Week VIII - Photo Update

As always, the full set of pics is available here: "Pics"

In the interest of finally catching up on photos, I am going to keep the text part of this update pretty short. For more info about the bridge, mentioned in an earlier blog, see here: Millau Viaduct"

While behind on pics, I guess I'm pretty up to date on news, so let's just discuss "My weekend with the Americans", shall we?

As mentioned previously, most of the students at my school are doing two, three, or four week stints. Last Friday, the friends I started with at the beginning of September, or met along the way, all wrapped things up. (Guess what's on my agenda this week?).

So, having said goodbye to one after a drink at a local bar, I went to the bartender to settle up and found myself next to a garrulous American with a red mohawk and a chest and biceps which I have come, after a month here during the World Cup, to recognize as the sign of a former Rugby player. Despite all of the above, we got to talking and ended up having more than just a few drinks. Restless, we went out to prowl the streets of Montpellier, where we encountered more Americans and an Aussie (this time, a lovely trio -- all three of them would kill me for using that expression, but I call poetic license -- of women currently living in London.) With various additions and subtractions along the way, this group stayed loyal to a strict regime of rugby watching and beer drinking for the rest of the weekend (with the most lovely of them taking a break for some shopping, of course).

As the only American in town last night (Sunday) without a ticket to the US match, I watched from our normal perch and met up with them for a final drink before re-entering the known universe and getting back to studying French.

The highlight, aside from getting to meet some great people, was the game we watched Saturday night. Not for the game, but for the location. If you have a sense of humor, thick skin, and good map-reading skills, I highly recommend visiting Bar Il Corto.

The bar, named after Il Corto Maltese, a famous Italian (and later French) graphic novel series, is dominated by a burly, exuberant, and quite possibly clinically insane proprietor who, I believe, uses the bar as his own personal mental health maintenance device.

We watched the game standing. Not because there was a large crowd. In fact, I counted ten. But because it's a very, very small bar. Only after the game did someone think to see where the stairs at the back led to, thus discovering "the dungeon".

I've seen rooms like this before -- in fact, Ian may share my fond memories of a place in Paris that was similarly carved out of stone, with candles in every nook and a decidedly bohemian air. What took things to the truly surreal level was that the volume of the music -- sometimes dance, sometimes pure Scottish bagpipes, depending on what Il Corto felt like -- was so high, combined with the lack of any sound-absorbing material on the bare stone walls, that I was reminded of people supposedly using high-volume rock to cause people who have barricaded themselves to surrender.

When we climbed back upstairs, we -- and the rest of the bar -- were invited to join the owner in a rendition of a popular chant, a la Il Corto. (Afterwards, I noticed the signed illustration of the graphic novel's main character, Il Corto, and it all started to seem a little...just a teeny little...bit more logical.)

That night ended with all of us huddled under awnings as the sky opened up and unleashed a torrential downpour, completely overwhelming all of the city's drainage strategies and eventually compelling us to dash/splash (depending on which sub-group you were with) back to the hotel.

Definitely not full-immersion French, but definitely full-immersion fun.

Oh yeah, the US got creamed, but, as one journalist noted, we "played well, given our limitations."

Toodles!