Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Living in a Small Town Instead of Poitiers

Many of the people who work at our plant live 45-60 minutes away in the nearest larger city of Poitiers.  While I can understand the appeal, I am NOT a commuter because, well, I have been a night owl all my life (I apparently slept until 9 easily as a baby) and I like my sleep.

People who do it claim you'd commute to Poitiers frequently anyway, which is likely true depending on your life style; however, I like to shop once a week for the full week and that's it.  Since the French don't really go out in the evening and most things are closed in the area, that doesn't really matter for me either.

Frankly, I don't regret deciding to stay local so far.  The largest store has everything I'd need last minute and 7:30 PM isn't so early that it is unreasonable to go after work (although perhaps it is if you typically arrive at 8:30 to 9 AM and then leave at 6:30 PM or later - not an uncommon work schedule here).  I'll revisit this topic after I've been here a bit longer, but as of right now, if I were to live here for a longer period of time, I would try to find a place in here first, then neighboring towns . . . and would only go so far as Poitiers if there was literally nothing else available closer.

I will say that, once you're in a town, you can likely get by without a car if you don't mind a decent amount of walking; however, if I had no car I might feel differently about being here.  The large supermarket would be quite a walk and it is ~100 Euro to take a taxi to/from Poitiers.  On the contrary, you can park a car on a long weekend in Poitiers for less than 34 Euro.

Nothing to terribly exciting today - realized the gate had bent away from the wall, so parking didn't need to be quite so tight (pic before fix!)

My American coworker also introduced me to this lovely Easter pastry called Pain de Pâques, which just looks like good breakfast food to me (it would not be breakfast to the French)!  And that's it for today! 

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