Getting started in Dijon, France.
Dijon is the capital of Burgundy, a state/province/region in France. Guess what Burgundy is famous for. If you guessed burgundy, you’re right! Now guess what Dijon is famous for. Mustard! So there’s a lot of both here, right? Well, kinda. The French just love their wines in general, burgundy included. But I don’t see too much of a prevalence of mustard here aside from the cafeteria serving Dijon mustard. There is also a mustard shop on one of the corners of the main street in Dijon, nearby the bus stop where we get off from our dorm.
Speaking of bus stops, here’s something else I should probably note here: I don’t live in the same campus where I take classes. I am staying at a dormitory at the University of Burgundy. However, I go to school at the Burgundy School of Business, which is in downtown Dijon. UB (it’s a lot easier to type) is on the outskirts of the city. So what do we have to do? Walk from the dorms to the bus stop half an hour before class, take the bus (they give us bus passes) to downtown, then walk a bit more to the school and arrive right on time. It’s not the most convenient option for us (especially after hearing that Oklahoma State students taking classes at BSB are staying at a hotel right next to our bus stop), but I can’t do much about it aside from go with it.
Our first full day in Dijon involved a scavenger hunt around downtown. We visited places like the aforementioned mustard shop (Maille’s Mustard), a nice-looking chocolate artisan shop, very old churches (one with more than 40 gargoyles on it), and huge plazas (there’s a lot of them here), all while eliciting stares from people on the streets. As if they’ve never seen tourists before. Maybe it’s cause they’re wondering why tourists would want to come to Dijon and not Paris. One person, an older-looking woman, stuck her head between a group of us in a circle looking at a map. Why would someone do that? I have no idea. I was ready to yell at her, “What are you doing?” but before I could, she already walked away. She didn’t even say a single word the entire time. She just poked her head in, looked at what we were looking at, then left. Yep, this is only the beginning.
Luckily for me, I’m only taking one business course and French culture class this month in Dijon. Others aren’t as lucky, having to get up for 8 AM finance class. I have French class at 10:30 AM, so I have more time to get ready for class and get sleep at night. I don’t know if I’ll do much traveling and sightseeing in my down time, especially since I’ve already seen so much during the scavenger hunt alone, but we’ll see. Dijon has its nice areas. I still have to get used to this place, though.
There are some things that I don’t like already, though. Everything here is more expensive in general. Food, clothes, everything. I guess I can attribute this to the stronger Euro and the fact that the minimum wage is higher here than in the USA, so everything is more expensive as a result. Also, wi-fi access here is not very good at all. For the most part, the internet only works on our computers past midnight and doesn’t work when we come back from class in the afternoon. It’s hard to try to arrange calling back home through Gmail or Skype when the internet doesn’t work at all. When it does work, it’s very slow, so all we can do is use the BSB’s internet as much as possible. Either that, or go to Mister Kebap for kebabs and free internet. And finally, warm milk. Or maybe a better term is ‘room-temperature milk.’ They put it on their shelves or in bulk bottle packs. They don’t sell gallons of milk here, or even two liters of milk. The biggest size I’ve seen so far is one liter bottles. I guess I’ll have to deal with that. They do have a very small refrigerated milk section, but according to one of my new friends in the dorm (he’s been studying abroad from England since September), refrigerated milk tastes bad here. It’s hard to get used to it. I probably won’t get used to it, actually. But I have to have my cereal.
Anyway, aside from that, I have my laptop and my Easy Mac, so it feels like home in some ways. Aside from the horrible wi-fi access, warm milk, and expensive prices, it’s not too much unlike Blacksburg or Coral Springs. Except everyone speaks French. I don’t want to get too attached, though. I’m leaving for Munster on June 9th.
