La Societe Generale

Timeframe: Nov 3, 2008

Well, luckily for me the banks seem to open late here and I didn't miss my appointment. I took a nice stroll through town (read 30 minute walk) through small windey streets that had very nice houses on them (see photo).

The people at the bank were very nice. They tried their best to speak English for me (they kept apologizing, but their English was fairly decent). The only thing that bothered me was that they charged me almost 50 euro to change my travellers checks from USD. They also told me that I can't do any bank transfers (i.e. pay my landlord) until the 8th of November and that the funds wouldn't be in my account for a few days. Either way, the landlord said that 'if you can't, you can't'. So hopefully I can get everything set up before he decides to throw me out :)

After the bank, I went and bought a croissant and a can of orange juice from a vendor near the bank. As I hadn't eaten since the snack on the plane the day before it was very tasty. There was a phone shop right next door so I went and got myself el cheapo phone from France Telecom along with a card that has 100/0,55 = 181 minutes on it. But in France, you only pay for outgoing calls, not incoming ones, so hopefully it should be plenty (my co-worker at IRISA thinks I bought way too many minutes for my stay). If you want to waste your money and give me a call in France, send me an email and I'll get you the number.

After I had all my downtown business settled, I went to a local store called Marche+ to buy a few things (namely TOILET PAPER). It's definitely not Smiths (look at the picture above and remember that's considered a main, two way street). Try and thin of one of the drugstores you find around Manhattan, it was very similar to that. Although, one odd thing is that they don't have any bags. Apparently bags are not something French stores are used to giving you. So after stuffing my food into my backpack (luckily I had it) I returned home. So now with some food in house I headed off to my first day at work.