Erasmus in The City of Light

Posted on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 22:11 | by The Insider

You get a place in the Erasmus Exchange Program and you are lucky enough to go to Paris. You prepare for the trip for five months and you really hope that you will feel special in this city (well, come on, it’s Paris!). Then you arrive there, but the feeling that you were waiting for doesn’t come. You are worried and you repeat to yourself, “Maia, it’s Paris, feel something!”, but you don’t. And then there is this ordinary day when you go out from the apartment, and probably you are on the way to your university; you feel very comfortable in your shoes; you have your walkman; you have some plans for the evening; you look on the pavement, look around, look in the sky; you take a deep breath; you smile; and you realize that you love Paris…

The first part of our semester my friend Egle called the ”cultural one”. She bought a good Paris guide, and I had a list of 100 places that I wanted to see. Every day we discovered different parts of the city and its suburbs. I highlighted visited places in my list, Egle put ticks in her to-do-list. We went to university three days per week, and all other days we wandered around the city. Paris is unquestionably beautiful with a crazy amount of things to offer. I admit that I still did not manage to see everything I wanted.Well, I wrote two paragraphs about my feelings and the city and did not say a word about the studies, which were of course the aim of the program (at least formally). Paris Graduate School of Management gave an opportunity to choose any course from a very long list of subjects. Though the workload is smaller than in our Alma Mater, the subjects are still interesting and useful. I became fascinated by the culture and economics of Asian countries, learnt fancy things about tourism industry, improved my economics skills. A very good thing about PGSM is that maximum amount of people in every class is 30, and, as a result, teachers get to know you well. I received invaluable advice and recommendations from my professors.

On the first week of November we had our mid-terms, which came quite unexpectedly. And starting from the 7th of November the second part of our semester started. I call this part “real Erasmus”. We had many guests from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania visiting us. With our friends we discovered new restaurants, museums, pubs & clubs, small streets, big boulevards, markets, and paradise shops. Emotions were overwhelming every day. Friday was not such a special day any more. Mondays, Tuesdays, Sundays were as bright and active as any Friday or Saturday! We woke up in the morning in our small but cozy studio with the view on the Eiffel Tower, drank coffee, and hurried to meet another happy day.In this city I met Rihanna, spoke the most romantic language in the world, ate the tastiest food, met the most interesting people, had the best heartwarming evenings, shook the hand of Vivienne Westwood’s son, saw the works of the most talented artists, had the longest walks, danced till the morning light, had the time of my life… Even music in my walkman sounded special in Paris.

I am grateful to SSE Riga for giving me this lucky ticket, to my friends and family with whom I started to love the city, to Egle, Inga, Lena for experiencing all this with me, to new people whom I met there.Just to conclude, I am not the same after my Erasmus. Now I know where I want to live ;)