Coucou everyone!
Today I bring you the story of how I ended up suddenly moving to Paris and settling down in this magical city, all the challenges I faced along the way and how I overcame them – spoiler: I’ve been living my dream life ever since! If you also share this dream I hope you can use these words as a guide and if we’re already neighbors, here’s a friend that understands the complexity of this process.
A little bit of the backstory for context:
I’m Portuguese, 21 years old and I lived in the north of Portugal until I was 17; during my childhood and teenage years I’ve always loved anything creative and knew that I wanted my future career to be based around all things art. I was mainly passionate about Cinema, Literature and Photography and not being able to choose only one of this fields I ended up choosing a broad Media course (Contemporary Media Practice) at University of Westminster in London – I dreamt about this city every since I learnt of its existence and the more I visited it the more I fell in love with it.
I spent the next three years living in the University’s accommodation and although I was having a lot of fun while achieving successful grades, London can get a little overwhelming after a while.
During my very last semester, a friend invited me to join her on a trip to Paris as a birthday celebration. Wanting a little break from my studies and excited to get to know the city of love, I arrived in Paris for the first time in April of last year (2023).
Prior to the trip, I watched multiple vlogs to figure out what I would like to visit and through these short clips of the city I could already sense the beauty and the magic of Paris but even then I wasn’t prepared for what I would find; the next four days I was completely hypnotized – it was the perfect city: breathtaking, art & artists everywhere, kind characters and a sense of perfectly contentment lingering in the air. I knew instantly this was where I wanted to be, everything I hadn’t found in London was right in front of my eyes.
Timing and the universe were on my side – as April was the last month of my degree, I found a job with an open-hour contract and upped my savings during May. I bought a camera and sent my Portfolio to all the brands taking part in the following Fashion Week in June. I heard back from two of them expressing they would be happy to have me documenting their shows: it was my cue to start packing and finalize all my commitments in London. By the first week of June, I was back in Portugal ready to re-pack my whole life in a 30kg suitcase and to call Paris home for a month.
Now, this is where things got tricky: finding a place to stay. I didn’t have any friends or family in Paris so AirBnB was the easiest method. I had 10 days to find an apartment in a easy-to-get-around area for someone that knows very little about the city and absolutely no French during Fashion month and beginning of summer, within my(extremely low) budget having just gotten a degree in one of the most expensive cities in the world – my options were very limited. The very few possible apartments I could find kept rejecting my applications due to a problem with the AirBnB website (from two different accounts) and when I had finally agreed on an apartment, my booking got canceled a few hours before my flight and I realized that I had also never received my flight confirmation email and had forgotten to double check.
It felt as if the universe was denying me this thing I had worked really hard for and I almost gave in; but I had this really strong intuition within me that I was meant to go regardless; and so I did – unsure if I had a flight and certain of not having a place to stay, my mother was driving me at 2AM to the airport. I must add that I’m extremely lucky and I have the most amazing family in the world; – while I was explaining my problem to the Transavia lady, embarking the plane and landing in Paris with 9% battery on my phone, my mother had gotten my grandad and uncle all glued to their phones trying to somehow book me an apartment. By the time I found a random Starbucks to charge my phone and take a break from dragging my 30kg suitcase up and down the metro stairs, I had received a text from them with the address of my dream AirBnB for the following month. Little did I know I was about to have the best Summer of my life.
The Fashion world has its perks and by the third day I had already met the people that would then become my best friends. I got to know the corners of Paris, the lifestyle and most importantly its characters pretty quickly; July went by in a blink of an eye and I wasn’t ready to leave. Being a social butterfly came in hand and a lot of the people I knew were leaving the city during the month of August and subletting their apartments, with less people in town and the certainty I wanted to call Paris home a little longer, this was the perfect opportunity to find a job and a long term apartment. Everyday was spent by the Canal Saint Martin drinking a Buddy Buddy coffee and sending job applications or handing CVs in person around.
I ended up getting a call back from an international hotel company that didn’t require French and would allow me to take on a one-year lease of an above average large apartment facing Notre-Dame in one of the most beautiful streets of Paris.
At work, I would rotate between receptionist, barista and bartender and work with a team of people from all around the world providing customer service on the basis of ‘random acts of kindness’: we would write cards for clients, leave random gifts in their rooms, offer teas in exchange of smiles and heartfelt conversation – this was my job for about seven months.
Sadly, the hours were long and demanding and my schedule would vary every day, it left no time for me to work on my personal creative projects and continue pursuing the career I had initially studied.
This was when I found Le Répertoire de Gaspard and babysitting, a source of income that doesn’t even feel like work and would still give me plenty of time and energy to focus on my own Freelance work. I met a lovely family that makes me feel like I’m part of it and I’ve been able to get moving with a variety of personal and professional projects, one of them joining the company as a Communications Assistant – I photograph and write a lot of the content you will now find on Le Répertoire de Gaspard Instagram, TikTok and Blog account.
Although my path here was very unique and definitely not suitable for anyone who doesn’t like to live life on constant edge, here’s to being able to achieve anything you want if you want hard enough!
Looking forward for your story,
Beatriz
