Written By: Paul
In our previous Expat Life posts we covered two months at a time, but we’ve decided to switch to a monthly posting schedule as two months at a time is simply too much to pack into one post! So Expat Life 4 will focus on our experiences in May, our fifth month in France.
May was a tale of two stories – we got to enjoy the best of Montpellier while also heading east to explore Bratislava, Slovakia and Vienna, Austria. May also saw us visiting Paris again to take in Roland Garros (one the four tennis grand slams), a bucket list item for both Angela and I. Overall it was a busy, exciting month that kept us on our toes.
The City
The first couple weeks of May were fairly relaxed, and thankfully based in our home city of Montpellier. April had been a big travel month, as our friend Shailla was visiting from Toronto so we hit Nice, Monte Carlo, and Barcelona while she was here. So we were in relaxation mode, kicking back a bit for the first couple of weeks of May, enjoying Montpellier and all it had to offer. The great thing about this city is that there is always something going on. Montpellier is not a massive metropolis by any stretch, but it’s an active, diverse city with a heap going for it.
In the first two weeks of May we enjoyed some of the special events going on around town including a fantastic book and author festival called La Comedie du Livre. The event featured writers from all over France and offered opportunities to meet and talk to authors and check out their latest work. There were hundreds of authors on-site representing all different genres.
We also took advantage of an opportunity to explore the Montpellier Opera during an open house. The opera house, completed in 1888 (after the two previous versions were destroyed by fire), is the work of Joseph-Marie Cassien Bernard, a student of Charles Garnier (who you may know as the architect responsible for the Palais-Garnier in Paris). So the building looks and feels more than a little bit like its more famous cousin in Paris. It’s nice wandering around these old, opulent buildings when you have no agenda other than wandering around old, opulent buildings.
Montpellier really came alive in May. The weather was fantastic – sunny, warm days and perfect nights hit us day, after day, after day. Special events, conventions, and markets caught our attention everywhere we went and the city had a great energy. It was the best month we had experienced in Montpellier, and that’s saying a lot.
Accomplishments
When moving to a new country there are countless administrative tasks to keep on top of and each time you are able to knock one down it seems like a huge win. May was a quiet month on this front – for me, I had just begun a back-and-forth with the CPAM (health) people which will hopefully resolve itself soon. Otherwise, not much to report on the admin front!
Other small wins from May:
- Found a killer restaurant that has the best salad in Montpellier! Good salads are rare here, so this was a big win. Huge props to Bistro Sainte Anne. They also helped us to create a Saturday tradition we call “Salade Samedi”
- Not sure if we mentioned the best burger in Montpellier, which we are happy to award to Le Bistro Koffee and Kitchen in Antigone. We go there every Friday, or as we like to call it “Vendredi – Burger Day!”
Travel
The third week of May gave us an opportunity to return to Paris and take in our first ever Roland Garros (RG from here on in). If you’ve been reading this blog at all you will know we’re tennis freaks, so this shouldn’t come as a shock. I have a goal to visit all four of the tennis grand slam events, so this was a big one for me. We went to the US Open in 2006, so adding RG brings us to the half way point on the tennis bucket list. This Roland Garros also brought us to the end of what we’re calling ““Paul and Angela’s and Occasionally Shailla’s European Clay Court Adventure”, which began in Monte Carlo, continued to Barcelona, and was to finish up here at RG, the big kahuna of all clay court tournaments.
Arriving in Paris after the 3.5 hour train ride from Montpellier, we popped out of the metro station on the Champs-Élysées. We were thrilled to find that they had closed it down to vehicles, and made it a full-on pedestrian walkway for the day. They had also set up a huge movie screen where they were airing classic movies with the Arc de Triomphe as a backdrop.
We grabbed lunch and people-watched, enjoying the atmosphere. After an hour or so we made our way to our hotel – we were on task this trip, it was meant to be all RG all the time!
We’ll have a full post running through the entire RG experience, but here’s a quick re-cap: Day 1, Monday, it rained – a lot. Even so, it couldn’t dampen our spirits. We slowly but happily made our way into the grounds and took in the industiral-style coolness of the Rafa Nadal statue just inside the gates. It helped to set the tone for some of the battles we were about to witness inside.
Inside and ready to rock, we were excited to get our grand slam tennis on. Sadly, the rain played havoc with the schedule all day, and our tickets for the first day were for Court Suzanne Lenglen, one of the show courts sans roof. So we had to wait an hour or so before play was to begin, but when it did we were thrilled to find front row seats for the Bianca Andreescu (a fellow Canadian) match on Court 7. We met a fellow Canadian sitting nearby and enjoyed talking about Canadian things.
Following Bianca’s match we made our way into Court Suzanne Lenglen where we enjoyed watching Naomi Osaka and Amanda Anisimova. We wandered in and out of other matches and enjoyed exploring the grounds, but it was a day really marred by rain. The skies opened up by mid-afternoon and it absolutely poured. As we didn’t have tickets for Court Philippe Chatrier (the one with the roof), we decided to cut our losses and get out of there before we developed webbed feet. Too bad, but still a great day and our Canadian got a win so we couldn’t be too disappointed.
Day two was better – no rain, and we had tickets for Chatrier, so if rain were to show up we would have a roof to keep us dry! Highlights included a great match featuring Madison Keys…
…as well as an emotional encounter between Casper Ruud (who would go on to the RG finals, where he would lose to Rafa) and Jo-Wilifried Tsonga, playing in the final match of his career. The house was packed, and people cheered every time Jo-Willie did even the most trivial things – it was a special atmosphere.
Our two days at Roland Garros made quite an impression, and we will most certainly return. Look for a more in-depth write-up on our RG experience soon. 🙂
We returned to Montpellier after three days in Paris, only to find our neighbourhood in Antigone along the River Lez had been overtaken by the world’s largest action sports festival, known as FISE.
FISE is massive. Like, more than 600,000 heavily tattooed, Red Bull guzzling adrenaline junkies visiting over four days massive.
Events at FISE include BMX freestyle, trotinette freestyle, parkour, breakdance, and many others. It’s a festival that celebrates big speed, big air, and big energy. We took part in all four days – it would’ve been hard not to as we could see (and quite clearly hear) some of the events from our apartment.
FISE was a fantastic, well-managed event that showcased Montpellier well. It’s not always easy having your neighbourhood taken over, and we really didn’t sleep much over the weekend because it was loud, but it was all in good fun.
Fuelled with adrenaline from our FISE weekend, we took off for Bratislava where I was taking part in an intensive weekend of karate training with many of Eastern Europe’s top instructors, as well as Sensei Tetsuji Nakamura, the world chief instructor in my style of goju ryu karate (and my sensei from when I was training in Canada).
Bratislava is not a place that was on our radar when we moved to France, but that’s the beauty of living in Europe – you get opportunities to see things and explore new lands that you wouldn’t have otherwise.
We flew from Montpellier to Amsterdam, followed by Amsterdam to Vienna. Arriving at just after 22:30, we just made the final bus to Bratislava from the Vienna airport. It was an interesting ride – the bus driver blasting music that ranged from German neo-classical speed metal to ABBA, finishing with a Lionel Richie medley as we crossed the border from Austria into Slovakia just after midnight.
The hotel was an older property on the outskirts of town, chosen by event organizers for its proximity to the training venues we would be using. It wasn’t a great hotel – it was more akin to an old school dorm than it was a hotel, and the doors had the weird feature of opening out into the hallway, a first for both of us. Heaven help the poor bastard running down the hallway to catch his bus only to have someone throw a door open, ready to take on the day with vim and vigour. The hotel did provide one big benefit, however – showers that had enough water pressure to knock an elephant off its feet, something that was both cleansing and entertaining all at once.
On day one we enjoyed exploring the city, taking in Bratislava’s old town and getting to know some of the local restaurants and shops. It was tricky not being able to speak the language – at all – and we felt a bit out of our element culturally. Both Angela and I are pretty seasoned travelers, so it was an unusual feeling not being able to connect with the locals, but it wouldn’t last long.
At the end of our first day, karate training began and everyone in the karate community could not have been more helpful or hospitable. For three days I sweated in hot gymnasiums, training with dedicated karateka who were keen to learn. In the evenings Angela and I enjoyed exploring Bratislava while I tried to soothe aching muscles and bruises.
Bratislava’s historic city centre is where this place shines – heaps of gorgeous old buildings, restaurants serving traditional Slovakian fare, and a more upbeat energy than we experienced elsewhere in the city. Sitting on the shores of the mighty Danube, this is a city with a long history and plenty of sights worth checking out. You can cover the highlights in a day or so, but if you find yourself in the area it’s worth a short visit.
The training wrapped up, we said our goodbyes and jumped on the bus for the second half of our adventure. Vienna is a city we had both always wanted to visit, so we were excited to spend a few days in this Austrian city of opulence and schnitzel.
We were staying in a perfect location, the Hotel Mercure Wien Zentrum. It’s a very nice hotel in the city centre, a short walk from Stephansplatz and all the museums and touristy things that Vienna tends to boast about. The staff were incredibly friendly and could not have made us feel more at home. We arrived mid-afternoon and found ourselves itching to tackle the city, so we walked over to the centre of the tourist universe in Vienna, St. Stephan’s Cathedral. From the outside the cathedral is impressive, but inside is the place to be. Whether you’re religious or not, this is a pretty impressive building.
We went for a wander and marvelled at just how ornate and aesthetically pleasing this city is. Much like Paris, no matter where you look there’s something pretty to look at. Make no mistake – it’s incredibly touristy, but touristy isn’t always bad, and hanging out in the city centre of Vienna is like living in a big, palatial fantasyland.
We enjoyed Vienna, and tried to maximize our time there. We spent a nice morning at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where we filled our fine art boots with viewings of works by Rubens, Van Dyck, Canaletto, and murals in the grand staircase by Vienna crowd-favourite Klimt. We ate schnitzel, sausages, and tried on Birkenstocks. We walked miles each day and really had a good time taking in all that Vienna had to offer. My high school German was awful, but certainly better than my non-existent Slovak from our time in Bratislava. Everyone speaks English anyway, so communicating was much easier in Austria than it was in Slovakia.
After three days we were back on the plane, flying from Vienna to Paris, then Paris to Montpellier. It felt good to be home, but we would only have a short break before turning around and heading back to Paris for most of June, but that’s a story for next month’s Expat Life post. Until then… à bientôt!