Accomodation
This can be pretty tricky and pretty expensive. There are basically three options, to get a room in a student residence, to get an apartment or to live 'chez l'habitant' (digs). Residence: This if you can get it is probably the most simple and straight forward option. It's very difficult to know what criteria are used by CROUS (the student agency) to decide who gets a room and who doesn't, they seem to give preferential treatment to french students. If you are taking this option it's a good idea to get in touch with them at the earliest possible date and to be very persistent. There are somewhere in the region of 8 residence locations, I'll give a brief outline of them as best I can. Most of the residences are on campus, which would make them a 35-40 minute walk from town, it's a 10 minute tram ride but the last tram leaves town about midnight so walking distance tends to be a factor. Of these, Residence OUEST is probably the best, the rooms tend to be around 10m2, the ones in OUEST are nicely kitted out and have bathroom en-suite. Residence BERLIOZ is currently being refurbished so some of the buildings are newly done and others are quite mediocre, the newly refurbished ones have a bathroom and a phone in the room. There are a couple of other on-campus places such as CONDILLAC, which is quite ok. Cooking facilities in these places are reasonable, 1 kitchen per floor and there are about 20-30 rooms on a floor. The kitchens in the refurbished ones are nicer and considerably better equipped. Off campus there is Residence LA TRONCHE, this is nearer town (20 mins walk) and quite near the campus also, the rooms are sizeable and have a sink, it is also very near the best of the student restaurants (CHANTOURNE). VILLAGE OLYMPIQUE is in the South of Grenoble, stay away from the place or buy a gun! (see extra curricular) In town there are a couple of other places MDE (Maison des etudiants) and HOME des etudiants, I don't know much about these but the location is quite good, (10 mins walk from centre of town). I almost forgot RABOT,- up the side of the mountain, great view, fresher air, crappy rooms, restaurant reminiscent of a prison refectory, cheap, very near the centre of town but a few hundred steps to be dealt with. PRICES: For residence come prepared to pay your first months rent plus 1 month of caution (deposit). OUEST and NEW BERLIOZ, about 1400-1500 francs a month. All the others, around the 600f/month mark. Remember you will get half your rent back so the diferrence is not as much as it may seem but you have to be liquid at the beginning because it's highly unlikely that you will see any CAF (Caisse d'association familliale - half the rent) until after christmas. (obtaining CAF or APL as it's sometimes called, will be discussed by someone else on the section on Carte de Sejours etc.) My advice is that if you can afford OUEST or NEW BERLIOZ take them, their worth it, if not, LA TRONCHE is a very reasonable next best. Apartments: This is a more risky venture but can be better than residence. A good place to look for apartments are the local free newspapers '38' and 'Info' they get delivered and you can swipe them out of letter boxes on Tuesdays and, (I think) Thursdays. The ads are encoded into looking- for-apartment-speak and I'm not about to write you a dictionary but get someone to explain it to you. Agencies are good but expensive to join. Initial outlay in getting an appartment is about triple whatever you think it's going to be. You have to pay 2 months deposit + the first months rent so 3*(advertised price). There may also be an agency charge whether you found the place through an agency or not. It's likely that you will then have to get water, electricity, gas and a phone turned on. All of these have large installation costs. An apartment typically could cost 3000F/month for a nice two bedroom place with living room kitchen and bathroom. Initial outlay for such a place could be over 10000F, quite a lot of cash I think you'll agree. Of course if you find an ad looking for someone to share or sublet, it's possible they would have all this done and the outlay would be less. It's probably best to make sure your name goes on the contract so as you can make sure to get CAF. For every bit of rent you pay, get a 'Quittance de Loyer', this is a formalised rent receipt and the CAF office will be wanting them. If you think your going to have mad parties you may have to think again. People in Grenoble for some reason are pretty uptight about noise, the mayor passed a special law a few years ago forbidding noise after 10pm. Your liable to get complaints from the neighbours for anything louder than a boiling kettle. At one stage we were receiving letters from the town hall suggesting, in the way town halls do, that we keep it down. Tips: Get to Grenoble early and start hunting immediatly. Don't listen to people you meet at the start who tell you it's impossible to find a place, it's not. Stay away from southerly parts of Grenoble like Villeneuve - not pleasant. Think of things when your looking like trams, buses and shopping. If you decide to leave your appartment you have to give two months notice. Read the contract carefully for stuff like this that you will need to know. Have the mad parties anyway! That may have sounded a bit like a sharp dose of reality. Trust me, I went easy, I never mentioned rising damp or rats! What it comes down to is, despite the trickiness, it's nice to have your own place and the experience factor is considerable in a 'survive that, survive anything' kind of way. If I was doing it again I'd still get an apartment. Chez l'habitant (Digs): I only know one person who went for the digs option, he gets on well enough with his landlady, he gets access to the kitchen but not all the time. It's not a particularly cheap option, as one might expect. A room would cost somewhere between 1000F and 1500F/month with a one or two month deposit. One reason for going this road might be to live with a family and speak lots of French, unfortunately, from what I hear, it doesn't seem to work out that way. Most of the people offering digs seem to do it every year and be very businesslike about the whole thing, it's not like you sit down to dinner with the family or anything normal like that. Access to stuff in the house is limited and freedom to come and go seems to be slightly curtailed. If you do go for this option then CROUS is the place for you, they have hundreds of people offering digs on file and they're only too happy to let you have their numbers. CROUS is just down the road from Gare Europole, the general consensus on CROUS by the way, is that they're the most useless bunch of salauds you'll ever come across. My attitude to digs in case you haven't guessed by now is - whatever your into! It may seem extremely difficult to get accommodation when you first arrive, mostly your on your own. You will find this with nearly everything during your year away. Once you have the major problem of accomodation sorted things become easier and you can settle into enjoying yourself. Eating : Grenoble offers much more choice when eating out......every type of restaurant is here and good value too...i.e. Pizza Street. But for day-to-day eating,the cheapest supermarkets are Carrefour in Meylan and Grand Place,Mr. Ed,Liddell are both opposite Rallye beside the campus. Station Sandwich in Place Grenette is the cheapest fast-food place in Grenoble-famous for it's "belges' at 10F. University restaurants are very cheap,generally good and filling. A book of 10 tickets can be bought between 11.30am-1.15pm every weekday at any restaurant for 123F.Eating times are 11.30am-1.00pm and 6.30-8.00pm. Chantourne,near the hospital is the best...an average meal would be steak,chips,soup,roll,dessert and coke.The next best restaurant is Barnave beside Berlioz on the campus...the other restaurants generally serve up stuff you wouldn't feed your dog with.
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