Life in Grenoble

I moved to Grenoble, France at beginning of November to work 7 months as an expat. Moving here has been quite a culture shock. I thought that it would be easy because I have been earlier living in Tokyo, Japan and adapting there was no problem. Maybe my mind is just oriented to not that big difference and I am experiencing bigger difference in culture.

Biggest issue is of course the language. I think it is no news for anybody that French people are really affected to French language, and that can be seen everywhere. It is possible to ‘survive’ without speaking a word of French, but despite Grenoble having second biggest English-speaking community in France, the social life is a totally different thing. Basically everybody wants to just speak French, that’s about it. I think I just need to adapt.

There’s of course plenty of good things as well. Most important being the Alps and the nature around. I went to one of the most famous ski resorts, Les 2 Alpes, with my fiancèe Heidi and it was great. Took quite many photos as well (link). Food is very good and wine is cheap & excellent.

Being much closer to central Europe is another good thing. I think I will do quite a lot of traveling while staying here. In winter time there are many flights to Grenoble because everyone wants to come to ski and I am hoping to find that those planes are empty when they go back from Grenoble and come back on Sunday to get tired skiers back.

Fresh new blog

Hi all,

This is my blog. It has been kinda long project for me to have my own blog. I think last time I had my own webpage was something like 10 years ago, so I think it is a time to have new one. Compared to effort ten years ago, having a website is kinda easy. You just go to wordpress.com and register for a website, and that is quite different from first spending one week with 10 cm thick HTML for dummies book at that time.

– Mikko