First weekend out- 8 on the L'AE index

OK- so now that I've explained L'auberge Espagne, I've decided to rate my France experiences on an L'AE index. 10 being like, straight out of the movie super duper cool, and 0 being like, my life sucks and I wish I was back in Cortland, New York, where at least I had real friends and the $7 Ho-Ho buffet.

This weekend, believe it or not, was the first weekend I went "out" in St. Etienne. Well, technically I went to dinner with some teammates after one of our games a few weeks ago, but that kind of sucked, I'd give it a 4 on the L'AE chart. We were at a big table, and I didn't really talk to many people, and my best friends from the team didn't come so I was stuck with all of the kind of mean French girls. And a waiter spilled 10 glasses of kir all over us. Lame.

Anyway, back to this weekend. Saturday started out pretty well when my super cool French roommate Caroline invited me to come downtown and hang out in a cafe. Score! Totally L'AE!!! We spent more than 3 hours sitting outside at the Place Jean Jaures drinking appertifs and having conversations about life in France/life in America. Good times. I was speaking French and not sucking!

After our lovely afternoon out in the cafe, Caroline invited me to come with her to her friend's house for dinner. Like me, Caroline is new to St. Etienne, she moved here in March to do an internship for a few months. However, it turns out her cousin's girlfriend- Tiffany- is living here doing a PhD, so she kind of has an insta-friend. Very convenient.

Caroline's cousin also happened to be in town this weekend, so the four of us had a nice dinner at Tiffany's place. This gets a high rating on the L'AE meter- the food was great, and everyone was super cool and intelligent, so we had some "real" (ie. not crazy like the other night) discussions about politics and current events. A highpoint in the dicussion was when we realized that all high school world history class is the same: start with pre-historic man, touch on Egypt, do the Greece/Rome thing, MAYBE touch briefly on the Middle Ages before getting to World War I, spend some good time on World War II (don't forget the part where you make an impression about the Holocaust with gruesome pictures/movies for a week), and then rush through the rest of 20th century in one or two days. No mention of current events and recent history like apartheid, Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, and the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. Glad to know it isn't just the United States.

At around midnight, we cleaned up the table and decided to head out in search of a bar or pub where we could continue our insightful conversation. We walked around downtown for about forty minutes, and the town seemed totally dead. I couldn't believe it was a Saturday night and the streets were silent. Finally, not far from my place, we found a little bar called "Le vol du nuit" (night flight), directly across the street from this stunning cathedral.

Walking into the bar, it was like falling down the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. The silent, peaceful streets (and shining Cathedral) were replaced by a loud "hopping" bar that apparently was themed around sex. Huge posters depicting vivid sexual acts plastered the walls, and the drink menu (which, by the way, had no explanations) contained drinks with sexual names. It was an amusing conversation when one of the French people went through the menu to explain to me what all of the different drinks meant, my sexual vocabulary not being up to snuff (not sure why they didn't teach "blowjob" in AP French).

We tried to ask the bartender what the different drinks were, but her patience was limited (big shock, she was French). She told us "it's an adventure, just choose something." I ended up taking what looked like the house specialty, a "tumulc" which turned out to be delicious! It was SUPER strong, and I was afraid I'd hit the floor after three sips, but it was yummy (peach and apple blended with their secret lethal alcohol mix). On top of the interesting atmosphere, the drinks were pretty cheap and very good.

My favorite part of the evening was that the bar didn't really close. Last call was around 1am (bars close around 1am here), so they locked the door, turned off the outside lights, pulled down the gate/cage thing in front of the doors/windows, and just left everyone inside. At around 3am, we decided to leave, and in order to exit the building had to climb up a ladder into the attic, sneak through a secret hallway and down a back stairwell. When we finally arrived back on the street, it was silent. Looking at the front of the building, all dark and locked up, you would never guess there were still 40 people sitting inside having a good time. Hilarious.

Overall I give this a 8 on the L'AE chart. It was a pretty damn good time, although fairly tame. Nothing too wild, despite the scandalous surroundings of the bar.

I was pretty pleased with myself that I was able to spend the entire day speaking French with a bunch of French people, and fully participating in the social interaction. I didn't feel like an outsider at all, even if occasionally they had to explain something to me. I hope there are more days like this, I just wish it hadn't taken all of this time to happen!