Fête d'Alban

Our friend Alban turned 30 last week, and his cousin turned 30 the week before that, so the two decided to host a party together. They rented out a gite in the countryside two hours from Paris and invited 30 of their closest friends to help them celebrate for a weekend.

I expected that David wouldn't want to go, being the weekend of his own birthday and a good 48 hours spent in the constant company of strangers, but to my surprise he was enthusiastic. So we signed up.

Friday night we met Hector at our apartment and shared a quick pizza before jumping into his car around 8:30. Hector has a roomy Nissan Qashqai - an usually large vehicle for a single guy living in Paris - and we enjoyed the rare luxury of being comfortable for a road trip. I snoozed in the back, and Hector and David navigated with the help of map printouts and the car's built-in navigation system.

And still we got lost. The gite was not in a town, but between villages, without even an address. We gave up on the car's navigation and drove back and for a while before finally finding the house in the dark.

The gite was not just a house but a set of three old buildings that were used for a mill many years ago. The building we stayed in was shared between 12 people, with a big stone floored living room and a bathroom on the main floor. Dave and I were assigned a tiny loft on the top floor, just large enough for two twin beds and our suitcase.

The coolest thing about our building was that it was built right over a river that drove a waterwheel just outside. The owners had put plexiglass into the floor, so that the river seemed to literally run through the house. In the bathroom, the river ran alongside the tub, with a pretty window overlooking the incoming river.

So on Saturday morning, we met everyone in the biggest of the houses and had a breakfast of pastries and bowls of coffee. The French drink their morning coffee out of cereal bowls. No handles, just pick it up in two hands and drink it like the leftover milk after your cornflakes. I later asked a friend why no one finds it odd that they go from giant bowls to teeny tiny cups for their daily caffeine intake, but the only answer I got was a shrug.

After breakfast we all piled into our cars and drove into the neighboring village for a tour at a local winery. We were taken through the whole process, all the way to a tasting at the end. I'm sure the whole thing was fascinating... if I'd understood what the guide was telling us.

David and Hector pretend to be wine connoisseurs

That evening we had a 1979-themed costume party. What a challenge, finding something to wear that represented 1979. David and I had looked up the year in Wikipedia for inspiration and learned all kinds of stuff. We learned that it was the year that the US opened trade with China (he could dress like Uncle Sam and I could dress like a Chinese girl? A stretch), Jimmy Carter was attacked by a swamp rabbit (amusing, but difficult to pull off), the 3 mile island nuclear disaster (some kind of creative mutation costume?), and the film Mad Max came out (Dave as Mel Gibson? I'm not so sure). In the end we pitched the idea of couple costumes and Dave dressed as John Wayne, who died that year, and I got a nun costume to be Mother Theresa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Boring, but needed little explanation in French.

Anyway, most of the costumes were cast aside as the dancing started after dinner. The guys set up a stereo and party lights and we had ourselves a little countryside dance club.

The next day we had no plans, but hung around and had one last lunch as a group before heading back to Paris. By the end of the afternoon David and I were both mentally exhausted from speaking (or trying to speak) French all weekend. We couldn't put together complete sentences anymore.

Anyway, for a weekend with near strangers, entirely in French, we didn't do too badly. It helped that almost all of Christophe and Alban's friends were extremely nice. Maybe if we get invited back for a 31st birthday party we'll be able to keep up a little better.