Just Another Day in Paradise - How to survive your first week in Montpellier

Well it is now almost 2 weeks since we first arrived her in Montpellier.
Most of you received our first email just after we arrived saying how fantastic this city is. Well even after 10 days (now edited after 12 days), bad weather, French lessons, power problems etc we still think this is a fantastic city.
We spent the first week, when we were free agents, just walking around the city. We would aim for a certain place on the map, but would not look at the map until we felt lost, when we could then adjust our direction. In this way, we have got our bearings, discovered lots of small, interesting streets and sights and seen a lot more of the city, than if we had just followed the most direct route.

For those of you who have been to Montpellier, we have of course been to the Place de la Comedie, Le Corum, Place de la Comedie, the Polygone, the Centre Historique and the Les Arceaux suburban area including the Place de Peyrou, the Chateau de l'eau and the Arceaux (aqueduct) and some suburbs to the north of here, Les Jardin des Plantes and have caught the tram, and have visited the major public library.
As Alan keeps saying we come across a new surprise everyday and they are nearly always good.

The highlights would have to be:
(Details about our house and area follow this section.)

• The architecture - so typically French, both wealthy and poor. The major buildings are amazing with the decoration and the colour of the stone when the sun shines on them. Most of the buildings date from the 17th & 18th century. By typically French, I mean yellow stone, lots of decorative carving, iron lace balconies, window shutters, etc. Suburban housing in the town centre and inner suburbs (like Les Arceaux where we live) is right on the street and very cramped together but fascinating to be amongst. The styles vary enormously from old to new. The newer housing in the outer suburbs is mostly large blocks of flats, ugly and boring. Interspersed in both areas are individual houses with gardens - some of them very nice. Surprisingly it reminds us of large Turkish towns in many ways!
• The open space - The French are amazing at designing public open space for just enjoying. The Place de la Comedie, the Antigone and the Place de Peyrou are all amazing areas. Melbourne town planners could learn a lot from the French!

Below are 5 photos showing the modern style of the Antigone, which believe it or not is mostly public housing! with a small amount of retail and office space. We have fallen in love with the Antigone. It is basically a very long (the length of Burke St, Melb?), very wide avenue, that is basically a mall. It crosses other streets, but they are like minor interruptions to the view and expanse of the area. Each block of the Antigone has a spectacular modern building or arch, many shaped around a large fountain or open space. There is one area that is mainly grass for sitting on. At one end of the Antigone is the huge shopping area called Polygone, which houses a Galleries Lafayette (think David jones , Myers, Selfridges, etc).The 3rd last photo in this batch show the Antigone entrance to the Polygone. The Antigone also houses the Municipal Library and Olympic size swimming pool. The 2nd last photo shows the more traditional French architecture of the Place de la Comedie (The Comedie being an Opera building), but hopefully also indicates the scope of the open space! The last photos shows the lovely old merry go round near the Comedie. Better photos may follow at a later date. Decorated roundabouts like this are common in many of the traditional open spaces in French towns.

• The friendliness of the people - Montpellier is a university town, a quarter of its population are aged under 25! There are schools & universities everywhere. As a result, the shop keepers, restaurant staff, people in the street, etc are very helpful to students and particularly if you are trying to practise your French. They will speak in French (or some broken English) but will speak slowly, repeat what they said or show you in some other way what they mean, all with a smile. All the shop keepers always greet you with bonjour and always farewell you with either au revoir or bon journee (have a good day).
• The food - lots more to come on this. Although not cheap, food here is very good. For example we bought minced beef at a butchers today and he bought a beautiful fillet of beef out of the fridge and minced it for us when we ordered it (this is normal)! The bread is excellent and we love choosing a fresh bread every few days. We have 2 good boulangeries at the end of our street. The French pastries have also been excellent and there are shops selling these literally every few yards! The restaurants have also been good and we have already had some spectacular meals at a North African, Tunisian/Middle Eastern, and classic French restaurant. There are also some nice looking crepe (pronounced crep not crap) restaurants that we are yet to try. Mind you Melbourne holds its own very well, and although we are raving about what we are eating here, Melb restaurants are just as good food wise.
• Of course there is also the fresh food market in our street every Tuesday and Saturday. It stretches almost the whole length of the aqueduct and is like a million top farmers markets all rolled into one. There is a take away (emporter) food stall at the market that sells the most fabulous meals. The 1st Saturday we had an African lamb stew with cous cous that was to die for! Today, saw but didn't sample a genuine and fabulous looking looking paella.

• A photo attached includes one of poultry that may be distressing to the vegetarians out there (be warned) as most of the shops still sell all the poultry with the birds heads still attached to the body including beaks and eyes. It is a bit disconcerting at first, but at least you know it is the actual bird! Also it is easy to get all sorts of poultry incl chickens, duck, quail, pheasant and some other birds I don't know yet. They also sell rabbits with the whole body incl head & legs (although these are skinned, unlike the birds!). The vegetable shops also sell carrots loose or as a bunch with the full green leaf top attached.

• Of course there are cheeses and still more cheeses and again more cheeses......you get the idea. We have tried cow's and sheep's cheeses and are looking forward to trying some of their goats cheese soon. The number and variety of cheeses is excellent.

• The traffic - In the old city it is very Mediterranean, ie traffic and pedestrians are intermingled, but the drivers here are very polite, and mostly patient. In the city centre (historical area) all the big carparks are underground. It is very impressive, because you don't have ugly carparks next to lovely old buildings. Otherwise, parking occurs on the footpaths because there is nowhere else to park, so therefore people walk on the road and this okay. In the narrow streets of the historical centre, the pavement and road are often only distinguished by the colour or material of the stone used - for example in the street where our school is, the pavement is a mixture white and pink marble, and the road is made of small even cobblestones. There is no difference in level between the pedestrian area and the driving area, but it all slopes very gently to a drain or channel that runs down the centre of the street, so if it rains water runs into the channel and drains away. Because there is no difference in levels, pedestrians, bikes, motorbikes and cars all just weave between each other. It is a lot of fun and not really dangerous, although Alan does tend to get nervous as I have 1st class degree in jay walking and he is not yet used to me crossing roads like this without stopping first and checking everything - but he is getting better and learning to adapt!
• They have excellent traffic management systems. Mostly it is large concrete bollards that mark the route of the traffic so that they cannot drive on teh footpath, but the best we have seen is metal bollards that are either controlled by a traffic light or sensor and goes down when a car approaches slowly or when the light turns green and goes back up again whe n the car has passed. It is really good to watch. If a car travelled too fast in one such street, the bollard would not go down in time and the car would be wrecked!
• Bicycles - there is a very cheap bicycle hire system operating here that we are keen to try out. We wanted to be a bit more familiar with the roads and traffic and also our directions, before we are game to ride in town, but there are a lot of cyclists and we will be on to the bikes very soon! Mind you no-one wears a helmet!
  
• We have been sampling local wines, but mostly at the cheaper end of the scale. The supermarches (supermarkets) sell packs of 4 small bottles, which is great because it enables us to have a drink every night without having to seal up a large bottle. Once we finish our 4 weeks of classes we will be into visiting a lot of the vineyards and caves and sampling a lot more! In the interim, the local quaffing wine is very acceptable and drinkable. Overall it has good fruit and an earthy character (a bit like central Victoria) but seems to be quite light and smooth. They do not make the "big" reds that Australia is famous for. We haven't tried the whites as yet, but we will!!!!

Downsides:
Are there any? Yes a few, but manageable.

• The cost of living is higher than at home. Everything is dearer, but we are working through this.
• Le Fumer ie Smokers!! Unfortunately, France is very like Turkey, in that everyone seems to smoke, esp the young people. It is almost impossible to walk down the street without having tobacco smoke drift pass you. I am sure I will learn to cope, but it is not enjoyable. Fortunately they do not allow smoking in restaurants, but drinking coffee, tea or chocolate at one of the cafe tables outside on a nice day will be difficult
  
• The local water is pretty bad - very hard, full of lots of minerals and quite greasy. We have been filtering it through the coffee filter provided, but have decided to just switch to bottled water for drinking and cooking. At least bottled water in large quantities is not too expensive.