First of all, the most lovely and amazing Samantha came to visit me, freshly released from her contract teaching English in Korea. It had been more than a year since we'd seen each other and i could hardly contain my excitement. I was in fact, so excited that I sang about it.
Yeah, I am a huge loser.
This we know.
Being reunited with my Sam was marvelous, and she was one heck of a trooper. She arrived from three days of traveling halfway across the world in buses, planes and trains and I threw head first into a mexican dinner with about 8 frenchies and all of the sudden, not only was she jet-lagged and forced to sociable, but she also had to deal with a lot of language.
I gave the precursory tour of Nantes. We went out with my friends. We tried to catch up on a year worth of stories and gossip and hugs. That poor girl drank an entire glass of pastisse (a naaasty licorice-flavored concoction) because in Korea it is rude to not accept a drink or food that is offered to you. In France it is not rude. In France it is perfectly normal. It was even offered to her with a "you can try this if you want, but if you don't like it, just give it to me and I can drink it." But she didn't believe them I guess.
Poor, poor thing.
(photo courtesy of samantha panger)
I played a song to make her feel better. I am like the pied-piper of happiness.
Then she let me drag her to Rennes (Rennes, the city of my dreams... and my former study abroad home-base) so that I could meet up with my friend Maïwenn, who I hadn't seen since I left France 3 years ago. Rennes was, as always, perfectly magical. We ate gallettes at the market, drank a café and enjoyed wine and cheese in one of my old haunts. We spent the afternoon wandering through the winding cobblestone streets and stumbling upon a tacky, blaring neon fair.
In true Rennes fashion, there was a loud demonstration of crusty punks and hippies who were protesting a new law calling for the ban of "ephemeral housing" (a very shite law, truth be told. Look it up.) by crashing what was supposed to be a visual presentation in front of the town hall and lighting a bunch of crates on fire while blasting aggressive trance music.
There were fire-dancers.
I LOVE fire dancers.
(photo courtesy of samantha panger)
I was more than happy to join their numbers, until the municipal police showed up and starting telling the gathering crowd of parents and children who had come to see the now-interrupted presentation that anyone with children needed to leave. Nay, not just leave, but to "get as far away as possible."
I turned to Sam and said, "we need to leave.Now." When she asked why, I asked her if she remembered the G.I. Joe SWAT teamsters that we saw gearing up a few blocks away. "That's why."
According to the paper the next morning, the team showed up minutes later and fired tear gas into the crowd.
I'm not that sorry that we missed it.
Especially because as we were wandering the streets, killing time until our rendez-vous with Maïwenn, we heard the beautiful sound of accordion music echoing through the streets, and followed it to find the most beautiful young punk playing Yann Tiersen songs. I gave him money and some day Samantha is going to find him and marry him. We will live across the street from each other and her beautiful, musically inclined new husband will teach me how to play the accordion while Sam and I make movies together.
It is a fool-proof plan.
Finally, we met up with Maïwenn, had a drink, and an excellent dinner in a Lebanese restaurant, and then she was kind enough to drive us to the train station where we were to catch a 10o'clock train back to Nantes.
Well, we were lucky that she drove us, because due to my being an absolute idiot, there was in fact, no train, and so, instead of leaving us to sleep in front of the train station all night, Maïwenn invited us to stay with her at her sister's home. Her sister and her brother-in-law were not only amazingly hospitable, but really really cool.
They stayed up with us into the wee-hours drinking tea and talking about music and film, they shared some 20 year-old Calvados that his father had made on their farm in Britany, and in the morning, we got to eat breakfast with their beautiful daughters. (The youngest is two and she is ADORABLE)
Sam pointed out that ALL European children have the same high-pitched little voice, and it makes your heart melt. It's wonderful.
So a day later than planned, we made it back to Nantes, went to visit the Machines of the Island (see previous posts) and packed for our Big Spanish Adventure.
Also, just in case you're curious, here is the video of Nantes that I made for my family at christmas. It's like a shaky, fast-paced walking tour.
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