Last Quango in Paris

Today Minda and I were guests of the French government agency called l'Agence Europe Éducation Formation France, the body tasked with executing the EU's Lifelong Learning Programme within France. This includes sending and receiving Comenius assistants - of which we are two - and today was their official welcome meeting for us in Paris. Where else?

In order to get there in time for the 10am start, we had to take the train from Montluçon last night. We expected to get into Paris for about ten, but we arrived ninety minutes late because of three attempted suicides, two on the mainline and one on the métro at Bastille. Eventually we reached our home for the night (Minda's boyfriend's flat, in the nineteenth) and bedded down - Minda with her man and me all alone on a cold sofa. City of love, my arse!

We woke early and took the métro to Sèvres, the suburb where the agency's headquarters are located. After a brief cluster of modernist eyesores around the métro station, Sèvres quickly became idyllic once more. It's clearly an affluent area, consisting of stately villas perched on a forested hill just south of the Bois du Boulogne. Different streets are reached via a network of little steps and passageways, all covered by ivy-laden pergolas. In the central valley lies a substantial 18th century château which in other countries would pass for a palace, but in France is home to the minor government bureau which had invited us north for the day.

The event itself was a fairly tedious series of seminars which would have been useful two months ago, although we had the opportunity to meet all the other assistants for the first time. They come from as far as Iceland and Turkey, and there were a fair few Brits as well. More importantly, all were young Europeans with far more in common than not; everyone seemed to be aware that, just twenty years ago, a Briton and a Romanian and an East German and a Czech would not have been able to gather in Paris with such ease - let alone call eachother colleagues. Truly, we are "the Erasmus generation." It makes me bitterly angry that denying future British youth this opportunity in the name of populist nationalism is currently the political hobby-horse de rigueur in the UK. In leaving the EU, we would not just be leaving an economic bloc.

Anyway, I digress. Lunch at these events is always hit-and-miss, but it was the highlight of this particular occasion, as shown above. Three courses freshly cooked in the on-site kitchens(!?) along with wine and cheese. What's more, it was better than free - I was paid 200 euros to attend this event!

After an absurdly detailed presentation about culture shock and its symptoms, Minda and I decided to slip out along with a new-found friend - Claire, an assistant working in Normandy - to people-watch in Le Marais for a few hours. We chatted over cocktails exchanged numbers, then headed off for our respective trains. As luck would have it, ours was the last train to leave Paris for the night before a 48-hour strike. And there weren't even any suicides this time. Vive la France!