zenon90

as for now I am going to buy some books for studies - then I will see how much left :)

Hello guys. I am back home for a while but I completly forgot to post a reply in this topic. Well, I must say I enjoyed my first staying in France. Both in Paris and Bourges people were really nice and helpful (and there were a lot of times we were askin for some help). There is a popular myth here, that French people can't or hate speaking english - since I were in France, I know it's a lie. There was totally no problem with communicating in english, not only with sort of officials but ordinary passersby. We had a little affair with the police. We were hitch-hiking close to highway, and two police officers came to us and said it's forbidden in France :/ They took us to the police station and gave us fines of 4 Euro :) - and said we will be imprisoned if it will happen again :). So we decided to by to Bourges by train and in this way lost 20Euro. Except of this incident, I've noticed that police is rather tolerant here; you could walk the street with vine in the midnight and they completly didn't care. I think they had to deal with some riots, I even saw one... The job itself was rather hard. You had to work bent down all the time, in full sun. I hoped to learn some french, but there were people from Georgia, Chechen, Mongolia etc. so we'd rather communicate in russian :) We got about 600Euro for 2 weeks, which is quite a lot for us and as I found out later, it's also quite a lot for French people. In Paris, there was a picket of CGT union at Notre Dame cathedral and they told us, people working here earn 400-500Euros for the whole month which was a suprise for me. People from the West believe that living in countries like France is colorful, simply and amazing but it's not that easy. All in all, I am going to work there also in the next holidays. It's hard but worth it... at least for people from Poland.

Thank you all guys for valuable comments! When I go back, I will share my feelings with you :)

JMB, I will have a season job of gathering grapes. Dog, thx for advices. Actually I am on vegetarian diet for years :) I don't pracitice freeganism as here in Poland it's almost impossible but indeed, I heard it's easier in the west Europe. I am only afraid of legal issues, reportedly supermarkets do everything to prevent using their bins with food.

Hello Guys, it's nice to join the forum. I am from Poland and in few days I will go to France to work. I will be staying in Bourges for about 2 weeks. I will live in my own tent. Before it, I am also going to visit a Paris for 2 days and have a little touring. There is my first question: how much money I need for those two weeks to spent on food in Bourges/Paris and some touring in Paris? Not to mess the forum, let me ask another question. I am going to get to Bourges from Paris by hitch-hiking. Could you recommend me any place in Paris where I can catch the car? THX in advance!