the exam. So the exam was basically copy paste of something the professor had already done for us. How can we show what we know with such an exam?!
And now something completely different:
Kristian, one of the three Norwegian musketeers, has returned to Norway. We’ll miss him the last two months, but he’s in Trondheim so I’ll see him around!
Last Saturday I had a great dinner the BEE team. We ate at a nice Italian restaurant, before we had fun at Café Pop’s Farmer’s party!
The BEE team at the restaurant (Photo: Teddy)
Today I tried climbing again, for the first time in well over a year. It’s been way too long and I am restarting on beginners level. Tons of fun though, even if I can barely grip a bottle right now.
So that’s the past. On Tursday I’m visiting Torbjørn who is studying in Antibes, not far from Nice. Torbjørn is a good beachvolley buddy of mine and also one of my future colleagues this summer.
I think we’re going to have a great time!
