First day at university and overcoming bad presentiments

There won't be that many pictures today, since there was no sightseeing and I spent much time on campus. But anyway, I didn't show any pictures of my room yet. So here you go. These are 6 pictures put together. I will change rooms twice but I think the rooms should look about the same.

 

So today I went to university to get administrative stuff done and get my fancy new student card. Well, it looks like a normal student card. On the card there's my name, an excellent picture of me, my student ID number, the name of the university and a bar code...yeah, stuff that's usually on a student card. It's a plain normal student card.

There's security staff in front of every building of the university controlling people who want to enter. They only let people inside with a valid student or teacher card. I have to open my bag and show it to the staff every time I want to enter a building, too. On Friday I couldn't get into one of the buildings since I haven't received my card yet. After being sent to another building 3 times in a row (the buildings are all downtown but still not that close to each other or at least I thought that as I wasn't that familiar with the layout of the streets and buildings) I was told that my destination where I can get my card has closed 20 minutes ago and that I should come again on Monday. So there I was.

I ate lunch at a restaurant belonging to CROUS . It is more or less the abbreviation of the system that helps students in their everyday life. For example it helps with finding a place to live. CROUS helps to feed students, too. The restaurants belonging to CROUS are subsidised by the state so my meal shown down below cost only €4,35.

A girl couldn't eat anymore of her lunch (even though she barely ate anything) and I asked whether I could eat the rest of her meal since they'll throw it away either way. I went and asked for some topping as the spaghetti had none. What I received was roman broccoli, which looks quite funny.

There is a point system. A main dish costs 4 points, a soup, a salad, a fruit, a yoghurt cost 1 point each and a piece of cake costs 2 points. The basic menu for 6 points costs €3,25. Each additional point costs €0,55. If you want you could even eat 2 main dishes for the same price I paid, I guess I'll try that some time. Of course you have to be a student to acquire these services.

Afterwards I went having a cup of tea at a new friend's house with other new friends. We had some tasty chocolate tea. I was reminded being able to change courses in the first two weeks of the semester while wailing around about my late night French course on Monday. I wrote an email that I would like to change my level B2 French course to C1 since I wanted to learn French on a higher level anyway and got a quick approval. Now I have a more pleasant time table...and of course a bigger challenge ahead which is good.

In the evening there was an “a bar a day” event, again. I went to the place and wanted to have some fun with my new clique. The bar was very crowded and situated in the city centre and somehow I got a bad feeling. I didn’t want to enter. I remembered the hateful and targetless attack in Paris in 2015 and somehow my brain refused to tell my body to walk into the bar even though I was walking back and forth in front of it. After thinking about the number of eventless days in Paris that have passed before and after the attack and how many bars there are in Paris I convinced myself to enter, eventually without regretting it.

As I wanted to go home the same girl that gave me her spaghetti wanted to go home by taxi since she was afraid of getting home alone by bus. After trying to get a taxi with the help of a Canadian buddy without success I thought that I could accompany her home. It took some time and it was pretty much freezing (maybe only for me because she hasn't quite wrapped herself up in her jacket...even though she came from Lebanon where she should be used to a warmer climate, right?) but we managed to avoid all kinds of interruptions. By the way I still have no Idea which parts of Paris can get dangerous if approached being unaware of it. Afterwards I still had to get home myself while living in a completely different part of the city.

From now on I won't be writing an article a day (keeps my good grades away) but less frequently since the courses started already and I won't be writing about the courses and similar university stuff.