Yesterday was the first Friday back in France for me so of course I had to go out and do some partying.
Like clockwork one of my coworkers suggested to go see "some underground art group" and of course I was pretty excited because he knows the strangest events in town and has a bunch of artist friends.
Last time we went to an event is was "Mozart in 20 minutes" which was some crazy party with all kinds of live music performances ending with "the 20 minutes of Mozart" which was all works of him mixed into one 20 minute track by overlaying tracks based on some crazy math formula.
So I go homa after work, grab some food and take the tramway+metro to meet him at the "Republic Beaux Arts" metro station where he has a nice surprise for me.
Bikes...wheeeee
We cycle through Lille like madman to get to the place were the event is being held - wickedly fast with no breaks, it was a blast.
When we arrive there's a huge door that is opened by some guy wearing a saw mask, can't say I expected that.
The good news is that inside there's a pretty long line of people wanting to get in which means it will be an awesome event.
We stand in line for I dunno how long and I have to fight of a couple of guys trying to greet me with the traditional French kiss-left, kiss-right routine. I don't think I'll ever get used to that, handshake is just fine, thanks.
Once we get in I'm immediately overwhelmed by the scenery. "Wow" is the first thing that crosses my mind.
It's some old industrial basement decorated in a gothic-meets-industrial kind of way.
Think Tim Burton meets Henry Ford meets SM dungeon. It's German expressionism come to live so if any of you know the movies Nosferatu or Metropolis picture those movies combined with gear wheels, hammers, helmets, screws and so on.
There are a bunch of small wooden cabinets with displays of art inside and lots of dirty and dusty mirrors.
We head straight to the bar and they serve some strange biological beer that tastes great.
I talk to a couple of people and am pleasantly surprised that almost everyone is willing to speak English - not typical at all for France.
After some rounds of drinking and talking the first performance starts kind of out of nowhere. This turns out to be a theme for the whole evening. There are no stages and the artists just start by shouting out loud that there is a performance in the corner over there and it just starts. Pretty neat.
The performances were a mixed bag and there was a new one every 15 minutes or so. The highlights include:
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] A trio of zombies juggling while babysitting. They try to outjuggle eachother to impress the baby and then all kinds of limbs get chopped off when they bring in the swords. In the end one guy juggles two arms and a hand, gruesome but very funny.
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] A woman bending her boddy into all kinds of impossible shapes...simply crazy.
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] An actor telling the story of his addiction to alcohol while always drawn back to the bottle of whine on the table. Pretty amazing how he acts as if his arms and hands are controlled by some deamon drawing them to the bottle all the time.
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Some juggler that tries absolutely impossible stuff and fails all the time. Extremly funny because he's cursing like crazy and one really belives that he's just bad. But of course the show ends with him doing all those crazy tricks to perfection.
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] Someone reading a short story about the death of a child. Not spectacular but wow he has some writing skill eventhough I don't understand some parts. The story fits into the somewhat depressing atmosphere perfectly.
[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] "The orgasm man" who fake orgasms on stage. Absolutely hillarious but impossible to describe. Of course he's wearing some monster costume like all the artist which makes it even funnier.
The event ends with the screening of a short movie, I'll post the link once I find it because I think it's available online and it was pretty good.
During the flexible-woman performance I'm intorduced to Colette a supercute French art major. Thankfully I have a broad grasp of art and we discuss Impressionism and Monet for a bit. I notice that I had forgotten how sexy a French accent is.
We get along pretty well and to make a long story short we make out a little and she asks me to sleep at her place.
My collegue leaves about 30 minutes later jokingly cursing that I get the woman and he gets the second bike.
The event ends sometime around midnight and around that time Colette decides to tell me that she has "changed her mind" before disappearing. I stand in the middle of the Goth-Circus frozen in shock for what must have been a solid minute before a rush of "down to earth, think, think" kicks in.
I suddenly realize that I am pretty close to the time of the last tram/metro for the evening, something I had not concidered before for obvious reasons. A quick check of my wallet reveals that I had taken way to little money and it has mostly been liquorfied. To make matters worse I haven't used my French credit card in 4 month and can't remember the code so a taxi is out of the question.
Looking around I realize that I know noone who is left and I certainly don't feel like hitting on a random woman to get a chance to sleep at her place, a tactic that has worked with mixed results in the past in similar situations.
Somehow the evening has turned from Expressionism to Surrealism rather apruptly as I leave the place and start running into what I hope is the direction of the "Republic Beaux Arts" metro station.
I'm pretty drunk but the freezing wind helps with the sobering process. I happen to reach the metro station at what I belive to be close to the deadline for the last metro, buy a ticket, head down the stairs and a friendly security guard informs me thet the last metro has left 3 minutes ago. Sucks.
But I know that I still have a chance of catching the last tram at "Lille Flandres" the only problem being that I have walked from BA to LF once...6 month ago.
I figured to not have enough time to stop and ask for directions as that would probably cost me 5 minutes given my French skills so once again I'm off running and hoping that my city orientation is good enough.
I'm slowly starting to lose my breath about halfways to LF and slow down a little.
I reach the long straight street leading to the station and start sprinting again. There's a big clock on top of the building and it's 0:36h. the last tram leaves at 0:40 so I figure I'd make it in time.
Alas, when I reach the station, the security guards have locked the door and some other people that probably also want to reach the last tram hammer on the door demanding to get in.
Trained to quick decision making from endless hours of online poker I figure the chances of the guards opening the doors are lower than the chances of me outracing the tram to the next station with what I figure to be a 2-3 minutes head start.
I start to jogg towards the "Lille Europe" station to catch my breath but it litteraly turns into a race when I notice the tram behind me ... catching up.
Close to the station we are about even and I swear I saw the driver grinning viciousely towards me as I look towards the tram. Some people inside are pointing at me and seem to be amused while I picture the driver trying to accelerate to beat me.
Thank god I still have the ticket that I didn't get to use because with buying a ticket there's no way in hell I'd make it.
I come flying down the stairs almost hitting the wall, turning sharply while seing that the tram is sitting there with the doors still open. Running as fast as I can I make it and have to grab one of the poles in the tram to not crash into the wall. A friendly guy in grey greets me with a nice "votre titre de transport svp" while some of the folks sitting in the tram start to clap in applause.
At least something to feel good about as I hand the ticket to the guy.
I ignore everyone who tries to talk to me while sitting in the tram ready to puke and wondering how much one of those oxygen tents that you hear about on sports broadcasts all the time costs.
At home I drink a bottle of water and fall asleep fully expecting to dream about juggling Colette's chopped off body parts from.