I’ve been back in Dijon for just over three weeks now and although the time has gone by quickly, it still seems like ages ago that I was in Vienna. As I said before, coming back to France felt like coming home, which was a really weird feeling that I hadn’t expected at all. I was pleased though, because if I can feel perfectly at home in another country then it must mean my Erasmus year has been a success!

The past few weeks have been busy: the university was still blocked when I got back and the striking students were taking it in turns to sleep in the building to prevent anyone but the teachers from getting inside (legally they can’t deny anyone access to their place of work). It was decided that the teachers who weren’t on strike would relocate their classes their classes to other buildings on the campus that hadn’t been blocked – that way, the students could still have classes in the week leading up to the exams, which were going ahead regardless of the strikes, but the government would see that officially we were still striking and the blocage was still going ahead. Then, in the first week of exams they held a secret ballot which decided to unblock the building. Up until that ballot, all the votes were being decided by a raising of hands, which meant that some students were too intimidated to vote ‘no’ to the blocage and the strikes. Either way, the deblocage didn’t really affect anyone because exams had started by then and there were no more classes anyway.

The exams were pretty much the same as the same as the ones we did last semester, but I only had three this term because some of the striking teachers didn’t set exams. Once again I was surprised by the lack of rules during the exam – everyone had their phones out and people were passing each other notes and answers along the pews of the lecture theatre and walking around to get more paper or borrow a dictionary from someone sitting on the opposite side of the hall! I think going back to Edinburgh next year is going to be a bit of a shock to the system!

All in all, the exams weren’t especially stressful and most of the Erasmus students viewed them as nothing more than a bit of an inconvenient detraction from sunbathing and partying. The weather has been absolutely amazing these last few weeks – it’s been above 30 degrees nearly every day although we’ve also had quite a few storms at night time. We’ve taken to sitting outside at one of the cafés in the main square most evenings, drinking wine and watching the world go by –it’s all very French! There are fountains in the main square as well and a couple of weeks ago we spent a memorable few hours playing in them and taking photos of each other running through them and jumping over them. That kind of behaviour in public is quite frowned upon here (I think mainly in bourgeois towns like Dijon rather than France in general) and we generated quite a crowd of people staring in disbelief at the crazy ‘anglaises’! Incidentally we’ve also been getting a lot of stares lately for our summer clothes – the French never seem to wear shorts or skirts, or even strappy tops – no matter how hot it is they always wear jeans or black trousers with long sleeved tops, or if it’s really roasting three-quarter lengths! I have no idea how they do it – they must be so uncomfortable! But judging from the stares and pointing, they seem to think we’re just as crazy!

As well as sunbathing we’re trying to see and do as many things as possible before we leave Dijon in the next few weeks – the first day everyone was back after the Easter holidays we sat down and made a list of things to do and we’re trying to work our way through them – although a lot of them involve food and sunbathing opportunities! So far we have seen the new Audrey Tautou film about Coco Chanel, had drinks at Café Gourmand (the one in the main square – we’ve done this quite a lot of times!) and gone to Parc Colombier which is a massive park quite near the campus with a petting zoo and ice cream parlours and lots of sunshine and ponds and exciting things like that! We also visited Besançon last week, which I think I’ve written about before. It’s the nearest university town to Dijon and has much more of a studenty atmosphere. Although I’ve enjoyed Dijon, I think I would have really liked to have spent my Erasmus year in Besançon, just because it’s a bit (a lot) livelier! We spent our day there at the citadel, which I’ve never been to before. It was really interesting and has three or four museums, including a fantastic one about the French Resistance, and a zoo, which was ace!

Another thing on our list was to do karaoke at Hunky Dory, Dijon’s best and only karaoke bar. I had never done karaoke before and to be honest I wasn’t especially keen to do it now, but it was on the list so it had to be done! We went along last Tuesday, which was Megan’s last night here before she went home for the summer. It turned out to be a fantastic, although slightly surreal, evening. The place was quite empty when we arrived with only one table of about six French teenagers who were singing song after song. When we went up to sing they cheered and applauded as though they had never been so thrilled about anything in all their lives and so when they sang, we did the same. It was all very friendly and mutually encouraging and everyone was getting more confident, so while I had agreed to sing just one song, we ended up singing about fifteen! About an hour after we got there, we were about to leave the stage after a particularly brilliant rendition of ‘Everybody’ by the Backstreet Boys, when the screen came up with ‘les anglaises’ and the other table of people gestured to us to stay up and sing again. The French version of ‘My Way’ came on and they rushed up onto the stage to sing with us. When it ended the screen showed ‘les françaises’ and we sang ‘Yesterday’ by the Beatles with them. It doesn’t sound like anything too special but we were really touched that they had made the effort to bond with us and to sing an English language song. After that we sang with them a few times – them making the effort to sing in English and us to sing in French. At one point we put on ‘Colours of the Wind’ from Pocahontas and while we sang the English words, they sang the French – it was lovely! When the bar closed we went our separate ways and I doubt we’ll ever see them again, but it was a really lovely and memorable evening! On our way home we passed the cinema which had discarded as massive cardboard cut-out of Bob from the film Monsters vs Aliens which we stole and paraded around the town and took photos of next to all the landmarks we could think of, which was, I think, the perfect way to finish Megan’s time in Dijon!


Megan and Sophie with the newly rechristened Jean-Luc