jeudi, juin 22, 2006
Faites la Fête!
Every year on the longest day of the year (yesterday! oh no, the darkness is on the way back!!) the Fête de la Musique is celebrated. This "Party/ Festival of Music" started off in 1982 here in France, and has since spread to all over Europe, and apparently even "100 countries on 5 continents" but the Paris event remains the largest. The Fête is a huge community event of random musical events performed in random places all night long. It is a loud and crazy mix of everything from lust metal and thrash death to caribbean orchestral to jazz jamming to electro-rap DJs to classical choral, grand concert halls to a drum kit on the street corner, and everything is free! Some events are huge, with big proper stages and tens of thousands of fans in front (Mel C was a particular attraction on the main stage at Bastille this year!), some are just a couple of people clutching lyrics having a bit of a sing-along. A lot of bars and cafés get in on the act too, and have bands playing.
It's an absolutely fantastic atmosphere, everyone just out to enjoy themselves and to see some live music that they otherwise wouldn't. It is particularly cool that unlike big music festivals etc, this is mostly amateur musicians getting the chance to play in front of really receptive crowds that they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. Anyone at all can stage an event at the Fête, you don't even need to be good, you just need to have your own equipment, get organised enough to sign up, pick a street corner, and hope that a few people walk past and stop and listen. Time to dust off my old recorder!
Also people making and selling Mojitos on the side of the road!
It's an absolutely fantastic atmosphere, everyone just out to enjoy themselves and to see some live music that they otherwise wouldn't. It is particularly cool that unlike big music festivals etc, this is mostly amateur musicians getting the chance to play in front of really receptive crowds that they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach. Anyone at all can stage an event at the Fête, you don't even need to be good, you just need to have your own equipment, get organised enough to sign up, pick a street corner, and hope that a few people walk past and stop and listen. Time to dust off my old recorder!
Also people making and selling Mojitos on the side of the road!
jeudi, juin 15, 2006
Blanc, rouge, porròn
A civilised evening gone terribly wrong... or right.
A wine and cheese tasting I went to a while ago at Paul and Karine's house, with frenchie Franck going to lots of effort to have lots of white and red wines and lots of cheeses to match with each wine, even going so far so as to have a little card next to each cheese with the names of the matching wines. So civilised I made plans to go out afterwards, assuming that it would end at a civilised hour...
Perhaps if the first tasting had not been only white wines without cheese, resulting in the time being after 10 before we were even allowed to look at the cheeses, perhaps if we hadn't started the evening with a couple of gin and tonic aperitifs, perhaps if the porròn hadn't come out... But it did, and the evening turned into a drunken mess of very tasty haphazardly swilled wines not at all matched to their appropriate cheeses, because nobody was able to focus enough to read the cards!
A porròn is a spanish wine drinking implement kind of like a cross between a carafe and a teapot, which the spaniards use to pour the wine at a full arm lengths distance into their wide open mouths. We used it to pour wine over each others faces, sometimes from a distance of several metres. Needless to say, the floor needed mopping and several dresses needed a wash by the time I had to get the night bus, having long since missed the last metro home.
A wine and cheese tasting I went to a while ago at Paul and Karine's house, with frenchie Franck going to lots of effort to have lots of white and red wines and lots of cheeses to match with each wine, even going so far so as to have a little card next to each cheese with the names of the matching wines. So civilised I made plans to go out afterwards, assuming that it would end at a civilised hour...
Perhaps if the first tasting had not been only white wines without cheese, resulting in the time being after 10 before we were even allowed to look at the cheeses, perhaps if we hadn't started the evening with a couple of gin and tonic aperitifs, perhaps if the porròn hadn't come out... But it did, and the evening turned into a drunken mess of very tasty haphazardly swilled wines not at all matched to their appropriate cheeses, because nobody was able to focus enough to read the cards!
A porròn is a spanish wine drinking implement kind of like a cross between a carafe and a teapot, which the spaniards use to pour the wine at a full arm lengths distance into their wide open mouths. We used it to pour wine over each others faces, sometimes from a distance of several metres. Needless to say, the floor needed mopping and several dresses needed a wash by the time I had to get the night bus, having long since missed the last metro home.
mercredi, juin 14, 2006
Le Grand Fête de Foot
Last week, I got to thinking... France, Germany, shared borders, fast trains, football, campervans... from all these seemingly disjointed ideas, I was able to come up with a stroke of genius! A quick swipe with the visa card across the computer and train tickets were procured on friday, and on sunday I went to Germany! For a very quick and very impromptu trip that unfortunately wasn't well planned enough to try to actually score any tickets, but was rather intended just to enjoy the atmosphere, eat some bratwurst and drink some large beers, laugh at the crazy outfits in all the colours of the worlds flags people had managed to put together, and bake in the summer heat in front of gigantic TV screens, and all of this came through like clockwork.
4 hours on the train from Paris to Cologne, and the biggest party in Europe this summer! The crowds were amazing, so much excitement, everyone was really happy to be there (I think it was still too early for the unavoidable disappointment to come for many!) and loads of people that we spoke to were just there to watch football and support everybody! It was funny, most people were loyal to their one country (we saw mostly Portugese, Germans and Swedes), but heaps of people were supporting everyone whose merchandise they could lay their hands on: Portugese shirt, german mohawk, paraguyan flag, dutch flags on the cheeks! Amazing! Even on the train the atmosphere had started, everyone was talking to everyone, and saying good luck to each others teams, even though everyone was supporting different teams.
In Cologne I met Camilla and Patrick who are spending the whole World Cup travelling around Germany in their campervan and on whose dining room table I slept for the next two days (well, it folds into a very nice bed!). A gorgeous two days were spent enjoying the atmosphere, the food, the beer and the sun - summer has now well and truly arrived in Europe, 30 degree days over the last week! Football wise, Australia certainly had a good start to their World Cup efforts and it was great to see the match in such fantastic atmosphere. Otherwise, it has been a bit of a disappointing start with Sweden drawing a game they really should have won and France also starting the competition off with a draw against Switzerland. But we'll see. It's early days yet, and there is still plenty of shouting and cheering to do.
On the way home from Germany, I had fly-by visit of Luxembourg as well, the smallest country I have visited so far! A couple of hours was actually quite a lot of time to check out this little city which was very pretty, located amongst gorgeous green valleys and full of interesting old buildings.
4 hours on the train from Paris to Cologne, and the biggest party in Europe this summer! The crowds were amazing, so much excitement, everyone was really happy to be there (I think it was still too early for the unavoidable disappointment to come for many!) and loads of people that we spoke to were just there to watch football and support everybody! It was funny, most people were loyal to their one country (we saw mostly Portugese, Germans and Swedes), but heaps of people were supporting everyone whose merchandise they could lay their hands on: Portugese shirt, german mohawk, paraguyan flag, dutch flags on the cheeks! Amazing! Even on the train the atmosphere had started, everyone was talking to everyone, and saying good luck to each others teams, even though everyone was supporting different teams.
In Cologne I met Camilla and Patrick who are spending the whole World Cup travelling around Germany in their campervan and on whose dining room table I slept for the next two days (well, it folds into a very nice bed!). A gorgeous two days were spent enjoying the atmosphere, the food, the beer and the sun - summer has now well and truly arrived in Europe, 30 degree days over the last week! Football wise, Australia certainly had a good start to their World Cup efforts and it was great to see the match in such fantastic atmosphere. Otherwise, it has been a bit of a disappointing start with Sweden drawing a game they really should have won and France also starting the competition off with a draw against Switzerland. But we'll see. It's early days yet, and there is still plenty of shouting and cheering to do.
On the way home from Germany, I had fly-by visit of Luxembourg as well, the smallest country I have visited so far! A couple of hours was actually quite a lot of time to check out this little city which was very pretty, located amongst gorgeous green valleys and full of interesting old buildings.
