Montpellier

Where to start ... probably because they were all founded hundreds if not thousands of years ago, French cities have more organic layouts. Rather than the wide boulevards and square blocks of an American city, French streets are narrow, twisting, and worst of all, the buildings all have somewhat uniform architecture, so it's difficult to remember where you've been. And even the remarkable buildings are easily hidden. For example, we came across a mamooth cathedral yesterday and didn't realize it was there until we were staring at the two giant support pillars out front.

One thing that helps find your way, though, is the fantastic graffiti. Tags, burners, and paid murals on storefronts are everywhere. Yesterday some friends (also from the U of M program ... they're the only other students I've met so far) and I went on a graffiti tour to both learn the city a little more, and get lost in tiny alleys with graffitied walls.

The heart of the city is la Place de la Comédie, named for l'Opéra de la Comédie, a big opera house which is still decked out in sparkly holiday lights complete with a big "Joyeux Fêtes" across the top. On the other side of la Place from l'Opéra is the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle, a tree-lined promenade with fountains on each end. At the opposite end of the Esplanade is the Corum (latin: heart), a great big complex for cultural events, though I'm not exactly sure what.

Though la Place de la Comédie, l'Esplanade, and le Corum are the cultural center of the city, they're geographically located on the Eastern border of the city center. To the west of la Place is where the twisting streets of Montpellier's downtown commercial area are located. On the Western edge of the shield-shaped city center is Montpellier's Arc de Triomphe complete with its own Place Royale, a small park with a statue of some guy nobody knows on a horse in the middle.

That's the Medieval part of the city.

L'Université de Montpellier III (there's also Montpellier I for and Montpellier II for Medicine, Law, Polytechnical stuff, but Paul Valéry is Montepellier's College of Liberal Arts of sorts) is further out. At an American university we tell people that they don't belong there through awkward glances and avoidance. At a French university, the same effect is accomplished through tall fences, gates, and barbed-wire coils. Unfortunately, that means that I can't really describe the campus until classes start (i.e. tomorrow).

My host family lives in a nice neighborhood at the end of busline 11 on the edge of the city limits. Their house is small compared its American counterparts, but it's cozy. Colette, my host mother, told me that the top floor is for young people, the bottom floor is for old people. That means that I have the whole top floor to myself (not that I can't use the living room, kitchen and dining room downstairs ... like in any home, those are the common spaces). I haven't had much of an opportunity to explore the neighborhood, but we're almost right on top of a busstop, so it's easy to get in and out of the city while the buses are running when my host family isn't around to give me a ride.

Christian, my host father who works downtown for the French equivalent of the FDA, and Colette who is the director of an elementary school are very accomodating. I told them I liked to go out at night and that I liked music and they went out of their way to find me music venues and concerts and told me about a bus that runs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights and stops only at discothéques. I told them that I was interested in radio, and they found me a list of every radio station in Montpellier. I told them I was thinking about taking Arabic, and they turned on Al Jazeera.

Montpellier is famous for its nightlife. It has one of the largest student populations per capita in France, if not in Europe entirely, and where there are students in Europe, there are discothéques. The only one we've been to so far, though, is the Rockstore, more of a nightclub, actually, with the back half of a finned, 1950s American car sticking out of the façade. They played the typical Euro-dance type music with a live DJ, but on the sixteenth there'll be an 80s night at the Rockstore which I'm already excited about going to.

One final thing before I finish what was supposed to be a brief sketch of Montpellier (it's a packed city and its been a packed couple of days). In the baggage claim area at the airport, we were greeted by Montpellier's three soldiers, two of them carrying assault rifles and all three wearing camoflagued fatigues and big, floppy, black berets. I've seen them a couple times around the city since then. It's always the same three, though: two square-jawed young men and one short woman, smoking cigarettes and looking either stern or bored. No white flags, though, so I guess that's just a stereotype.