trois

During my week in Angers, Annika and I went out one night and had the most bizarre and hard to describe experience of my life. So of course I’m going to describe it.

It was Tuesday night and we decided to go out for a drink. We went to another old favorite of ours, Dublins. It was strangely empty, in fact just us on the inside. As I was explaining to Annika my theory of why I never get hit on in France (which is that they still haven’t gotten over that old distaste for gingers), two fairly attractive French boys walked in and stood waiting at the bar. I said to Annika how I found one of them to be pretty dreamy, and then they sat that a table near us for about ten minutes, during which Annika claims the less dreamy one kept looking over at us. After said ten minutes, said less dreamy boy approached and asked with oh-so-much charm, “can I sit with me?”

                Well how can you refuse such a question? The two sat down, and for another ten or so minutes we struggled through conversation because they couldn’t understand our American accents in French OR in English, during which time I changed my opinion about the relative dreaminess of the two, finding the second to be in fact much dreamier. We were asked to speak in a British accent so that they could better understand us (lord knows that didn’t happen), and eventually we were invited to their university, where “there is a bar.”

                Now I know what you’re gonna say – “didn’t you see Taken?!?!” In fact I did – Patrick, the genius, suggested we watch it a mere week before my departure (jk Patrick, it was good).

                With Taken in mind, Annika and I decided to check out this “bar in a school” if only for curiosity, and promised one another to GTFO before 1:30 am. So we cross the river with the boys and they tell us about how they wear coats at their school (because it’s an engineering school?) We arrive at what seems to be the entrance to an alley, and they boys say “the main entrance is over there, but we have a secret entrance.” Red flag number one. We go down the alley and they boys swipe their ids to open a gate, behind which is a 400 year old monastery. Annika points out that we have no idea where the main entrance is, and thus cannot get out without the boys showing us or reswiping to open the big gate (red flag number two), and we follow them through a dark parking lot (red flag number three) into one of the super old and awesome looking buildings. We round a corner and come out in a sort of alley between two buildings, and this is when it gets weird. Before us we see about 20 boys, all with beards, wearing the aforementioned “coats.” But let me tell you, these were not coats – they were almost cloaks. They were knee length grey mechanics coats, painted on the backs in different designs, and drawn or painted on the front, all with a number on the left breast. Oh did I forget to mention the ALTAR? At one end of the alley there was an altar of sorts with a bowl on top – oh and it was decorated with what looked like a mix between the Zoroastrian symbol of the gods and the eye of Ra. There go red flags four through 20. Annika and I look at one another and are pretty certain we’re about to be sacrificed. The two boys we came with disappear into a room for a few seconds and reappear as then don their “coats.” Apparently you have to wear them when you’re at the school. They offer us drinks and at this point there’s no turning back so we accept some sealed bottles of Kronenburg (the pabst of France) and start chatting with all our new friends. Everyone is pretty excited to see outsiders, not to mention girls, so they all bombard us with questions of where we’re from and why we’re here, and one of them teaches us the school toast (cheers, wrap arms, say “fraterns” and drink).  Then we get invited to “the cloister.”

               

“ ‘ave you seen ze cloistehr? Eet ees beautiful! You must see eet!”

Nah uh, no way, no how. I stop at red flag thirty five, thank you very much. After about 5 individual invitations, I say to Annika “I guess we have to see the cloister” and a very friendly, very not drunk boy offers to show the two of us. Seems harmless enough, so we follow him. And then it gets creepier. WE go into the next room and as it turns out it’s a tunnel of black sheets hanging from the ceiling that we walk through. We wind up in a big open courtyard between buildings, with open starry night above us, in the cloister, which is in fact, beautiful.  So after a while out there we head back through the creepy sheet tunnel (we were later told it was for “initiating” the first years), and head down to the bar, which after all this time we discover does, in fact, exist. It’s basically in a cave, built into the brick, and furnished with old saggy couches, but it’s awesome. We teach the boys chandeliers, play a few rounds (for which they fill their cups to the brim, where you’re only supposed to fill it a few ounces), and decide to go home. At this point, of course, we’ve completely lost the boys we came in with, but our nice cloister friend showed us how to get out. Annika got his number, but not his name, and ever since that fateful night we’ve been trying to get a second invitation to the strange yet wonderful cult of bearded boys who live in the cloister.