Tag: library

Life is a story

31 May 2019, my contract as a touristic agent at the château de Versailles came to its end. What happened after? 3 months of research on Hippocrates and of pure happiness of a free, liberated human being.

16 September, one week ago, I started to work again for one library (Gernet-Glotz / GG) dedicated to the sciences of Antiquity. The contract is for two months, just 15 hours per day and only 500 net euros per month, but these days I couldn’t believe I was back to the library. The difference between two jobs – tourstic agent and librarian – is huge, they’re like earth and heaven, so last week I was at heaven. It is not only quiet and you don’t need to communicate with thousands of angry, arrogant, barbarous, asking too many questions people all day long, but also it gives you some time to continue your work on your post-doc thesis.

The librarians have their lunch at the INHA restaurant. Not just them of course, but all the staff of all the research units and institutions in and around. So once upon a time (last Thursday) I came there, looked back and saw one of my ex-colleagues from Versailles! What a surprise! Such a small world! This guy from Columbia was one of the most amiable in our team, he always seemed to me to be the most fragile and most suffering from Versailles. Now he is here. And me, I’m here too.

– S., what are you doing here?

– And you?

– I’m a proud librarian!

– So am I!

I aksed my colleagues sitting at another table to excuse me, I’d rather have a lunch with my old friend S.

So we ate and talked, talked and ate…

I was so excited by this funny coincidence 🙂

Post 3

Before being trapped in such an ordinary situation, I worked quietly and comfortably in one little, comfortable library which makes part of a scientific center for the Greek and other ancient worlds. This comfortable job lasted for about two years. How did I manage to find such a dream-work?

I arrived in Paris in December 2015. I wanted to conduct a serious, deep research on skin in Hippocrates. But I needed a job.  And at that moment, I had no idea of how it is difficult to do these two things simultaneously: to study seriously and to earn enough money to survive in Paris, where the cheapest apartment is a studio 9 m2, on the last floor without elevator, with no WC inside, no shower cabin and no kitchen costs 350 euros per month. No problem! says the householder, you’ve got a swimming pool not far from here. There, you may take your shower. By the way, the door of this “studio” was rather symbolic: old, one half of transparent glass, another one wooden. “There have been no robberies here as yet”, says the householder. Oh, thanks for these words, I feel safe and comfortable now…

Fortunately, around the mid-January 2016, I found a studio (rented, by chance, by a Ukrainian) for 5oo euros + 70 (electricity and internet) in the 9 arr., Cité Napoléon. Cold, humid, tiny, but ok till the neighbour listening music every night arrived.

I also found a babysitting agency and became a babysitter, my first job in Paris. But I suffered from the boys, then I suffered even more from the girls I had to take care of. Finally, a friend of mine and a doctorant from Greece, Vasso who knows well how it is for the outsiders to study and to work in Paris, insisted: ask, do not hesitate an ask our direction for a job at the Gernet-Glotz! So, I did it. And closer to summer 2016 I signed the contract with CNRS (library). Since then, my life in Paris had become more “bourgeois” – more or less quiet and stable…