This was something I was very concerned about for a long time, not least because my very organised housemate had successfully gotten hold of a houseshare/flatshare with some coursemates for his year abroad. Meanwhile I had heard precisely nothing. As a precaution, I joined the student university group for Aix-Marseille where people were advertising flats and looking for colocataires. However, I was hoping to apply for university accommodation with CROUS (the international student accommodation company), as the paperwork vis-à-vis having a French guarantor would be less complicated.
Application process
In May, when I filled out the online Erasmus application on the link which AMU sent me, there was a little box available to tick. Are you wanting to apply for university accommodation? Tick for yes. Two months later I still had heard nothing from the university – this was when the alarming email arrived in my inbox telling me they hadn’t received my application on time and thus Erasmus year is cancelled. I tactfully opened it five minutes before a job interview, and spent the whole of that interview and the two hour commute back from the office worrying about it, only to find a second one apologising for their error when I arrived home later that morning. Three hours later the Erasmus office sent me a link to the application for a room in a Cite Universitaire. Applications were open for two months (until 24th August), and once you were offered a room you had 10 days to accept it and pay the deposit, or they would reject your request and not offer another. As I was due to go on holiday the next day, I made my selection extremely quickly.
All the CROUS accommodation sounded very similar: a small room with a bed, desk, ensuite bathroom, a shared kitchen with your corridor. They have exceptionally cheap prices: 255.50 euros a month. The Cite Universitaire I selected (Cuques) looked like the newest one on the CROUS website, and thus would be less dingy and in a good state of cleanliness. It is a short fifteen minute walk from the university campus. So within one day I went from knowing nothing about my year abroad (except the name of the university) to having my place confirmed, accommodation reserved, and a date from which I could move in.
Paperwork
Almost two months later, I heard no further communication. Until the paperwork email came through. The French have a particular way of writing their bureaucratic emails. It goes something along these lines: ‘we want THESE documents and we will need them IMMEDIATELY’. This tone is designed to panic you into being as organised as possible, to ensure their paperwork system runs without tears and arguments. My email was less brusque than this and kindly also asked for payment for the full semester of rent as soon as I arrived. They wanted
- a bank card
- insurance for responsabilité civile
- insurance for my CROUS room
- two identity photos
- a copy of my passport
when I arrived, or within 48hrs of doing so.
Moving in
When this email arrived, I was already in France with my family and a car boot filled with vacuum-packed bed linen and jumpers, an assortment of pots and pans, and enough spices to make the strongest person sneeze if they got a whiff. Driving from village to village as a holiday and trying to work out when in the next week I’d be able to move all the baggage into my accommodation. The original email said the CU would be open from the 24th, but the website said that it was shut on weekends. I knew that there were five different CU Cuques buildings, yet hadn’t any idea which one my (unknown room number) was in, nor which one of them had the welcome desk. This consequently provoked some small amount of anxiety, consoled by the fact that people successfully navigate their year abroad each year, and who am I to let a little thing like a missing address get in my way?
In the end, it was actually quite easy. We turned up in the car on the Rue de Cuques, spotted a small building with a sign over it that said ‘ACCUEIL’ and queued for ten minutes. Their photocopier gracefully accepted my passport, while a stapler mauled my identity photos leftover from renewing said passport earlier this year. Of course, we couldn’t pay in that little building, we had to walk to another CU to the caisse desk and pay there. However, that went both without incident (thanks to Nationwide’s lack of overseas fees) and with a long queue. Happily, we were able to skip the queue when returning to the original welcome desk with papers signed saying we’d paid. There was a form to fill out of the usual: passport number, home address, duration of stay in France, emergency contact numbers, and then the much-coveted keys! A lovely official Cuques Frenchwoman came up to my room with me to go through the inventory extremely thoroughly. We checked the toilet and shower were working, small stains, the minor break in one fridge shelf, and the wood scuffing on the doors – all was minutely inspected, noted down, and signed off. Woe betide anyone who dare decrease the quality of this room while they live here.
In one fell swoop, the other two overheated family members were called into action. All vacuum bags and kitchen utensils were moved from the car into my room, before promptly being abandoned for lunch. We sorted out insurance from a website called assurance-etudiants later on in the day.
But do I like my room?
Given that I have to live here for the rest of the year, it is an important question. Yes. In spite of all fears about the quality of CROUS accommodation, I can firmly say I like my room. It reminds me of my room in first year, being about the same size (a little smaller), yet with excellent storage spaces. The window lets in a good amount of light while having a decent enough view. I’m looking forward to not waiting for forty minutes to use the bathroom to brush my teeth before bed, a luxury I have gone without over the last two years. There is a fridge (none in the kitchen), a bed light, and a desk light. Although the kitchen does worry me (four hob points and no oven for a corridor of thirty people), I am safe in the knowledge that I can bulk cook, and my rice cooker will certainly help me this year.
As I continue the remainder of our family holiday, I actually have positive feelings about returning to this little room and making it my home for the next year.
A plus,
Zoe x
An Aixpat-en-Provence 