hannah dee

Campus looked a bit like Narnia, but with cooler street names. Being in the Alps, they know how to handle snow. Public transport runs fine. People change the tyres on their cars, then just get on with it. I’ve not cycled since it came down as I’m a bit nervous of ice, but the trams are going perfectly, so that’s not a problem Later in the day, once the University Snowplough had passed, it got a bit more slushy, but not much. It’s done a lot of melting today and has just refrozen, turning the pavements into a real ice rink just in time forRead More →

I finally got to catch a Grenoble Foot 38 match just before xmas, and you know what? They didn’t lose!!! The final score was 1-1 against Nice, which for GF38 is really very good. In my not so expert footballing opinion, they were robbed, too, and it should have been a win. But what do I know. The Stade des Alpes is a magnificent building. It opened less than 2 years ago, and according to Wikipedia its solar panels generate 70,000kWh a year. I have no idea what they use those kilowatts for though, it’s certainly not heating. We had to scrape the ice offRead More →

Where Père Noël seems to find it rather hard to get in….

A few weeks back I went to the Grenoble Swing Dance Festival (GSDF). This involved all sorts of fun, like 6 hours of classes and 45 minutes volunteering to work on the bar. Strangely, the bar only sold soft drinks. Yes, only soft drinks. And pancakes. Believe me, you didn’t want to get the first crepe I made, it was more like a baguette. Fortunately, I sold it to an American guy, who probably didn’t know any better. The Flocon classes (this was translated as “snowflake”, but I think also means “flake”, ha ha) were the absolute beginner level and were taught by a coupleRead More →

I’ve just bought another French mobile phone. This isn’t because I’m some kind of gadget freak, it’s because I lost the one that Graham kindly gave me to replace the one I lost about four months ago. Yes, that’s right, I’m on my 3rd French mobile. When I’m leaving a place, I have a voice in my head that says “Wallet, Keys, Tobacco, Lighter, Phone… Ready!” and I’ve had real difficulty adding “Other phone” to the mental list. This necessitated a visit to the Orange store. I first tried to fix this problem – AKA buy a phone – on Saturday, when I turned upRead More →

I’m halfway through my French Adventure now – my work contract tells me that I run out of job on the last day of May, and my flat contract ends on June 6. Paradoxically, time is both speeding and crawling by. In one sense I feel like I’ve been here forever and in another sense like I have only just arrived. My French skills are very much improved; I’m not sure that the people I share an office with would agree wholeheartedly, but I can perceive the difference myself. Every now and then, in conversation, I do something surprising (like use the futur antérieur) andRead More →

Weightwatchers in France is an interesting thing to do. It’s not as hugely popular here as it is in the UK, and I don’t think there are any competitor diet clubs (I’ve seen no Slimmers World or Rosemary Conley), and it is much more expensive than in the UK (38 Euros/month rather than 18 quid/month !!). However given that my documents were posted in Maidenhead, I guess there are some postal overheads involved here. And it’s still cheaper than French lessons, even if the vocab is somewhat limited. In the UK, as you approach the scales, there’s a kind of scruffy striptease, in which everyoneRead More →

This view is about 20 mins into my bike to work. I love the way the mountains shift behind the buildings, perspective changing and somehow managing to make the boring boxy foreground stuff look interesting. There’s been snow on those for about four weeks now.