A Virtual Trip to Jouy-en-Josas

Now that I only have two weeks of school left, I thought that I'd finally post some pictures of my campus and the long trek that I have to make there to go to class. This past Wednesday, I took pictures of my commute and thought I'd take you on a "virtual trip" to HEC in Jouy-en-Josas. So, here we go!

11:46 am: I first board metro line 9 at Oberkampf, which is about a three minute walk from our apartment building. I take this metro line two stops to the Strasbourg-Saint Denis stop and then transfer to metro line 4 towards Porte d'Orleans.

12:07 pm: I arrive at the Montparnasse-Bienvenue metro stop and have a long walk through the underground metro tunnels until I arrive at Gare Montparnasse (train station), which services the suburban commuter trains, but also the high-speed TGV trains bound for south-western France.

12:15 pm: I catch the SNCF "ter Centre" train bound for Chartres, which makes its first stop at the Versailles-Chantiers train station. This train arrives at Versailles-Chantiers remarkably quickly and I have my good friend Michael R. who was on exchange at HEC last fall to thank for the tip on this secret "fast train".

12:28 pm: I arrive at the Versailles-Chantiers train station and make my way down to platform J to catch the "VICK" RER C train which will take me to Jouy-en-Josas.

12:38 pm: The RER C "VICK" train departs from Versailles-Chantiers and after a brief stop at Petit Jouy Les Loges, arrives at Jouy-en-Josas at 12:46 pm.

12:48 pm: I catch the Z bus from the train station at Jouy-en-Josas, which will take me directly to the HEC campus, where I arrive a few minutes before my 1:00 pm class.

The HEC campus is relatively small, but it's situated in a very beautiful location. All of my classes take place in the MBA building, a round building that has about six large classrooms on the ground floor, another six to eight smaller classrooms upstairs and administrative offices on the third floor (the second floor in France, since the ground floor here is considered floor zero). Here are a couple of other pictures of the campus.




These last couple of pictures show the route I have to take if I need to walk back to the train station from campus, which is pretty much every day that I go to class. The first picture is of the back-road short-cut which is a very dimly lit path with occasional stairs that leads down to one of the main roads, rue de la Libération (second picture). Note: this path can be pretty trecherous when it's dark and raining out -- luckily I haven't faced those conditions very many times.

Getting back home to our apartment in Paris from Jouy-en-Josas is another whole ordeal which I won't bother with since this is already probably more information than you'd like to know about my trek to HEC. Overall, it's not a bad commute and I definitely like the convenience of living in Paris as opposed to Jouy-en-Josas, which is pretty much a one street town with one bakery, a pharmacy, a couple of banks, a grocery store and fewer restaurants than I have fingers on my right hand.