Leaving a once foreign city calling it home

A year has come and gone in the South of France and now I find myself back in Dublin, a little disorientated and little empty; missing someplace I’m not. I finished college in April and decided to stay working in Nice for the summer.

Finding accommodation at the height of the tourist season in Nice was not an easy task. After countless trips to real estate agents (we were always laughed at when we divulged our meagre budget), an unfortunate sleepover with bedbugs and brief homelessness, my Irish roommate Phoebe and I found ourselves an apartment in the heart of the Old Town.

Those precious summer months were the reward for a somewhat bewildering academic year. Sophia Antipolis, my university in Nice, was different from home in so many ways that I stopped comparing the two after a few months. The academic administration was painfully slow at times and due to the lack of societies in universities in France, it was hard to feel any distinct ‘college atmosphere’. Students generally went straight home after lectures and the library was closed by 7pm.

However, I don’t regret going to college in France for a second; my French improved dramatically and I become even more academically independent, not to mention that without Sophia Antipolis I never would have come to Nice.

Working in Nice

Working on your Erasmus is great for countless reasons: it gives you something to do which is crucial on arrival, it makes your new city feel like home a lot faster and it obviously gives you extra money.

You meet locals when you work and for all the fun that other Erasmus students are, they won’t help you discover your new city’s quirks and hidden gems like a resident will. I found a job on my second day arriving in France last September and worked the entire year.

Nice brought me a series of random and wonderful employment opportunities; I worked as a dog walker, an art supplies sales assistant (imagine the painstaking French vocabulary I had to learn), a barista in a French café, a journalist for an arts and lifestyle magazine, a proof-reader and a waitress in the busiest tourist bar in Nice, Wayne’s Bar.

Working on Erasmus gives you a sense of community that only a job can give. Walking the streets and recognising clients and colleagues is comforting. It’s also a great way to improve your language skills – if you can work in your new language then you know your level is adequate. All of my closest friends I met through various jobs and they’re the friends I stayed over the summer with, long after the other Erasmus students went home.

Life post-Erasmus

Leaving Nice was harder than when I first left Dublin back in September 2016. I cried on the flight back to Ireland. The friendships I made and all the good memories I had resulted in a very difficult parting. Suddenly the dream ended and I was sitting in my childhood bedroom, wondering if I had imagined the past year.

Re-adjusting to life in Dublin isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. It’s been a week since I walked the streets of Nice or went for Nutella ice-cream with my Hungarian friend (a once daily tradition), and I’m scared that I’m slipping back to the rhythm of Dublin far too quickly. To anyone who is finding it hard to re-adjust after their Erasmus: it’s ok.

Little by little, day by day, you adjust. Just as I adjusted to France when I first moved, I’m adjusting to Ireland again.

‘Home’ is an unconsciously revealing word. Before going on my Erasmus ‘home’ always meant Ireland. But now it means both Ireland and France. I met people on my Erasmus who made Nice home to me.

No doubt I will always miss Nice whilst in Dublin, just as a part of me missed Dublin while living in Nice. I think that’s all anyone can hope from their Erasmus though; to leave a once foreign city calling it home.