Post No.5: 'Bye Bordeaux'

‘Bye Bordeaux’

You know that feeling that you’re never going to get to a certain point in the future and then you’re suddenly there? Welcome to a year abroad. It’s full of that feeling. First there’s the first weekend off from work, then there’s the first time someone comes out to visit you, then there’s the first time you go home and then suddenly there’s, ‘I’d better make the most of walking down this street as it’s the fifth to last time I’m ever going to do it’. Suddenly you find yourself nearing the end of something that seemed as though it would last a great deal longer than it has.

Over the past few days, since coming back to Bordeaux after the Christmas holidays, it has started to dawn on me that I’m not here for very much longer and even the things that I normally don’t enjoy that much – such as the journey home from my Wednesday evening English class which includes a bus, a walk, a tram and then another walk always in the dark and generally in the rain – take on some kind of new significance. A year abroad is full of new starts and thus new endings too. You constantly have to begin and then say godbye to new things whether they be friendships, classes or even just buildings that you particularly like walking past. The upside of this is, of course, that the harder things become easier to bear but the downside is that you may also realize you didn’t appreciate everything enough while you had the chance.

This is what makes the beginning of a year abroad difficult – at a point so seemingly far from the finish line you just don’t think about the fact that both the bad and the good things will come to an end. In my previous blog posts I tried to stress this, not just to other people, but to myself too and yet even I, despite thinking I knew this from having lived away before, have ended up suprising myself with pre-departure nostalgia. That’s not to say that I’m not excited to be moving on to a new country and starting a new placement but the problem with a year divided between two countries is that by the time you really start to build a proper life, it’s time to uproot yourself and move on.

 The most frustrating thing for me has probably been that by Christmas I had managed to build up a good base of private students and a strong group of friends and I had even received offers of free accomodation with families desperate for an English speaker and yet my time in Bordeaux was nearly over. I would advise anyone moving somewhere new to try and get in touch with people who have already lived there. Their help with everything from lodging to socialising will most likely be invaluable. If, on the other hand, you’re the one with help to offer, offer it. Go on Facebook or whatever you use and advertise the family interested in a lodger, the company needing an intern or whatever else you know of. You never know whose day you might be saving.

So why has it taken me so long to get around to this final blog post? It wasn’t Chritmas, assignments or Erasmus deadlines but more that I wasn’t really sure, up until now when the end is suddenly in sight, how to wrap things up. As I said in an earlier post, being in Bordeaux seems normal now and the fact that I no longer view the city or my place within it through the eyes of a tourist stops it from seeming particularly blog-worthy. With just a week and a half left, however, it’s time to start saying goodbye to everyone and – if, like me, you’re that kind of person – to everything as well. I could easily make this post a travel guide to Bordeaux but you have Lonely Planet and the tourist office for that kind of thing. Instead, as this blog is intended for people embarking on a year abroad, I think it’s more useful to look over what I’ve said before now that I’ve had the time to try out my own advice.

In previous posts I’ve talked about a range of issues that come up when you move abroad, from homesickness to culture shock and now, several months later, I think I can quite happily conclude that my ideas, not just about why these things occur but how to deal with them too, made sense. I speculated that boredom, isolation and jugement would be the most important things to avoid and I would say now, having experienced all three, that this is a fair claim to make. Keeping yourself busy and surrounded by people as well as making a conscious effort to be open-minded towards everything that is different honestly will help you to feel at home and to keep that feeling going. I called my very first post ‘Dealing with Settling In’ and the one before this, ‘Sunday Night Blues’ and though both target the feelings you get when you’ve recently arrived in or come back to a foreign country, neither mentions the feelings that you sometimes get in between. Sometimes when you live abroad – and especially if you live on your own – just how alone you are can really hit you. You’re far away from your family, any friends that you’ve had for longer than a couple of months and sometimes also a boyfriend or girlfriend which is particularly tough. It’s important to remember that feelings of loneliness, whether it’s just the occasional pang of jealousy when you see a picture of your friends having fun together at home or something more, are completely legitimate even months after your start date. In fact, you might find that the usual pattern for homesickness doesn’t apply to you and you find the beginning, when everything is new and exciting, the easiest part. Whenever these feelings do kick in, however, it’s important not to take it out on your new environment. Yes, certain things will annoy you because they’re different but is it really that French man’s fault that his laugh is so unbelievably… French? Is it really the fact that ‘the morning commute is neither the time nor the place for laughing with your friends in that incredinbly irritatingly and somehow French way’ that’s getting on your nerves today? Unlikely. Is it more likely that you woke up that morning feeling a little lonely and craving a full English with your family whilst knowing full well that it won’t be possible for quite a while and therefore that somebody daring to be so openly cheerful whilst you are feeling shaky is kind of annoying? Probably.

 Even when your very degree trains you to explore and embrace different ways of life, it can be easy to take out your personal frustration on things simply being different. That said, if you’ve got to the point where things are irritating you for legitimate reasons and you know it’s not just you being judgemental, you’ve probably also got to a point where you’ve found a way to move past it and adpat your way of doing things to theirs. Certain things about working in France will probably always seem silly to me (standing up to kiss every person in a group of people who enter your office on both cheeks even though you don’t know half of them and were in the middle of a phone call for example) and yet I trained myself to expect and accept them and now it comes naturally. In a similar way, I now zone out of conversations and no longer panic when I drift back in that I wasn’t paying attention. My ears expect to be taking in French and my brain has often processed what I heard even though I wasn’t making a deliberate effort to understand. I may not have perfected my grammar or broadened my vocabulary to the level of an entirely fluent speaker but if there’s anything that’s actually rewarding in language learning, it’s this. Furthermore the point of a year abroad is not to make you perfect. It’s to make you comfortable. So, here’s what I’ve learnt overall; sometimes you have to be uncomfortable to get to be comfortable. I accepted a colleague’s last-minute invitation to spend the weekend at her sister’s house out in the vineyards about an hour outside Bordeaux. I hate being a guest and I’m always uncomfortable staying in other people’s homes but I made myself do it and it was over the course of this particular weekend that I learnt my brain was working in French and that I could drift in and out of conversations like the lazy (and potentially rude?!) person that I am in English. So keep trying. Keep saying yes to new opportunities. Keep trying to have a good time because, believe me, that does actually help.

So now I find myself about to say goodbye to the place that I have been working so hard to make my home. After just five months I am leaving everything and everyone that I have worked to get to know. Does this make the process of doing so pointless? Of course not. Even if you never move away again in your life, you will have done it. You will have made an effort to get to know new people and even if you don’t come away with ‘friends for life’ (which you are apprently supposed to be able to do wherever you go according to most year abroad promotional talks/videos/presentations/blogs etc. etc.), you will have put yourself out there. Both in the literal and figurative sense, ‘putting yourself out there’ will teach you things you simply don’t learn at home and whether you come back wishing it had gone faster or slower, you should be proud of yourself.

Thank you for reading this final blog post. Now for the final sweet treats tally: CROISSANTS: 5, CHOCOLATINES: 8, TRESSES: 3, BRIOCHE: still uncountable especially with Epiphany having just passed… what is the unit of measurement for brioche anyway?

Finally, as I have realized I did promise it in my first post, a few little recommendations for where to go in Bordeaux if you only have a day or two:

 If you head over towards the most central quays (getting the tram to Quinconces is your best bet as you’ll also find the tourist office here and you can get yourself a map), you can easily get to several of Bordeaux’s most wonderful sights. Wander down from the tram stop (lines B and C stop at here) towards the river and go towards the right and you’re going in the right direction to see Place de la Bourse and the Miroir d’eau, the Porte Cailhau, the Pont de Pierre and the St Michel Basilica. Alternatively stop at the Pont de Pierre and either cross over or get on line A of the tram which will take you past St Catherine which is great for shopping and on to Hôtel de Ville where you can get off and explore the cathedral, see the Mairie and make your way to the Musée des Beaux Arts which is great for people who prefer small galleries.

 If you want French food, stop at Grand Bar Castan (2 Quai de la Douane) if you’re over by the river or head over to the Place du Parlement which is one road behind Place de la Bourse and has a great little galette restaurant as well as ice cream shops and cocktail bars. If you’ve stopped at Hôtel de Ville, try the café called Petits mots bleus for good sandwiches, quiches and cake (although be aware that everything is limited and if you’re too late, they’ll have sold out) or one of the larger brasseries. From Hôtel de Ville you can get back on the tram (‘direction: Berges de la Garonne/Cité du vin’ and get off at Grand Théâtre) or walk on to Cours de l’Intendance where you will find more eating and shopping options. If you want a souvenir shop – which are surprisingly few in Bordeaux despite the abundance of tourists – Cours de l’Intendance has ‘Bye Bordeaux’ (whose name inspired the title of this post … and thank goodness as what would I have done without the possibility of repeating the alliteration of ‘Bonjour Bordeaux’ and the validation of a separate source condoning the slightly jarring ‘Bye Bordeaux’?!) plus plenty of places where you can get chocolates, macarons, canelés and more. If you prefer, you can carry on past the theatre – which is definitely worth having a look at – and get off at Quinconces where you started off. It’s also worth finding out what’s on there as Place des Quinconces has something different every month from such as funfairs and markets.