Arriving ...
Yesterday morning I finally arrived at INRIA. Before that I managed to find the place where I will stay, "Residence Oxford", and managed to communicate with the caretaker who was a bit unwilling, so early in the morning, but very able to speak English ;-).
By the way most things have really funny names around here. My dormitory is located in "Rue Henry Pointcare", the one that leads here is called "Rue Albert Einstein", ... :P.
The dormitory is a brand new building (like most around here) and my room has a small bath room with a huge mirror (around the corner so it is not visible on the picture).
The main living area with a desk and a couch. It also functions as a rather small bed (80x190), but has a second mattress with movable feet underneath so I could increase the bed size to 160x190 if I would not be too lazy to do that every evening... And there is a small balcony with nice view on the parking spaces and some dirt hills. I assume there is another dormitory planned.
Around the corner (picture tanken from the desk) is the small kitchen area.
The view outside the other side of the building (i.e. not my window) is really impressiveand you can see the mountains and the golf course next door. On the other side I can see a colourful sunrise every morning :D.
Everything is very calm and quiet and the only person I could see or hear was the gardener of the golf course on his huge mower.
Then I went to the lab where I met my first co-workers: Emmanuel, Nicolas and Nicolas. Most of the other people were on vacation, as there was some deadline the week earlier and a holiday in this week. Later I met Aicha which takes care of most of the paperwork necessary for my stay and have me my INRIA badge :D.
I spend the rest of the day to get used to the computer environment (everything is in French!) and eat a very good lunch (which took more than one hour) in the really nice cafeteria, right next door to the lab.
The food is terrific (really no comparison to the stuff they call food in the mensa back home), has an affordable price (compared the restaurants in NIce) and as I am a student and by definition poor, I get a huge discount on top of that :D.
Today I met the lab head, a quite interesting person, and got a French bank account, to get a R.I.B. (some paper with all the account numbers, confirming that I have a bank account) which is needed by the landlord of the dormitory.
According to the lady in the bank (who spoke incredible good English) I absolutely need a French VISA-card for that account. Not only for paying but also to withdraw money from ATMs and learn my account balance... As the bank has some agreement with the lab so there won't be fees (unless I withdraw more money than I own of course) so it should be ok to get...
By the way most things have really funny names around here. My dormitory is located in "Rue Henry Pointcare", the one that leads here is called "Rue Albert Einstein", ... :P.
The dormitory is a brand new building (like most around here) and my room has a small bath room with a huge mirror (around the corner so it is not visible on the picture).
The main living area with a desk and a couch. It also functions as a rather small bed (80x190), but has a second mattress with movable feet underneath so I could increase the bed size to 160x190 if I would not be too lazy to do that every evening... And there is a small balcony with nice view on the parking spaces and some dirt hills. I assume there is another dormitory planned.
Around the corner (picture tanken from the desk) is the small kitchen area.
The view outside the other side of the building (i.e. not my window) is really impressiveand you can see the mountains and the golf course next door. On the other side I can see a colourful sunrise every morning :D.
Everything is very calm and quiet and the only person I could see or hear was the gardener of the golf course on his huge mower.
Then I went to the lab where I met my first co-workers: Emmanuel, Nicolas and Nicolas. Most of the other people were on vacation, as there was some deadline the week earlier and a holiday in this week. Later I met Aicha which takes care of most of the paperwork necessary for my stay and have me my INRIA badge :D.
I spend the rest of the day to get used to the computer environment (everything is in French!) and eat a very good lunch (which took more than one hour) in the really nice cafeteria, right next door to the lab.
The food is terrific (really no comparison to the stuff they call food in the mensa back home), has an affordable price (compared the restaurants in NIce) and as I am a student and by definition poor, I get a huge discount on top of that :D.
Today I met the lab head, a quite interesting person, and got a French bank account, to get a R.I.B. (some paper with all the account numbers, confirming that I have a bank account) which is needed by the landlord of the dormitory.
According to the lady in the bank (who spoke incredible good English) I absolutely need a French VISA-card for that account. Not only for paying but also to withdraw money from ATMs and learn my account balance... As the bank has some agreement with the lab so there won't be fees (unless I withdraw more money than I own of course) so it should be ok to get...
posted by IC at
12:26 PM
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