neuf

It’s not dad, it’s dadcula.

This is just one of the gems to come from the age old Halloween favorite, Hocus Pocus (featuring SJP and Bette Midler). Today in France everything is closed, because it is the Toussaint, or all saints day. That makes yesterday Halloween, which isn’t celebrated over here. Yet somehow I managed to spend 24 straight hours fete-ing the day, and let me say, it was excellent. But let’s go back a bit.

I stayed in Angers until Wednesday afternoon, during which time I basically just drank a ton of wine. I mean a huge amount of wine. Just tons of it. After the goats we got back to Annika’s and searched out more wine, then ended up seeing ‘the social network,’ which is one of the better films I’ve ever seen. I highly recommend it. Monday and Tuesday nights were pretty standard – wine, pasta boxes, wine, couscous, wine.

I was pretty upset when the wine was gone

Wednesday I said farewell to Sue and the gang and caught the train back to Nantes. I had to stand in the aisle because the train was so packed, not one of my favorite train rides. I decided to leave on Wednesday because Thursday was announced as a huge strike day, and at least half of all the trains were cancelled (in France, they announce their strikes beforehand so you can be prepared). So on Thursday I went into town with some friends to shop around. Around 3 or so Carly and I went into H&M, and everything was normal. Twenty minutes later we were headed for the door and we noticed no one was going out of it. We approached and got through the people to see the street filled with smoke. We went outside and saw a good thousand people marching through the street, wall to wall, with signs, loud speakers, and drinks. The French word for protest is ‘manifestation,’ which I found entirely appropriate – twenty minutes ago this street was empty, they all just appeared out of nowhere. So we followed the march back into town and Carly headed home. I decided to search out a fabric store for my Halloween costume, and I somehow stumbled into the center of the protest. The marchers were coming down this hill and convening in a park next to the tram line. I’m worse than anyone at estimation, but I’d say there were upwards of 5000 people milling about.

Now let me say a word about protests. If I had been in America, I might have been nervous for my safety in a crowd like this, especially a crowd that’s there to flip the bird at government. But in France it’s entirely different. It felt more like a tailgate than a protest. I felt like I was at the end of a marathon, the marchers coming down the hill were arriving at the finish line and being rewarded with a cold drink and a hotdog, and the celebration could commence (seriously, there were people cooking hotdogs). There was even a van driving along in the middle of the march selling wine for 50 cents and beer for a euro. On top of all this, it was a family friendly event, with children all about carrying their own protest signs. One baby carriage had a sign attached to it that read something to the effect of “protect the future for me.”

At one point some kids got out smoke flares and stood in the street with them. No big deal, I guess, the police standing near didn’t seem concerned. This all continued for about an hour, but around 6pm the crowd began to disperse. By 6:30 there were less than 100 people left. They want their early retirement, but nothing will get between the French and their supper. The remaining protesters piled up the cardboard and paper that was lying around and lit it on fire in the middle of the road  - again, no concern from the police. Kate brought her camera, so hopefully I can procure some of those photos.

Friday Celeste, Carly and I decided to take a day trip to the lovely town of Clisson. Unfortunately the early train was cancelled (thank you, grève) so we milled about Nantes for a few hours before catching the noon train. During this milling we found a great fabric store where I got my Halloween costume for a mere 8 euro, not bad! Upon arrival in Clisson, we realized it was a ghost town. There was no one in sight. There were tumbleweeds. Someone was whistling the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (these last two statements are false, but really, it was deserted). We wandered into the center and saw the remains of a morning market being packed into trucks. We asked someone where the tourist office was, and we were told it was closed. Awesome, Clisson, see you later. We found the office and discovered it was closed til 2.30. Of course, why didn’t we realize, this is not a ghost town, it’s just lunch time. The entire country closed from 12-2. It’s ridiculous. So we found the castle (also closed), looked at a church (not closed), and then decided to wait out the lunch break with some wine. At 2.30 we found the tourist office and were told of all the wonderful things to do in Clisson, including the Castle, which as it turns out, opens for the day at 2pm.

It was bomb. Seriously, this castle was awesome. Half ruins, half slightly more recent, and mostly filled with grass, it was lovely. After the castle we crossed the river and visited a gorgeous park before returning to the gare to catch our train home. I can’t really explain how lovely it all was,but here are some pictures.

This brings us all the way back to Halloween. Saturday some kids from Angers came to stay at my place, so once they were settled in and after dinner I headed over to Kate’s place with Carly, around 7.30. We set the place up a bit and got into costume, and around 9 or 10 the people began arriving. I was telling someone about how French people are terrible at dressing up, how they don’t really do a costume, but rather put together a bunch of goofy things or parts of costumes in a totally nonsensical way. At home we dress up in a costume, here they just dress up. So Kate’s French friends arrive, and one is dressed as a pirate, in a totally comprehensive costume. I’m surprised. Except for some reason he has blood all over his neck. The other one is a different story. He’s dressed in scrubs, cap and all, and has a syringe full of cherry wine. This is great. He also has a knife through his neck with blood running down, and light up antlers that are actually skeleton hands. Good try anyway, French guy. We played upside down bobbing for apples (apple from a string on the ceiling) for which the prize was an 85 cent bottle of hard cider. There were four apples but I only brought two bottles, fortunately the first winner wasn’t too keen on the 85 cent part, so I was able to regift it to the third winner. I’m pretty sure 5 or six people got the last one, by the time I took it down it was mostly just a core. We had a grand ol time, and by 3 am there were 6 of us left to stay the night in Kate’s livingroom/bedroom.

Sunday around 9 Carly sat up and announced that she was done sleeping, thus commencing the laziest day of my life. We sat/layed around for a good three hours, watching youtube videos and listening to music, before finally getting out of bed to clean up a bit, and then getting back into bed for another hour or two to listen to yet more music, only this time some of it live (turns out Kate’s a pro on the ukulele). It seems that the only thing that could possibly prompt us to move about was our stomachs, and around 4 we made a brief exodus to find some kebabs. We were back within 40 minutes, at which point Kate put on Hocus Pocus (which explains the beginning of this post). Finally around 6:30 we got up the strength to leave, thus ending our literal 24 hour stay chez Kate (daylight savings).

Woody Allen, Artemis, Cowgirl, Shadow, Robot, Devil, Cat, Dunno, French ER guy, Cruella DeVille

Best Halloween abroad I could ever ask for. Good work, team.