It's a lonely life a la fac

While it was nice to have temporary accommodation organised, the unit turned out to be the unit from hell! I had never lived on campus during my uni days in Australia and boy am I glad if that’s what it’s like! Our new ‘home’ had 2 big rooms and a separate bathroom and kitchen. They were the only positive things about it. By way of furniture, it had 2 of everything: two single beds with two hard foam mattresses, two bookshelves, two bedside tables, two desks and two chairs, all stain proof and very simple. It had a little table about the size you get in a squishy restaurant – very romantic for 2 but impossible for any more than that. The floors were lino-covered and were extremely slippery and squeaky with or without shoes (again stain proof!).

We soon got sick of that horrible sterile place and decided we needed to make it a bit more homely. So we hired a truck and went around to troc places that sold second hand goods. In French the word troc means trade or barter. The idea with these shops is that people take their second-hand goods along and the shop gets a commission if they’re sold. It means that items can be sold for less, although it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are guaranteed to work. Luckily they have a 24hr returns policy so we were able to return the washing machine that didn’t work. But unluckily it’s only a 24hr returns policy and we didn’t work out that the dryer wasn’t working properly until a few days later and then had to live with a piece of useless furniture for the rest of our stay.

Living on campus (or à la fac as they say in French) did have its advantages (no, really). The Côte d'Or was about 30km away - the big wineries all situated in a line along the side of a hilly stretch of countryside. Our block of units was a concrete monstrosity but from our top floor windows we could actually see the Côte d’Or (but not touch it. Shame!). And it was fairly quiet (except for the Mirage fighter jets doing flybys throughout the day) but this could have been because all the students had left for the summer. I guess that’s all the advantages it had. Not many really. It had more negative points. Especially when the heat started in mid-June and the unit became a furnace day and night. 

Life for me at the fac was strange and dreamlike and very lonely. As with a lot of universities around the world, the University of Burgundy was situated on the outskirts of town and I soon tired of being so far away from anything interesting. Even the purchase of a stereo and TV from one of the local trocs (thankfully fully functional) so I could watch crappy daytime French shows and dance to really repetitive French music didn’t help. My days became a routine of seeing Michael off to work every day and settling down to boredom. Oh, I did things to combat it, like going in to have lunch with Michael and his new colleagues, but it somehow felt like I was intruding, especially when they all talked about work. I also went shopping or used Michael’s computer in his office to email friends and family but even this became awkward when one day his crazy (psychotic) roommate who was doing her PhD came in and accused me of cracking her computer password and stealing her files! Why?? (She went on to finish and obtain her doctorate, even though many thought her work didn’t deserve it, and continued to haunt everyone in the department by sending them abusive emails, including the department head! She really knew how to entertain people, even if she thought she was being serious!)

No matter what I did, I always returned to the unit feeling more lonely than before. This was not the way I thought my first month living in Dijon would turn out. We had to do something about finding a more permanent apartment in a more interesting part of town.