My first days in Angers

Yesterday around 5PM we arrived in Angers. We drove all the way to Angers in my little car, which did an amazing job (worth to mention because of trust issues). It was a long drive of 10 hours, but definitely not boring. Driving into France and seeing the landscape change gives an amazing feeling.

But before going to France, preparation had to be done. Even though I thought I was prepared perfectly, some food to eat when arriving at campus wouldn’t be an unnecessary luxury. Same for toilet paper, believe me you will need it after driving 10 long hours. For the rest of the stuff that I brought, I bought two big IKEA bags to use as my ‘suitcases’. They are very big and everything fitted perfectly. From clothing to bedding and from pans to shampoo, it was all in the IKEA bags.

Fanny, a student from ESA helped me with signing some papers at campus. After doing that, I got my keys and could start unpacking and decorating my room. Decorating the room was needed, because when I entered the first time it looked like a small prison room. But after decorating and moving some furniture, it started to look more like a room I could spent the next 10 weeks in. The campus that I live at now is called Pavot Couffon. It is a big campus with 3 buildings. Every building has three floors and every floor has rooms on both sides for the students. In the middle of the hallway you can find the kitchen and the bathrooms. This is totally different than the campus in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands you share an apartment or even a house with a few more people. When this is what you expect, sharing a small kitchen, two toilets and two showers with 20 other people is a little disappointing. But no hard feelings, this is what I have chosen for when applying for the campus where I’m at now. The other campus named Bourgonnier is more expensive but offers your own bathroom and shorter walking distance to school. But the room you have when staying at Bourgonnier is very small.

Something else you have to be aware of when coming to Angers is that you can only ask for the Wi-Fi on working days. It might sound a little overweening, but believe me my fellow 21e century students, Wi-Fi is pretty handy to have the first days. Luckily my friends from home gave me a Disney puzzle, because I might get bored.

From what I can tell till now, Angers is a very beautiful city. It’s very old and really has its charms. The first morning I went for a run and started to discover the neighbourhood. The campus is very close to the Maine, a river that gives a beautiful view over the city when standing on the bridge that crosses it. We also went to the city centre of Angers, a large square with different types of restaurants. Angers has many streets with a lot of shops which can also be found in the Netherlands (e.g. Zara, H&M, Mango) and many other shops.

I hope the first days are more clear now and many more stories will follow the coming weeks. Thanks for reading and till next post!

Photo gallery