What happens when a person goes to live in foreign country? Could we call it a specific experience of one’s life? I assume that long term departures can lead to certain changes in your life: you meet new people, new cultural context, you do some new activities … But are these long term changes as well?

First departure

My first departure abroad for longer than one month was in France, in Paris, for studying via Erasmus exchange programme. During the first days I “captured” every moment, everything – people, streets, buildings, and various details drew my attention.  And all these stereotypic symbols of Paris: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Montmartre, St Germain, Champs-Elysées…I’m wondering how the imagination, reinforced by films, books, music, touristic guides contributes to the city’s experience…

I'd like to be a tourist, but not in plastic.

You see that elegant lady walking with her three dogs in a park? Real Parisian women! Look at this waiter in a bistro! It’s seems to me that I’ve seen his face in some movie…Weren’t you in the Parisian market on Sunday? For the first time I was seeing it like a cultural event. Yeah…it is more than “just” a market. People go there to communicate, talk to each other. Oh, and these nice jazz clubs in Quartier Latin when you can go and listen to a good concert on Wednesday, for example! And Sorbonne’s Library, you enter there and the reading gets a different meaning. Too many “clichés”?

Sometimes I had an impression that I was watching a theatre play. People – actors and Paris – a scene with its decorations (streets, buildings etc.). I felt like a spectator watching all these manners of communicating…You understand in some cases that there are some cultural elements which you can’t find by reading books or watching films, but only in living in that country.

And after…

So what’s next? Then you start living a “normal” life, step by step you create your own life’s environment, you find a constant activity, some of the new people you met become your friends, you know very well how to access there or there, you know all the shops in your surroundings, you avoid “touristic” places…You choose this jazz club with jam sessions on Tuesdays… (And not the touristic one in Quartier Latin)
You get this “metro boulot dodo” (metro, working, sleeping) attitude where sleeping takes a more important place. You fall asleep…
 
Are you still walking in the city just for walking? – I don’t have a lot of time…Still you go to Montmartre with “baguette, vin, fromage” for watching a beautiful panorama of Paris? – Oh, it is a bit far from my quartier…let’s drinking a glass of wine near to my (your) house or let’s meet in “Café Universel” like almost every Tuesday…

You have your own role now, your “trajet quotidien” and you forgot that you used to be a curious observer. You are losing that “external” view which you had in the beginning.

Do you still live in that Paris you arrived in when you were trying to “taste”, to stop and look at each element from it? Could you have become a part of this urban spectacle? You have your own role now, your “trajet quotidien” and you forgot that you used to be a curious observer. You are losing that “external” view which you had in the beginning.

It’s a natural thing. I came back to everyday life. And now I’ve just arrived in Brussels. In this huge institutional world. And at the moment I feel more a “tourist”, a spectator than a “real player”.
However, I would like to keep a bit of this “touristic attitude” during all this traineeship. It is more interesting, don’t you think?

For the end:

Interroger l’habituel. Mais justement, nous y sommes habitués. Nous ne l’interrogeons pas, il ne nous interroge pas, il semble ne pas faire problème, nous le vivons sans y penser, comme s’il ne véhiculait ni question ni réponse, comme s’il n’était porteur d’aucune information. Ce n’est même plus du conditionnement, c’est de l’anesthésie. Nous dormons notre vie d’un sommeil sans rêves. Mais où est-elle, notre vie ? Où est notre corps ? Où est notre espace ?
Georges Perec