This was my assigned "room" at 68 rue du Château d'Eau. I could be in this room until 10pm, at which time I had to go downstairs to sleep in Madame Ducruc's salon. Notice the obligatory impressionist artwork on the wall. I still have that Larousse Dictionary. The storage for clothes was a single armoire barely seen in the left of the photo. There is a sink to the right. My journals state that Gayle and Ginger would come up to brush their teeth, since the only other place to do that downstairs on their floor was a sink in Madame's tiny kitchen. I had a hot plate, too! On the right side of the room there are some big windows that I could reach to open. In the winter, I could buy yogurt and set it outside to keep cold.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Robin's "Attic" Bedroom
This was my assigned "room" at 68 rue du Château d'Eau. I could be in this room until 10pm, at which time I had to go downstairs to sleep in Madame Ducruc's salon. Notice the obligatory impressionist artwork on the wall. I still have that Larousse Dictionary. The storage for clothes was a single armoire barely seen in the left of the photo. There is a sink to the right. My journals state that Gayle and Ginger would come up to brush their teeth, since the only other place to do that downstairs on their floor was a sink in Madame's tiny kitchen. I had a hot plate, too! On the right side of the room there are some big windows that I could reach to open. In the winter, I could buy yogurt and set it outside to keep cold.
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Why couldn't you sleep here?
ReplyDeleteThere was a married couple, the Brancas, who lived in the rooms next to mine. Madame explained that Mr. Branca had had a nervous breakdown and needed complete quiet at night. They thought a student might be moving about the room at night and creating noise that would disturb their sleep. Remember how THIN the walls are. I could always hear their TV and hear them arguing. Or perhaps they were also trying to shield me from certain nocturnal happenings that could well disturb MY sleep. There were, however, perks to coming downstairs to Madame's salon. She would often insert this contraption made of wood and a lightbulb under the covers to warm the sheets for me. Or, I might find a little apple pastry!
ReplyDeleteI lived in the dorms, and I love hearing about the living situations in town.
ReplyDeleteAfter about a month in the dorms, I felt they were a bit too much like those back home so asked Mr. Garcia if he could find me something in town (I hadn't been adventurous enough to "dive right in" to French living when we had to give our choice the year before). Sonya was moving out of her room, so I took her place. Mme. Ladevesa was a bit of a "pill" at times, but I did get a taste of la France profonde. I had the bedroom and the Ladevesas slept on a "hide-a-bed" in the salon-salle à manger. They also rented out another room under the roof (with an outside access through the little courtyard) to Samir, a dental student from Lebanon. It seemed everything about living with the Ladavesas was a bit... difficult. In the end, I'm glad I opted for a room in town, but during the year, it wasn't always easy. I envied Candi's freedom of movement (to say nothing of unlimited access to hot water! though the showers in the dorms were creepy) and from a landlady's prying eyes and judgmental comments and body language.
ReplyDeleteCreepy dorm showers? How so? That I don't recall. I kept some supplies in Helene Neu's room so I could shower occasionally at the dorm. Madame Ducruc limited us to 1 shower per week and charged 2 francs. To actually take a shower, we had to ask madame to light "le gaz". Then we had to remove all of the crap from the shower which was in her kitchen. There were racks of wet laundry, cleaning tools, and the dog's food and water dishes. My little room, however, was equipped with the most pitiful bidet I've ever seen. It was a flimsy tin pan that perched precariously on a set of wobbly legs.
ReplyDeleteSince the dorms were co-ed during the day and there were no locks on the "sanitaires" and only plastic curtains, if I remember right, on the shower stalls (some of which had peep holes cut in them!), I never wanted to shower there. (Correct me if I'm wrong, those of you who lived in the dorms.) I, too, only got one shower a week at the Ladevesa's, but she didn't make me pay. I learned to wash my hair with cold water, and developed coping strategies -hair down during the first half of the week and up in a braided chignon the second half. One does survive, n'est-ce pas!
ReplyDeleteI don't remember the dorm showers being creepy. They were just ordinary dorm showers. Evelyn, who lived in town in a room that only had cold running water, would come and visit me so she could take a hot shower and wash her hair. Hey! Remember how we walked 12 miles in the snow to school everyday?
ReplyDeleteI must have had a scare right at the beginning of the year and the memory stuck. I'm so glad that I was wrong. I never did hear my dorm friends complain.
ReplyDeleteRobin, Ginger here. I think there was one more issue about why Mme Ducruc didn't want you upstairs all the time. I think that she was renting the rooms illegally. Since it was part of the école maternelle, there were regulations about what she could do with her housing. It wouldn't be good to upset the neighbors.
ReplyDeleteI started out in the dorm as well, but found the cleaning lady a bit intrusive. She kept leaving my windows open when I wanted them shut, to keep out the bugs. When I left her a note asking her to leave them shut, she flipped out on me.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile my friends in town seemed to be having a much better time so I wound up moving into town as well, sharing the top floor of a three-story building with Mary Lou Wills and Rena Feigenbaum. The elderly couple who owned the house lived downstairs. There were four rooms up there - one apparently was kept for the use of their daughter when she was around. We each had a toilet, sink and bidet, as I recall, but there was only one bathtub on the floor. For some reason, Mary Lou and Rena's rooms came with bathtub privileges and mine didn't. I took baths anyway, and Mary Lou or Rena would always say that it was them. But somehow the old folks seemed to know. They would confront me every now and then, saying triumphantly "vous avez pris un bain!" And I would deny it. I don't remember much about how those conversations concluded, but somehow I kept taking baths despite their disapproval. After the academic year ended I stayed on in Bordeaux for the summer, but had to find different lodging, again at the top floor of someone's house. It was not nearly as nice, but I did have full use of a rather sketchy shower.