For the past month, we have enjoyed living in Nice. Our time has been spent walking to and from French language school, usually stopping at the market on the way home. In the evening, we would wander into the old town for dinner, wearing our masks the entire time.
The Reality of Covid
Last week, we started a 9 pm curfew but the number of Covid cases has exploded in France. Then last night, President Macron announced another full country-wide lockdown as of tomorrow, much like the one we endured in March and April. Since we have to stay here in France to renew our visas, we will be “enjoying” the inside of our apartment. We could leave, but without our visa renewal, we won’t be able to come back next year as planned. The president said that administration offices will stay open and we are hopeful our renewal goes through quickly.
“Confinement” as the French Call It
As before, we will need an attestation in order to go outside during confinement. We can only leave our flat to shop for food, get exercise, go to the doctor, or attend an administrative summons. We feel like old pros at this and we were advising other students in our language class about what to do. Fortunately for us, Nice is a lot more interesting than Perpignan and we can take our walks by the sea, so it’s not all bad.
Bad News in Nice
In other news, there has been a terrorist attack in a church in Nice. You may have heard of the events in Paris a few weeks ago, followed by president Macron’s battle of words with Turkey. Today, there was a knife attack where three people died a few blocks from where we live. We heard the news during our class this morning and our teacher was so shocked and upset that she had to leave the room for some minutes. Practically overnight, the world has turned upside down for us. Again.
All of this said, we still love France and Nice in particular, so we are staying according to our plan and we will definitely be back next year.
6 comments
Stay safe. I’m sure you will find ways to make the most of lockdown.
As if Covid-19 wasn’t enough. Please take care of yourselves.
Thanks, we will manage to amuse ourselves
Doesn’t sound very safe to me.
My goodness, 2020 is just a challenging year, no matter where one is or what one is trying to do! 🙁 Fingers crossed the confinement doesn’t delay the visa processing – hopefully that fits under the definition of administrative summons?! From where do the other students in your language class hail? Good to hear that being in Nice is more interesting than Perpignan was for managing through lockdown – but with all that is going on please keep alert and stay safe!
The students are from all over. Spain, Germany, Romania, England, Ireland, Switzerland, Chile, Korea and Japan. This lockdown seems similar to the Bay Area prior to outdoor dining. Not too bad.