Oh La Lauren

A night of Borscht and Oberkampf

Mardi soir: Bar with Corinne and Laura
Mercredi: Armistice day . Borscht party . rue Oberkampf
Actuellement (currently): Centre Pompidou library, 2 pages of Haussmann research paper complete

Yesterday was simultaneously one of the most boring and one of the most exciting days I’ve spent in Paris.

Seeing as it was Armistice day, I assumed that everything was closed, sat home and did a little bit (stress on the “little”) bit of homework. I really did nothing. I talked to Patrick a lot about his mediocre experience thus far in the Netherlands. Ate dinner with the host family where we had red meat for once! Joelle explained to me that she believes that red meat is bad and therefore they don’t eat it often. Yes, I noticed.

After dinner I headed off to Christina’s place where she was making Borscht. I’d never tasted it before, and only knew it as the stuff that Chuckie from the Rugrats takes a bath in to stop the stench from his skunking incident. But I was incredly surprised, it was SO good, not a lumpy purple stew. Some of C’s friends from UCW joined us, as well as her friend Dina (who is half Madagascarian, too cool) and Hubert as usual, and we engaged in all kinds of Russian traditions besides Borscht, such as vodka, vodka, and vodka. Christina drank it like water, I swear. Vitalie could not have been more content with it all.

We left around midnight in order to catch the métro, and so I went from the 2 to the 5 as usual. Halfway home on the 5, while listening to my ipod, this girl sitting next to me asked me something about armistice day. I still don’t know what, exactly. Anways, somehow we just started talking and it turned out we were both getting out at Oberkampf. Rue Oberkampf, the street I live on, is actually pretty well-known for being a trendy place to sortir (go out). She was on her way to a bar and just invited me to come with her. We chatted all the way up the street, and then got to the bar that was pretty much totally empty, though a really-nice looking place. She bought the first round of drinks, and I bought the second. There were met her friends Marco and Karim—and as I found out, Marco likes Maureen, but Maureen likes Karim. Hahaha.

I talked a lot with Marco, and owned the dance floor with Maureen. It was all fun and totally random. Maureen speaks hardly any English so I definitely got to use my French. We exchanged contact info and I got home around 3 AM.