family host in boulogne-billancourt

It is very late to start looking for May 2004. Has she asked someone in the company to make suggestions? Usually there is help for interns and she should take advantage of it. She’s going to Paris, albeit the suburbs, at the start of major tourist season.

You might contact the Maire (city hall) of Boulogne-Billancourt and see if they can offer assistance.

Do a Google search for Boulogne-Billancourt and see what you get there. Possibilities are the local school system, expatriots who are living there and tourist bureaus. I realize she isn’t a tourist per se, but tourist bureaus in France are very good at finding accommodation for almost any type visitor. If you can’t find the Boulogne-Billancourt Tourist Office, contact the Paris Tourist Office. Explain the situation and see if they can help you.

If your daughter speaks French, it might be faster for her to simply telephone the tourist offices in the area.

Since it is the start of summer, she might also contact local universities to see if she could rent a room nearby, perhaps sublet a student apartment in the area. She really doesn’t need to be right where she works because Paris has a marvelous public transportation service.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

thank you for the info. i will try to do that
urmila

i have had no luck in finding accomodations in boulogne-billancourt so if there is anybody who knows of some please reply.
thanks
urmila

Urmila,

Here is the address, phone number and e-mail of the local tourist office.

Boulogne-Billancourt Tourism
28, rue Le Corbusier
Téléphone : 01 55 18 50 50
Fax : 01 46 03 22 52
e-mail :tourisme@mairie-boulogne-billancourt.fr

I’m hoping your daughter speaks French if she’s doing an internship in France, so let her phone both her company and the tourist office. If you dial 10 10 297 followed by the country code, area code and phone number, you will only have to pay 3 cents a minute after a 39 cent connection charge. If she starts speaking in French, they will probably switch to English to help her.

Here is a guest house listed on Pages Jaunes. You can call or e-mail them. I don’t know anything about the place. Just saw the ad.
Alteirac Michel Ham de la Davière 72320 Lamnay
Mobile phone : . 06 20 64 09 05
Mail : daviere@wanadoo.fr

Here is the Pages Jaunes web site so you can search further.
http://www.pagesjaunes.fr/pj.cgi

If your daughter has found this internship through her school, have her check with the school for lodging help. Other sources are her local public library reference librarian or her local university reference librarian.

If she has or knows a French teacher, she should call the teacher for information. That might be the easiest way to do this.

Good luck.

Many thanks to SalB for providing such useful research, including worthwhile calling tips!

If the company has offered no suggestion, which we find rather strange, It may be best to get a hotel room for a week or two until your daughter can get her surroundings straight and find out what the other interns are doing. I doubt, unfortunately, that the boulogne billancourt Town Hall will give you a prompt answer.

I just looked at the Zip code for the guest house. The zip code starts with 72, which means that it is located in the Sarthe ‘département’. To be in Boulogne-Billancourt, the zipcode needs to start with a 92, which is the numerical code for the Hauts-de-Seine ‘département’. This is difficult things which you need to just learn, like knowing that the area code for DC is 202, or that all California zip codes start with a 9…

Anyway, that guest house is a few hours from Paris, so a hotel may be a better solution. We don’t want you to have no fall-back option, so here’s what appears to be a pretty good choice. You can see if it is close enough to where the internship will take place:

http://hotelbook.visitfrance.travel/hoteloverview.php?hotelID=11260692

It’s just a thought.

Two more suggestions:

1) The hotel idea is great. She could book a hotel then contact people at her company for help in finding an apartment. I can recommend a hotel in Paris. It’s not near Boulogne-Billancourt but it is near three Metro stations so it would be very easy to get to work. It is right across the street from La Sorbonne University and is a very safe area and there would be lots of fellow students. It’s small and inexpensive, but is also very clean and friendly. Try:
Hotel la Sorbonne
6, rue Victor Cousin
Paris
District: 5ème Arrondissement
Region: Ile de France

You can easily access the web site by clicking on the red and blue France.com on the screen above on the left. We’ve stayed there and we’ve booked through the France.com web site and we’ve had excellent service. There are stores and restaurants in the area and Metro passes are inexpensive.

Suggestion 2)
Again, click on the red and blue France.com above on the left. This will take you to the main page. Scroll down (way down) to a section called "france directory." Then choose, Business and Economy, and then choose "Real Estate." You’ll have to look around a little, but there are various real estate web sites listed and you could do a search for an apartment. I’m sure you’d get a pretty fast response from a real estate agent.

Good luck.

cheekoo, where are you? Did you find a place for your daughter? We’re all curious.