Geography lesson continued

Perhaps some of you were wondering to yourselves exactly how far it is from where I live to the university and where exactly Grenoble is in the grand scheme of things. Maybe you weren't but I know my Dad was, so at least he will be interested.


Grenoble is located in southeastern France and is known as the 'capital of the alps'. There are about 156,000 people who live in the city and about 600,000 people in the greater Grenoble area. As far as I can tell almost everyone seems to ski here. There are also a larger than average amount of people on crutches/with casts. I imagine this is due to all the snow sports people do.

I takes about 3 hours to drive to Marseille (south) and 7 hours to drive to Bordeaux (south-west)

When I stayed in France before I lived just north of Rouen (north) which also takes about 7 hours to get to. In terms of age Wikipidia would have me believe that Grenoble is incredibly old. If you believe what you read on the internet, it seems like a tiny settlement was established in this area in 43 B.C. Then in 286 AD the romans built a strong wall around the town and it has continued to evolve since then. In my previous post I have a picture of what I believe is a remainder of the wall.

This a map of the downtown type area. I have marked the area where I live with the green x, and campus with the green circle type shape. It takes me about 30 minutes to get from where I live to campus, half of which is spent descending the hill and the other half of which is spent taking the tram. The A is in the middle of the downtown area. Now you may be wondering, 'Why is the campus so huge relative to the rest of the city?' It is actually probably larger in area than the entire historic downtown district.


The reason is this. The campus does not hold one university but 6. That alone is pretty surprising, how many towns can say they have 6 universities? The reason for the seemingly high concentration of universities is this, each university is specialized in a certain discipline. So there is a university for the sciences and medicine, one for social sciences, one for arts, one for political science, one for engineering and then one that kinda does a bit of everything. These universities are collectively called Université de Grenoble (the university of Grenoble) but each sub-university (for lack of a better word) has its own name. I attend the social science university which is called Université Pierre Mendès France (Pierre Mendès France was a prominent French politician who was quite active during WWII).

This is close up of campus, the majority of UMPF buildings are in the red circle. I get off the train at the purple x and the climbing wall is in the blue circle.  It takes about 10 minutes to walk from my uni to the climbing wall if I don`t get lost.

I think that putting all the universities in the same place was quite a good idea, however it can get quite confusing if you don`t know where exactly you are going. There is also quite a lot of green space on campus which is nice change to uOttawa which is mainly just buildings and concrete (and thus far more compact). In total there are about 61 000 students who go to all the universities together. I tried to find how many people go to my university but I have come up empty handed.

There you have it, a brief tour of the areas that I frequent on a daily basis.

In terms of what is going on in my life today, not too much. It snowed last night and is still snowing now. Prior to today there has been no snow in the city since my arrival. I'm not sure what kind of approach the city takes to salting the many stairs that I take, but I am somewhat skeptical that they will be in good condition. For a city that calls itself the capital of the Alps they don't seem to get much snow. I might even end up having quite an adventure as I am going to venture out into the snow to buy my groceries for the week.

Ads

Recently I have been struggling with whether or not to put ads on my blog. I was intrigued by the idea of making money for doing something I would be doing anyways. On the other hand it seems particularly callous to capitalize on my family and friends' interest in my life. As I understand it, money from ads on your blog is generated my the number of visitors on your site, how often you write new entries, plus some other things I don't fully understand. If you guys can't have a share of the profits it seems kind of like ripping off your business partner. But on the other hand, why not take advantage of the 'free' money?

Then last night a solution came to me. I have decided to put ads on my blog (which they tell me will be appearing shortly), however if they are too loud or obnoxious I will unsubscribe myself. However, instead of keeping whatever profits these ads may generate I will donate them to a charity. This might end up being nothing more than a grand gesture because I have no idea how profitable ads really are, but this way I will have satisfied my curiosity and everyone will be helping raise money for a charity by visiting my blog. To date I don't really have a particular charity in mind so if anyone has a suggestion let me know.

Les manifestations

So today I am about to embark on the 4 hour long laundry process that involves me running back and forth to the laundry room (6 flight of stairs) to do laundry. I can't start yet though because I'm waiting to get the key which should be arriving any minute now...

As exciting as be doing laundry is, that is not what this post will be about. Last Sunday, while all the shops were closed two friends and I went downtown to explore Grenoble and I ended up taking some pretty interesting photos, some of which actually turned out quite well.

There was also a protest going on, it was probably the most impressive protest I have witnessed to date. Perhaps I am not politically active enough to be in the right circles at home but given the French's reputation for strikes I believe that protesting here occurs on another level. They were protesting the use of nuclear energy which, if I understand correctly is a fairly large industry in France. I have some pictures but they don't really do the protest justice. (Note, if you click on the pictures they will become larger and you can use the arrow keys to scroll through them, then just click the black x in the top right corner to exit)

I am no good at judging how many people are present in a large crowd but I can say with certainty that there were more than 500 people. They were walking around the city in a chain, holding hands chanting anti-nuclear energy chants. This description makes it sounds quite hippie like but it seemed to be full of people from every walk of life. There were many families who had brought their school aged children and even children in strollers were participating. These children were holding the hands of strangers (which I doubt would ever happen at a protest in Victoria) and walking around with the crowd. There were no police that I could see, the protesters did not seem malicious at all and were perfectly content to let us snap their photos. There was actually quite a jovial air to the entire protest, these people were really enjoying their protest on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps this is what the French do when no shops are open?

Place Notre Dame, this is the stop where I get the tram to go to school

Place Notre Dame from another angle

Jardin de ville-Grenoble

The side of the Hotel de Ville (town hall)

Sign on the side of the Hotel de Ville "This day, at 10 o'clock in the morning the municipal body assembled at the city hall with prominent citizens of Grenoble and took the memorable steps to prepare the assembly of Vizille and began the French Revolution"

Gate in the jardins de l'hotel de ville

Jardins de l'hotel de ville

Place Victor Hugo

The protesters

more protesters

protesters...

Protesters gathered in the jardins de l'hotel de ville waiting to walk out on the street.

Remenants of a wall from the Roman Era (I believe, there was no sign saying this)

Art in a tunnel to deter graffiti, the lion and the snake are a fountain at the base of the staircase I take. Next to the fountain is written a French proverb: "La serpen et lo dragon mettront Grenoblo en savon” which means "the snake and the dragon will destroy Grenoble" The serpent symbolizes the Isère river and the Dragon symbolizes the Drac river. On the statue there is a lion's head instead of a dragon (from Wikipedia).

The eggs the go by my window every day. This was also art in the tunnel

Halle st claire, which holds a huge market during the week. Its dead because this photo was taken on a Sunday

A close up of the fountain at the entry to the Halle