Czech-ing Out the Golden City Pt. 1

Foremost, excuse the dreadful pun above. A weekend spent surrounded by words that you absolutely cannot read, accompanied by the best (and cheapest) beers this side of Fat Tire (and outside of France!) makes for lots of time to make bad formerly-Soviet nation puns while traversing the entire glorious city of Prague in the span of less than 2 days. The money is in thousands (1€ = 25 Czech "korunas" or the anglicized Crowns), the bars play only VH1 80s pop videos and a medley of Classic American/British Invasion Rock including the Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, and (interestingly) David Bowie, and you can walk the entire breadth of the 2.1 million-person city in about the course of an hour. Two days in Prague.

Thursday evening I began to pack my bag for two nights in Prague with winter staples and a multitude of antibacterial products for the dreadful morning I felt awaiting me. At 6:30 am, I would have to wake up and take the metro across Paris to catch a bus to the discount airport of Beauvais, about 80 kms north of Paris where airlines like RyanAir and our preferred mode of transit to Prague, W¡zzAir. More on them soon. At 6:30, I awoke to my French mother bustling around downstairs. After my shower, my 19-year-old brother Julien knocked on my door to ask if I had a cigarette. Forgot a couple of things, had a yogurt for breakfast, hustled out the door sans headphones, which always makes for a more interesting metro ride, and met Abby on a very cold and rainy corner of Paris's 16th arrondisement where we were to catch the bus to cart us off to Beauvais. No such luck. Turns out the buses don't actually leave as often as I had thought and the last one that would get us to the airport in time had left 10 minutes ago. EEK! So, lesson learned, this is the time when an executive decision was made that it was cheaper to take a cab than to miss our flight, we took a cab to Beauvais. In our time of urgency, my French was not garbled enough to ask how much for a cab to Beauvais and how long would it take us to get there. Not awesome, but we got there in plenty of time to check in and go through teeny-tiny security before being introduced to WizzAir.

Their planes are pink, the flight attendants all wear pink. (Needless to say, I was clashing terribly.) WizzAir does not subscribe to the traditional philosophy of assigning seats on planes. So our early Friday morning flight was jam-packed with excited Europeans, shouting like they had all been friends their entire lives. I slept awfully fitfully but when I woke up we were landing in Prague. Excellent!

Despite the gobbledigook nature of the Czech alphabet, we were easily able to get around because every single important thing in the city was either in Czech and English, or they were thoughtful enough to have pictures on the directional signs. My pre-ordered van to take us to our hostel wasn't there and, antsy to breathe some Eastern European air, we found an ATM to spit out our huge Czech bills. I actually took 4000 Crowns out of the ATM. That is equal to a little over $150. This lasted me pretty much the entire weekend, through paying for our entire hostel with one 1000 Crown bill, paying for drinks with dark and very pirate-esque coins, and copious amounts of Czech food of various varieties. Our first move was to find a ride into town, which was pretty simple and cost about $4. We shared the van with 2 older Norwegian ladies and 4 fellow American travelers, much LOUDER and more American stereotypes than either me or Abby by a long shot.

(Hilariously, we ended up running into them again that night on a street near Old Town (touristy-downtowny) and then this morning on our flight (looking none too jolly).)

Driving into Prague was unbelievably gorgeous. The city is kind of situated in a little valley sort of thing with very high hills on one side of the river (where you can find Prague Castle, St. Vitus's Cathedral, and a series of cool parks and extremely charming neighborhoods), and then the other side, the dip of the valley, I suppose, where we stayed (south) and the Old Town square with the famous (and crazy) Astronomical Clock and lots of gold-roofed old Czech buildings (north). To the East, there is Vinohrady, another inconceivable Czech word and a crazy neighborhood that we wouldn't discover until Night #2: The Girls Go Out All Night, to be addressed in due time.

Our van driver was very pleasant and didn't speak much English, but did offer to pick us up again on Sunday morning for our 9:30 flight. He was so funny that we had to say yes, plus we got a discounted rate on the way back. Alright! $3! Juliet's recommended hostel, Chili, turned out to be just as cute and helpful as they appear on their website. We shared a room with a British couple in Prague together, and a bathroom with a bunch of European boys who walk around in their tiny briefs when they wake up.

After dropping off our bags, we decided to go ahead and take advantage of the afternoon. Despite leaving our houses at 8:00am, we arrived in Prague and were able to go exploring by about 3pm. Our hostel was extremely close to the main "must-see" sights if Prague, including the Old Town Square, the Charles Bridge, and the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments (a gem that we, sadly, did not have time for). So after obtaining a city map and a vague idea of the things we must see, we chugged off in the direction of Old Town Square.

Walked through a few skinny pedestrian-only-kindof streets where there were shops full of Bohemia crystal, marionettes, Russian stacking dolls, and Praha Drinking Team t-shirts. There was a T.G.I.Fridays (T.G.!) and cute international boys hawking the International Pub Crawl every night starting at 8 & 9. We explored a little bookstore and I got some cool Kafka & Prague postcards for my next round of postcard sending. Then we spotted a place claiming it had the best cuisine and beer in Prague, and, feeling a little peckish, we decided to test out their claims. Our first Czech beer was large and delicious, especially paired with our Czech cheese plate with various types of stale-ish bread (we're pretentious after being in France too long). The cheese was wonderful and had flavor though, which was a nice break from some Parisian cheeses. We decided to search for a traditional Czech place for dinner and uncovered a place with lots to choose from in terms of traditional E. European fare, i.e. whole-roasted duck, goulash, dumplings, onion soup. Very hearty and good followed by a coffee.

I was very sleepy, having not napped much on the plane and was feeling like I might not be the best party-crawler that night, but after a brief trip back to our hostel and consultation with the reception, we set out to find some street "that begins with a D" for bar discovery. Happily, it was not too hard to find and we followed a group of party-looking-people down into this bar called Jack's(?) I think, which ended up being pretty Western and cheesy, but also fun and amusing.

There we proceeded to drink whiskey & lemon, beer, and, though I tried my hardest to explain an applesauce shot to the bartender, he just made us Midori mixed drinks. Ew.

I must make a sandwich for dinner in order to further explain the remaining hilarity of Prague.

A bientot!

Some Choses

Girl on our program who I make fun of all the time has been overheard saying the following things:

#1. "The Mummy was, like, the scariest movie ever. I just fast-forwarded through all the scary parts."

#2. "Um, Dr. Costello? Do you know if the duck we're eating for dinner is still on the bone? Because I can't, like, eat meat off the bone. It's just a thing."

Ed C.: "OK well, if it's a problem, you can order fish."

"Um, I don't eat fish either."

Ed C.: "OK then, well I will personally peel the meat off of the bone for you."

#3. Other tedious things.

On another note: I GOT INTO ADVANCED POETRY NEXT SEMESTER. I was really really not expecting to get in and so I am extremely thrilled and shocked and STOKED to read some legit pieces. After all, that was reason #1 I decided to come to France in the fall. No joke. I'm ready for a challenge and so excited to finally get recognized for something that I write, Suck it, Cellar Door!

"I See The Glint in Your Froggy Eyes"

Caption action: lunch oh my lord this was delicious; delirium kicking in after 2 days of chateaus; WTF is going on, the red death?; Abby & Sally & coffee & coldasshit; me at the Opera

"Elle est charmante!"

So it's been a few days. I know you're waiting with bated breath for my life updates, so here they are:

Got another box from my mom and dad, including various wonderful things like gummy bears, face wash, Halloween-themed toothpaste, Halloween-themed socks, and a stockpile of cold medicine large enough to get me through my already harsh French winter. Monday I got back my first Cinema paper (which, while good, was admittedly badly-researched) and got a B+ which rocks for only utilizing Google search for articles. Ooops.

After that, stress levels increased a bit for everyone when we realized that the assignments we had been given the first week here by Bondurand for Conversation class were in fact due in our interviews on Tuesday/Wednesday. 6 weeks really flew by! Luckily, I was signed up for Wednesday basically by virtue of fate bringing me to the Foyer a bit early last Friday, when the sign-up sheet was already posted. So on Tuesday night, like a good college student, I crammed. Watched an episode of Mad Men, Food, Inc., and had dinner with my family, but generally translated poems by Leopold Senghor and looked up French food vocabulary and listened to some seriously bad French rap shared with me by my ever-amusing host brothers. However, what most people I think failed to realize was that this assignment was meant to allow us to use more French than we might have used if we didn't have asisgnments, and that our "marks" are based solely upon our improvement in French. And, since I came into my first interview knowing basically "bonjour," "au revoir," and "merci," it would have been pretty damn difficult for me to do badly.

In fact, when I had finished awkwardly reading a poem aloud to B, listening to African music that ended up NOT being in French (oops), and explaining that I was too poor to actually do the cooking assignment, I was met with the response of: "Well, I don't really have much else to say other than that your French has improved enormously. Very, very good job. Keep up the excellent work. Have a nice day."

Needless to say, I was fucking joyful. My deep-seated bad relationship with French has been a thorn in my academic side since freshman year, when I got my first C in French and proceeded to never do any better. My plan to nap for the rest of the day until French class (which I thought would be necessary after I failed yet another French assignment) was rendered useless, since my happiness was far too large to be quelled into naptime. So I walked to Shakespeare & Company, read some old old old Dostoevsky upstairs underneath Notre Dame and wrote postcards to Michael McFee (my spring 2009 poetry teacher and on the selection committee for ADV, though the postcard had nothing to do with that - he collects tacky postcards) and my aunt, among others, and drank Coke Light. Then went to buy some rolling tobacco (in French), talked to a Swedish boy who told me he liked my bag (somewhat in French), met a girl in my French class (kind of in French), and was told by a Russian girl that she's jealous of my French accent (in French). Holy. Shit! Good day.

Shakespeare & Co has been largely neglected by me so far, but it is a godsend. Monday nights they do poetry readings upstairs for free (in English! - a well-earned respite) and you can chill there for as long as you want any time at all. I believe I am going to make an effort to do a bit of volunteering there before I peace out of France on December 7th. Good way to meet some cool bilingual friends.

So after class I insisted that some celebrating of my newly acquired not-pathetic language skills be done. So, Sally, Abby, and I grabbed wine and bread and went to Jardin du Lux for a bit of sipping, and as badass as that sounds, it was much moreso. Sally had family dinner, so she couldn't stay long but Abby and I elected to metro up to the Louvre (open late on Wednesdays and Fridays) for a bit of semi-drunken arting about. However, upon entering the Richelieu wing (which can usually be done by simply presenting a carte d'etudiant and an ID that has your birthday on it), we were rejected by the lady who told us that we'd have to wait in line to get tickets. Free tickets. Stupid. So, we wandered through the Louvre shopping center (where there is already Starbucks, an Apple store in construction, and other large capitalistic enterprises, rendering the horror I felt upon hearing about the planned McDonald's now just unsurprised) and out into the Louvre (i.e. rich) area of Paris in the 1er arrondisement. We proceeded to walk around for a while, smoking and ending up by the Opera where we went for the ballet on Monday WHICH I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO EVEN TALK ABOUT what am I doing? But it was wonderful to just spend a bit of time exploring a neighborhood which I was not familiar with, literally just walking in circles with my wonderful new friend.

The ballet: on Monday night, we got mad dressed up and went to the ballet "Giselle," which is like the French ballet equivalent of "Hamlet" or something, according to dear Dr. Costello. We had our own boxes at the Opera Garnier in the 9eme arrondisement, and before the show, the girls and I went to a little bar across the street from the Opera for a bit of vin and ran into Costello and his wifey (whose existence, I must admit, I was beginning to doubt since she's never made an appearance before). It was nice to put on my gorgeous dress from Ross: Dress 4 Less for the first time since my going away party (which was, I'm sure, very nice, though I can't pretend that I remember much of it) and wear heels and stuff. The ballet itself was wonderful, and apparently Kylie Minogue was there as well! We met some American ladies behind us who were very loud and horrible but then pretended to be interested in our lives so we couldn't tell them to shut up after that. I'll post a few photos right after this post.

Thursday: had lasagna for dinner with my family (completely homemade) and my mom asked if I wanted to go to a party with her. I agreed and she proceeded to explain what it was about, but I was so engrossed in my lasagna that I didn't listen and don't speak enough French to ask her politely to repeat it. So we biked (me on my 11-year-old brother's bike - ridiculous) a few blocks to this house that was huge and made of dark wood and had glass ceilings owned by a guy named Alexandre who lives with his 12 and 13-year-old daughters but uses the house as space for art shows/installations/generally hip parties pretty often. My mom introduced me to Marc, an American Indian from Canada who was bartending and spoke Canadian French that I could not for the life of me understand. So we spoke in English. There were lots of gorgeous girls milling around in period costumes with metal accessories and accents on their clothing. I didn't bring my camera because I was under the impression that this was a little party for my brother's middle school. I was wrong. Oops. Lost in translation, as usual. But the music was tragically hip and there were tons of old people that were obviously artists (i.e. in vintage clothes, smoking joints and cigarettes, drinking wine heavily, taking photographs in which no one was smiling, etc.) and I was kind of under the impression that the party was just an excuse for this guy to show off his gorgeous house and for his smarmy "actor-from-L.A." cousin named, appropriately, Rock, to schmooze and speak his slimy American French and pretentiously ask me questions like "can you understand what we're saying?" Yes, you asked this guy how he was and then asked for a glass of wine. I'm not fucking braindead. Mainly though, he was hilarious and had huge injections in his face to give him cheekbones. My host mom and I made faces at each other when he wasn't looking.

SIDENOTE: the main reason I like French people is because they are the only people I have ever met that readily and without regret talk as much shit as I do.

But then Alexandre killed the Cat Stevens and cranked some electronic music for the hot model girls to strut their feathered headdresses down the opulent staircase and out into the huge open space in the center of the room. I guess it was a combination fashion show/pomo art installation with LIVE HUMANS. I'm making fun of it for the sake of blogging, but it was truly very very cool and Marc was wonderful and lit my cigarette for me, was generally wonderful, and when we left, he insisted that I come back to their huge 2-day party in November and said to my mom, "elle est charmante!" which means (obv) "she is charming." A large compliment from the French, especially when you don't even speak their language. My mom and I biked to a modern furniture store for another little party stop and then raced home on our bikes with Day-Glo vests on to prevent cars from hitting us. I was so happy to bike, since I am too scared to do it at all in Paris.

Friday: Abby and I went out after class for a bit of wine, which turned into bar-hopping and finding GOOD BEER ON TAP: a rarity in Paris. 2 liters of Delerium Tremens (Cafe des Artistes - 5eme), a large carafe of sangria (le Dix - 5eme), a pitcher of wine (Le Luxembourg - 6eme), and a margarita (Anahuacalli - 5eme) later, we went and had dinner at the same Mexican restaurant where I went with Boyce when he was still in town (above). Drunk. Now, we knew that we had to awaken around 6am the next morning in order to go to the Loire Valley with the group. So we got home a bit after midnight and the next morning at 6am we just looked at each other like "wtf were we thinking." It was OK though. A definite adventure. And we slept on the bus while the sun rose.

Week-end: All in all, the weekend with the group was stupid, tedious, and like a class trip in middle school. I like chateaus, but going to 4 in two days is a little excessive. However, Tours was marvelous. Dinner was good (despite the bitching of people who have just obviously never eaten duck before) and Dr. Costello told our table tales of living in Nigeria (and moving there because they really liked elephants) over wine. I lost my hearing for a while and then we went out to the only place to go out in Tours, where I met up with Boyce and some kids from his program, including my new best buddy Alex. Boyce had mentioned him to me with the tagline: "you've got to meet him, you guys would get along great!" and he subsequently never introduced us. But sure enough, we hit it off and even have birthdays within 24 hours of each other (July 23rd & July 24th!) and he used to live in Madagascar. Nice to make a new friend.

By the end of our chateau tours today, everyone was basically going insane since Dr. Costello has no sense of brevity whatsoever and was telling us the tales of each room for about 45 minutes. We made it back home by about 6:30 though which was earlier than planned and we were all grateful to scamper back off to the suburbs for host family dinner and sitcoms in STC. And I listened to Joni Mitchell and ALMOST FINISHED Love in the Time of Cholera, so I am happy.

We have a student from Thailand living in our house now. For a little while. I haven't met him, but my mom said he speaks not a word of French but good English. Sweet, a kindred spirit.

Life is wonderful, going to Prague next weekend.

A bientot!

Frenzied Photos

From the top: Nuit Blanche thing, bathroom in a freaky British pub, sorry if this is a re-post but these Pimentos are so gorgeous I can't get over them, me dressed kinda like my momma in my new trousers!!

"Non-Verbal Frenzy"

First and foremost, I just discovered this group on Facebook that I think everyone should know about: Ben Carroll for Mayor of Chapel Hill. First of all, his platform is great, especially on the issues of Greenbridge and advocating gender-neutral language in official Chapel Hill town documents. Second of all, on the campaign blog, he is described as "the cute kid from Student Stores," a description which was, for me, totally accurate ("OMG that cute boy with the nose ring from student stores!"). His platform of equality and real proletarian issues should not be ignored. Write in, November 3rd!

Second and fifthmost, my last weekend in Paris until Halloween has been the shit. And not just because of the perfect fall weather of yesterday and the rediscovery of Regina Spektor's "Ne Me Quitte Pas". It was the sort of weekend where, despite of the threatening cold cold autumn, I found myself complete caught up in the city, in the smells, the bizarreness of everything and how cool the bizarreness is.

Thursday night I stayed up until 4am doing laundry and watching French movies and then chilling with my brother Mathieu. Got a tour of the basement, which is very funny and full of lots of extremely French things, like old croissants forgotten, half-eaten, Mathieu's old ferret cage ("Elle est mort. C'est dommage."), some bikes, and lots and lots of woodworking equipment. Went to bed, read 50 pages of "Love in the Time of Cholera," my last book that I brought with me. Also dommage. Woke up Friday morning and took the train to Montmartre for some shopping at Tati at the suggestion of Jack Bee.

Tati is basically like a huge sketchier TJ Maxx and they sell everything. From kitchen supplies to sexy lingerie to clip-on pearl earrings to toys for children (presumably full of lead). They also carry a wide variety of trousers, which was my m.o. on my shopping excursion. Tried on about 20 pairs of pants before settling on a pair of high-waisted not-quite-charcoal grey trousers with a belt around the waist. They're very short for my legs, but frankly, that's kind of the point. Then I stumbled upon a gorgeous purple cardigan that I pretty much couldn't live without. Yes, I now own even more purple stuff. Basically I've been obsessed with tucking in shirts and short pants, moreso because of all of the adorable Scandinavian girls in my French class that rock the high-waisted look with a huge variety of cute tops. I wish that I hadn't been told that French people wear only black, when in actuality they dress exactly like me on cute days back in the States. I would have packed differently.

Anyway, after class on Friday I came home and had dinner with my family (burgers, which they eat separately from the bun) and then sat on my computer watching French YouTube videos with my window open, listening to the rain. Now, you may recall me mentioning a couple of nice young French boys that I and my friend Caroline met last week along the Seine. One, aptly named François, seemed especially cool and spoke very good English so we weren't totally confused by each other and so through the ever-useful tool of Facebook, we contacted one another and made plans to go out for drinks on Friday night. However, I was feeling a bit sluggish, especially with the rain occurring in its very French manner of pouring insanely for 20 minutes and then stopping for an hour so that puddles may form, and then starting again profusely. But once I texted Abby, her enthusiasm was contagious and I, without washing my obscenely dirty hair, put on my new sweater and a scarf (crucial accessory) and trudged out the door to the RER.

Met Abby, went to weird Australian bar to meet François where my main concern was that I didn't really remember what he looked like. ("I don't know, he's French-looking, I guess.") But we found one another and he was with 3 friends who all spoke varying degrees of English but mostly French and we all went to the hookah bar. For the record, French people are ALL ABOUT hookah. They call it "shisha" (the whole hookah, not just the tobacco) and pretty much every French person under the age of 30 either has a hookah or smokes it religiously. So, we sat outside for a shisha and chatted, in varying degrees of Franglais, about jobs and Paris and classes and tattoos and pretty much whatever. They were all very nice and funny, except for one named Clement who was basically silent, but he comes into the story later.

Then we chose to go towards "Saint Mich" (which is French slang for, you guessed it, Saint Michel) to roll and smoke a joint (which French people do on the street or in the park, pas de probleme). It's not technically legal, but it's Friday night there's shittons of people around and cops aren't going to just come up to you and fuck up your life like they will in the US. Of course, as soon as we began to walk it started pouring rain, so we retreated under an awning of "Claire's" the tacky mall jewelry store for our little sesh. I was pretty tired and not the most lively that I can be, so I was kind of weighing the options of going home soonish. But the boys were very cool so I elected to not be a huge pussy on a Friday night. What kind of girl am I?

So, then we went to this little street right by where I used to have class by Notre Dame called Rue de la Huchette, which is just a little tiny primarily pedestrian street lined with bars and restaurants and apparently this place that we went to which was unbelievably fancy and Parisian, with loud loud bad pop music and overpriced drinks and tons of gorgeous people and steep stairs. So we danced and the two remaining boys, François and Clement (the silent guy) bought us shots and after a couple of drinks and a wee bit of dancing, no part of me wanted to go home anymore. Clement ended up just being shy and not speaking a lot of English, which of course was the reason he wasn't super-chatty with us and our bad French accents. But after a few drinks, talking to anybody is a million times easier, in French or in English (but especially in French), so we friendlied it up after our third vodka-champagne shot (surprisingly delicious, even for my diminishing palate for vodka in every form).

One point: the boys insisted on paying for pretty much everything we drank until Abby pulled out her credit card and laid down the law that she was going to buy shots now, no questions asked. But, as a former person with money sometimes, it was a HUGE treat to get treated for once, as opposed to having other people taking advantage of my generosity and "live your life" nature. I was basically ecstatically happy at #1 being out with French people, especially French boys and #2 dancing ridiculously to bad pop music (including the millionth time I have heard "I Got A Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas since I've been in France).

Funny anecdote: A tall blond French boy came up to me and asked me to dance, and me, being friendly and carefree and slightly drunk, started to basically salsa with him so as to chat and avoid him trying to molest me. I learned that his name was Mathieu, he was 19, extremely handsome, and also a super duper creeper. First class. Within 3 minutes of meeting me, he felt comfortable caressing my cheek and hair, which made me basically burst out laughing and mouth "HELP ME" at Abby over the shoulder of his creepy white sweater. She did, pulling me back towards her and yelling "desole!" at poor Mathieu. Luckily 5 seconds later he had some drunk 25-year-old sitting on his lap. We made fun of him for the rest of the night.

Drunk and happy, we smoked cigarettes in the cute little cave-like smoking room downstairs (since you can't smoke inside anywhere in France anymore - luckily everywhere has huge door-like windows for the cafe crowd). And as will happen in even numbers of boys and girls, we had sort of paired off with our respective French boys: me with François and Abby with Clement formerly known as the asshole. At 5am we left the bar, Abby and I happy that the metro started to run again in 30 minutes, rendering our late-night transportation worries non-existent. We proceeded to amble around the streets of Paris in the 5eme for about 45 minutes, pretty much just making out in the most Parisian of ways (i.e. in public, although I suppose that at 6am there's not a whole lot of public). The French are all about keeping their love out in the open though, and the only other people on the street at that time were doing basically exactly the same thing as us, with slight variations and specific destinations. Arrived home, delirious with joy, champagne and exhaustion, at around 7am.

Anyway, the point is that this week, I have a dinner/wine date with a French boy, tomorrow I am going to the ballet, I have fabulous new trousers, and this was only Friday.

Saturday was spent sleeping, recovering, and then trekking across Paris to Sally's house for drinks, dinner, movie, and a little French party that her host brother Benoit was throwing in lieu of their parents being out of town for the weekend. Found a Domino's pizza in France!! It was just as delicious as at home and they were having some sort of sale where every pizza was under 6 Euros. Hollaaaa. So two pizzas, a 12-pack of Heineken and whiskey-gingerale-lemon drinks (YES I FOUND GINGER ALE) later, we smoked hookah (what did I tell you!) with Sally's cute host brother in his little basement apartment and found out that French people like Crystal Castles and (more expected) Phoenix and not just the Black Eyed Peas, Bob Marley, and Justice.

Sally's house was beautiful even though her bathroom's ceiling is extremely low and she does not have a shower, but only a bath. Oy. But her room is unbelievably French and fabulous, with curtains and huge windows and a smell vaguely of mothballs and sunlight.

I love those girls. It's pretty wonderful. Life, that is. I've spent all of today inside reading/Skyping/writing postcards/thinking about Morocco and my trousers, as well as a bit of homework. Blech.

A bientot!

The Long-Overdue Tale of Buying Liquor

The most different thing about my lifestyle in France that is even comparable to back home is the accessibility of alcohol. Now, despite living with or being very close with various over-21s (either fake or actual), it is nevertheless frustrating and idiotic that I cannot go into a grocery store and buy a 6-pack of Magic Hat, for no other reason than that I like to cook with it, much less get drunk upon it.

So, needless to say, a huge incentive for me to come to France (drinking legally) was magnified when dear Alejandro told me that not only could I buy alcohol, but I could drink it. Outdoors. Without a cup. Wherever I wanted. And, as Ms. Hilary Walker and her town of Savannah Georgia know from my trip there last spring break, drinking outdoors while exploring is one of my Top 5 Favorite Activities of All Time.

Day #1: Abby and I meet, discover our mutual love of non-menthol tobacco products, go get lunch and have wine. Then we grocery shop and pick out the cheapest bottle of red wine we can find (me bringing the bottle opener from home was a good idea!) and go drink it on the roof of the Foyer. While this is thrilling, I have bought wine before at home, even without the fakest of fake IDs. The real joy comes on day #2.

Day #2: Exploring further, more grocery stores! And, not unlike my parents' home state of Nebraska, the French sell liquor in grocery stores. Behind the cash register, on the shelf, you grab it, clutch it cheerfully, pay (much lower liquor tax), and go outside and jump up and down. My first purchase: a little flask-like bottle of Label 5 whiskey. Cheap, burns your lips, delicious. I wanted to cry I was so unbelievably happy.

To test out Alejandro's incredible proclamation, I wander into Jardin Lux with my whiskey, take a tentative sip in front of the first uniformed person I see. They don't even look at me! Part of me wants to start yelling "HEY I'M DRINKING LIQUOR OUT OF A GLASS CONTAINER IN PUBLIC AND I'M UNDER 21 ARREST ME" but first of all, they wouldn't know what I was talking about (English) and 2nd, they don't give a shit. There are immigrants to harass, after all.

Day #3: One begins to abuse the privilege of buying alcohol by going out to "bars." This is a concept I never really understand, for at bars, you are paying much more for the amount of space that you physically take up at the bar and not your actual beverage. In France especially, wouldn't you just rather take up public space and drink your own alcohol purchased from NOT AN ALPHABET STORE BUT A GROCERY STORE??? Since you can drink outside, it saves you, to put it bluntly, a fucking shitton of money. Bars will try to charge you 6 Euros for 50cl of beer. Not happening.

Day #10: You begin to realize that every other human wants to go to bars, and you understand, since maybe they didn't have a fake ID at age 17 like some people (ahem) and have never even been to a bar. You'd like to go out too. So what's the cheapest way to do this? The joys of being an American lady are embraced by the European man: the purse. Put a little bottle of whiskey in your purse, order a Coke or nothing, go to the bathroom and make a mixed drink, or just take discreet pulls from your stash in the corner of the bar. Nothing could be easier. And the Belgian boys will inevitably buy you a drink anyway.

Day #Nuit Blanche:

Talking with fellow programmers who also enjoyed Nuit Blanche, many of them were aghast at my kahones in just walking down the street with a huge bottle of whiskey. "Don't you know you can't drink in public spaces here?" I'll believe that shit when a cop stops me for drinking on the street, in the police station, on the metro, on the Seine, in the garden. I think 2 things when confronted with this type of behavior: #1 what fucking country do you think we're in? And #2 your family must be loaded since you went to bars all night for kicks. Then I think the third thing: it's been 6 weeks and you have yet to grow a pair and realize you're in Paris. Stop worrying all of the time. Stress shortens your life. And wine makes it better.

Day #Today:

French class is tedious, so I go to the nearest grocery store and scoop a Heineken tall boy for less than 2 Euros at about 2:30 this afternoon (about the price of a Coke Light bottle, and frankly, much more entertaining) and proceed to people-watch in the square next to my school building, drinking my delicious and refreshing Heineken and listening to dance music.

And not only are you allowed to drink, but you are, in fact, encouraged to as well. Wine shop employees enthusiastically show you the myriad French reds, imported whites. Grocery store clerks reach to the highest shelf and hand you your alcohol with a knowing and wide smile. Yes, the French truly are backwards and stupid, to let people drink alcohol in a culture that doesn't giant stigmas above the stores where they go to buy it, nor do they hand out tickets for sitting outside with one's friends, laughing after a long day of school or work, winding down with a bottle of wine. They're really confused as to what's important, obviously. Just like their seafood isn't fresh.

HINT: It is.

A bientot!