Paris la belle

Paris is not a city for students. You will not walk around and feel as if someone cares that your budget doesn't correspond to the prices of the cafés around the corner of your university. You will feel a little lost after a student night out at the pub standing in front of the metro station at 1:00 a.m., because the stations are closed by now and the quantity of night bus lines is more suited to a dozy medium-size town than to a city that hosts thousands of nocturnal students.

And to be honest, when you look around you, you don't have the impression that the students' presence in the city adds any variety to the way Paris moves or thinks or dresses. Paris is more coercive, it forces you to adapt to the busy lifestyle of a Parisian who prefers to grab a baguette on the way home before hustling to the next metro station because there isn't anything more precious than the two minutes you can save by taking this metro and not the next one.

You might be curious and excited about getting to discover the city when you arrive in September. You quickly get the most important sights done: Eiffel Tower, Montmartre and the Centre Pompidou, and then you even try to discover votre Paris à vous, your arrondissement, your favourite spots etc. But as soon as the first dissertations à la française are kicking in, once your weekends are getting packed with meeting friends, or a workload that chains you to your desk, or whenever the Parisian weather shows you its nasty side, you quickly realise that you have turned into someone very similar to a Parisian: sightseeing is over and in fact your goal becomes to be exactly as busy and as grouchy as all the Parisians around you, rushing home from the metro home and throwing a snooty look at everything that moves slowly in the city centre and looks like a tourist.

It's a pity, but you seem to have lost your sense of the beauty and the uniqueness of the city while fretting about your exams that are coming up. How to remedy this? How to keep up the excitement that this city deserves to be approached with? To put it simply: if you are really doing a study programme that keeps you busy, you have to find ways to you live up to the challenge of your tough studies but still continue to benefit from one of the most exciting places on the planet. Here are a couple of recommendations for how to enjoy the city to the full without much money and without much time, challenging - believe me - but doable:

Photo: Lisa Schmidt, www.youthphotos.eu

Where would you go?

1. Go by bike

Have you ever wondered how Paris really looks between Châtelet and St. Michel or Odéon and St. Germain des Près because you travel by metro and therefore you only know the labyrinth of couloirs underneath the streets but not outdoors? Take one of the 60,000 bikes that are stationed at every corner and that you can ride around town for free before depositing it at another point. With Vélib' you get that extra Paris feeling while cycling up Montmartre's steep alleys or trying to cross the Concorde square with 12 lanes of cars around you.

2. Study at the right places

The libraries of the universities are often crowded and do not offer the comfort you might want in order to literally bury your face between the pages. But there are great spots to study such as the library close to the lab near the Panthéon or the very inspiring Bibliothèque Nationale de France where the grandeur de la France materializes in the colossal architecture. Or meet at one of those bars or cafés to talk things through with your classmates so that investing too many euros for too little coffee is compensated by the fact that you are actually being productive.

3. Move to the Cité Universitaire

I am taking a very Parisian point of view now: I bet that there is no place like the Cité Universitaire in the world. It's a residential campus for international students with all that you can dream of: a huge, marvellously maintained park for relaxation and sports activities, cultural facilities, a cosy library, an affordable university restaurant and best of all, of course, thousands of students from all over the world who are mixed in one of the 40 houses and who share their food, their cultural quirks and their love of partying.

4. Leave Paris once and a while

This city can be pretty depressing so leaving the crowded streets with busy people who spend money that you don't have can be very helpful. One great spot is the Parc des Sceaux just outside the city's boundaries and reachable by the suburban train. A tiny castle surrounded by never ending water basins and lawns where people play sport, chill with their families or walk hand in hand. It's a pleasant afternoon out and the best thing about it is that you know that you will soon be back in town.

Paris is not a city that is shaped by its students. Yet it is thrilling to live up to the challenges that are caused by the rapidity and the stress of this metropolis and the pressure your studies put on you. You will love it and in the end you will be surprised by how much Paris has shaped you.

Cover photo: Moira Marcinkiewicz, www.youthphotos.eu