22 January - Republique, Rennes (Day 4)

A brand new day awaits me. I was all geared up and ready to explore the city centre, Republique. I put on my sweater and coat, armed myself with Pentax, maps in my hand, and lastly grabbed 3 Snicker bars and left my room. It was raining as usual again today, but just a bit heavier than before. It was rather easy to find the bus stop and I waited for Ligne 16 to arrive. I was still not used to the fact that bus comes from my left instead of my right. Anyway, it came shortly and I bought the ticket successfully, which cost me 1.10 euro. This ticket would last for an hour. It took about 20 min to reach to Republique, much faster than I expected.

When I alighted, I was surrounded immediately by medieval buildings. I have read that most of the city centre was burnt down by fire when the fishermen went on strike. It took 10 years for the government to restore the buildings but I guessed the previous glories of the buildings could not be resurrected fully. With my map, I tried to find my way to the bank that I was supposed to go on Monday. The name of the bank was Societe Generale and it was located along Rue de Bastard. Rue means street in French. It did not take me too long to get lost.

When I alighted, I crossed the main road to the other side and start to find the bank. However, all the street names were different from that on my map! Afraid that I would be completely lost if I move further on, I turned back and returned to my starting point. This time, I decided not to cross the road and explore this side of the city. Bingo! All the street names started to come into the picture. Without much trouble, I found the bank. Now it was time to take a closer look at the city.

All the buildings were low and made of stones or bricks. Most of the European cities have a plaza or a square at the city centre and the buildings were built around it. Here a square is called Place. The centre plaza here was called La Place de la Mairie and there was a big cathedral also. There were boutiques, salons, bakeries, restaurants, bookshops, etc here but I did not patronize any of them because I was unfamiliar of the environment and did not want to waste money. Language was a big deterrent for me to do shopping, money was second to that. After touring for about an hour, I decided to go back to the bus station. I thought perhaps I would come here every weekend to break the monotonous life back in campus.

The area I lived in was called Campus BeauLieu, which meant beautiful place but it was rather boring in fact. Everyday I would just go to IRISA from INSA and back. There were bars along the main road but again, I dared not go alone. Furthermore, I don’t drink. So coming to town would be something that I could look forward to during the week. I had already come out with a plan on how to make my life passed easier and less miserable. I would give a full detail later on. Now back to my adventure.

So I was back at the bus station and boarded the bus 16. My destination was the other end of the city, Beauguard where the prefecture was. By the way, I was staying at the furthest east of Rennes where the University of Rennes I was situated. In the extreme west was the University of Rennes II, which specialized in arts and social sciences while my place specialized in IT. So it took another 20min before I reached the prefecture which meant to reach one end to the other of the city, it took just 40min by bus; pretty small city. Of course the prefecture was not open on Dimanche. I was there just to recee the area. With nothing much to see, I took the bus 16 back home feeling pretty happy that my missions were accomplished today. I was doing all the things correctly, just like the locals, so I thought.

I had with me now 2 STAR tickets, and was wondering which was the later one. If the conductor were to board the bus, which one do I show? Then I realized I was not so smart after all. There was a small machine at the entrance of the bus which I thought it was like the machine that we had on SBS to insert our farecard. Since I do not have a student farecard, I did not care about that machine. Big mistake! The use of the machine was to actually punch my ticket so that the bus conductor would know what time I boarded. I could not possibly go back and punch it now since my ticket was already half an hour old. I could only pray there were no bus conductor that day. I was very nervous because if the conductor came, I probably could not explain myself.

I had the same apprehension when I board the TGV train on my first day. I was told to buy the ticket from the controller after I board the train. I wasn’t sure whether this was the correct procedure and so did not dare to board the train until the last minute. I was afraid that I might be accused of taking a free ride and thrown into jail! It was possible because again I doubt anyone could understand my explanation. In any case, there were no conductor that day and I made it safely back home.

Time to wash some clothes. I had already found out where the laundry area was yesterday. It was at another resident building “Les Gleran” which was just next to mine (Brehat). But I have to walk right till the end of the corridor which was always dark because no one stays there. At the end of the corridor I had to take a lift down 1 floor, and again walk along a dark corridor. A room labeled “Laveries” would be on my left and Voila, that’s the laundry. At first I did not know how to use the washing machine. It looked like you have to insert some coins to make it work, so to place safe I tried 50 cent euro. It did not work and my coin was gone!!! I decided to take pictures of the instructions and go back to my room to check my dictionary. At last I found out how to use and it would cost me 1 to 3 euros depending on which machine I used. So I went again to try but I do not have exact coins. So I inserted 2 X 2 euros for the 3 euro machine and it worked. But the machine did not return me 1 euro! In the end I spent 4.5 euro just to wash some clothes. That’s 10 Sing dollars! I swear I would not make such mistake again.

Tired and hungry, I looked at the food on my shelf. There were canned food and cup noodles but I wanted to save them for future use. Food was sparse and again I rationed it carefully. You would not be able to buy any cup noodles here because in Europe, MSG is being banned (which I later found out was just a myth). Having eaten a cupcake, I began to think of ways to make life passed easier. I would give a list now.

1. writing journal everyday (which is what I am doing now)
2. draw a monthly calendar on an A4 paper. With each passing day, I would strike it off and put the number of days left in the next box (currently I had 157 days left). When it is time to draw a new one, 1 month would have passed.
3. every Wednesday I would go to the supermart to top up my food
4. every Saturday I would go into town
5. I brought about 30 VCDs here so every Sunday would be movie screening (later I going to watch King Arthur). By the time I finish all of them, I would be back home.
6. I have 6 luxury foods. 2 cup noodles, 2 canned meat, 2 canned tuna for sandwich. So at the end of the month I would eat 1 of them.
7. I had 20 food tickets for lunch which should last me for a month. So whenever I need to buy more, it meant that one month had passed.
8. I am going to put credit in my INSA access card for my dinner. But each meal is very expensive so I am going to eat at the restaurant only on Friday.
9. Every Monday I would check my fantasy premier league team
10. lastly I had a day counted on my MSN nick.

Hopefully, with these 10 methods, the date 30th June would arrive soon.