French people don’t dance, and in fact they seem perplexed by people who do. Friday night started innocently enough, and it was my intention to be home by midnight. I met up with some other assistants and a couple Frenchies at an English pub, where I was outraged to spend 6 euros on a pint of beer. To avoid paying exorbitant amounts of money on mediocre drinks, we went to a sketchy all-night supermarket, bought a bottle of the second-cheapest vodka there, and went to an apartment to drink. From there it became clear that I would not be home by midnight. Instead we went dancing. In Bordeaux, bars are generally open until 2am, and nightclubs run from 2-5am. Which means that if you want to dance, you have to commit to spending the whole night out…and we wanted to dance. We were committed to the idea. And when I say we danced, I mean we really broke it down. At the first place we were, which was only for a few minutes because they closed at 2am and we arrived at quarter-to, we were actually surrounded by a circle of people staring and literally saying “I’ve never seen anything like this.” This is because, to use an unfair generalization, French people don’t dance much. Obviously French people must dance, or else their country would not be quite so stocked with discotheques. But they were seemingly unaccustomed to any dancing that progressed further than a faint bobbing from foot to foot. And certainly they thought we were lunatics for dancing as we were, though in this case I fear they may have been justified. Just after 2am, which is a full two hours after I expected to be in bed, we left for one of these said discotheques ready to groove some more. And groove we did. After sweet-talking the bouncers to let us in despite the fact that we didn’t have enough money to pay the cover charge, we got inside and let ourselves loose on the dance floor. Finally at 4 am I returned home, where I promptly took off my high heels and hobbled to bed, which is where I remained until (I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit this) the next afternoon.
Saturday night I was certainly not planning to go wild. After all, Friday had already been more than I’d bargained for. I’d spent most of Saturday afternoon in bed and/or watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I was not exactly up for a night on the town. A couple friends came over to make Mexican food for dinner, and afterwards we went out for a drink intending to make it our first and last of the evening. Instead we ended up at a jazz-club type bar, the kind of place that makes you think of a 1920’s speakeasy. It was actually super cool, with live music and squishy couches and cheap pitchers of sangria. At 2am we called it a night, which is to say we went for 2 euro kebabs and ate them happily in the street before walking home in the rain.
It was a good (and busy-ish) weekend, and a good end to my two-week vacation. Tomorrow I return to work, which means today I am planning lessons and complaining about how early I’m waking up to get to class on time (530! In the morning! Positively ungodly.) To be fair though, I’m only working four days this week, to be followed by a four-day weekend. Life isn’t so bad here in France. In fact I think it suits me quite well.
