THURSDAY NIGHT SHENANIGANS
figured I should go out thursday night becuase the group was leaving on friday for the excursion to Set, and it would be my only chance to hit the town in toulouse this weekend, so I went on the internet and found a samba concert at a café near capitole I'd never heard of, and decided to go at 9 - rachel wanted to come to and said she'd invite her chilean french she'd met in the camping club she'd joined for her CSP (incidentally - SUCH A GOOD IDEA) so the night was set.
The cafe was little and cute and the bar and band were downstairs in this weird arched room done entirely in brick - the band was awful and the singer was this absurd woman with bad teeth in tight white pants and a weird plastic jacket doing the most hilarious saturday night live dances (don't ask me what I mean by that, I just kept looking at her bobbing her head and like, running in place, and thinking 'SNL!') to her songs and cheesy drum machine, but the atmosphere of the bar was nice - i got the impression mmost of the people there had showed up becuase they knew personally the band, so a lot of people seemed to know eaechother, and the place was small but well organized and everyone was sitting around eating tapas and drinking wine and the atmosphere was really freindly and light.
Rachel wasn't there so I went to the bar (three out of four barstools occupied by one man and two women, one smoking a cigarrette and drinking a glass of wine, the other smoking a cigarrette and drinking a glass of coke) and ordered a glass of wine, then leaned against the wall and started to drink it - the bartender noticed me standing there and indicated the empty barstool, which was between the two smoking women, and asked the one drinking wine to mive her coat, and pulled it out for me from behind the bar ... so I went and sat down. As the first song ended I turned to the woman drinking wine and asked when the band had started, and if they'd ben playing for long, and her answer was 'about 8:15,' and 'not too long' then nothing, so as the next song started I turned to the woman drinking coke and said something along the lines of 'maybe this is a dumb question, but the lyrics, that's not french, is it?' and she responded 'no, its pourtugese - where are you from?' which was more along the lines of what I'd been looking for. Her name was caroline, and she was a french professor - I talked to her till rachel showed up with her freind. it turned out that she knew the people in the band through her husband, who was argentinian and who owned a restaurant nearby which rachel had been to earlier that week, which specialized in something called an 'empinada,' which she got the singer of the band to explain to me during the break (the singer spoke a little english) when she discovered I'd never heard of it before. The singer started out by comparing it to some apple tart I'd never heard of, then a stuffed croissant, then a mini calzone. At any rate, I ended up finding out later - we went to the restaurant (sans caroline, sadly, she left a little early) after the show, which turned out to be a cosy little diner type run by a tall spacy looking forty something who spoke spanish (rachel's chilean freidn handled this) and bisoued everyone who came in - the place was crammed with people just hanging out chatting in various languages; we drank chiliean wine and chatted in french, which after a while rachel noted was funny (and this I absolutely loved) because it was none of our mother tounges.
anyway, we talked to long and I missed the night bus, but rachel's freidn walked me home (god I forget his name, I suck) and the garonne was eerie and beautiful, and all in all it was a great night.
The cafe was little and cute and the bar and band were downstairs in this weird arched room done entirely in brick - the band was awful and the singer was this absurd woman with bad teeth in tight white pants and a weird plastic jacket doing the most hilarious saturday night live dances (don't ask me what I mean by that, I just kept looking at her bobbing her head and like, running in place, and thinking 'SNL!') to her songs and cheesy drum machine, but the atmosphere of the bar was nice - i got the impression mmost of the people there had showed up becuase they knew personally the band, so a lot of people seemed to know eaechother, and the place was small but well organized and everyone was sitting around eating tapas and drinking wine and the atmosphere was really freindly and light.
Rachel wasn't there so I went to the bar (three out of four barstools occupied by one man and two women, one smoking a cigarrette and drinking a glass of wine, the other smoking a cigarrette and drinking a glass of coke) and ordered a glass of wine, then leaned against the wall and started to drink it - the bartender noticed me standing there and indicated the empty barstool, which was between the two smoking women, and asked the one drinking wine to mive her coat, and pulled it out for me from behind the bar ... so I went and sat down. As the first song ended I turned to the woman drinking wine and asked when the band had started, and if they'd ben playing for long, and her answer was 'about 8:15,' and 'not too long' then nothing, so as the next song started I turned to the woman drinking coke and said something along the lines of 'maybe this is a dumb question, but the lyrics, that's not french, is it?' and she responded 'no, its pourtugese - where are you from?' which was more along the lines of what I'd been looking for. Her name was caroline, and she was a french professor - I talked to her till rachel showed up with her freind. it turned out that she knew the people in the band through her husband, who was argentinian and who owned a restaurant nearby which rachel had been to earlier that week, which specialized in something called an 'empinada,' which she got the singer of the band to explain to me during the break (the singer spoke a little english) when she discovered I'd never heard of it before. The singer started out by comparing it to some apple tart I'd never heard of, then a stuffed croissant, then a mini calzone. At any rate, I ended up finding out later - we went to the restaurant (sans caroline, sadly, she left a little early) after the show, which turned out to be a cosy little diner type run by a tall spacy looking forty something who spoke spanish (rachel's chilean freidn handled this) and bisoued everyone who came in - the place was crammed with people just hanging out chatting in various languages; we drank chiliean wine and chatted in french, which after a while rachel noted was funny (and this I absolutely loved) because it was none of our mother tounges.
anyway, we talked to long and I missed the night bus, but rachel's freidn walked me home (god I forget his name, I suck) and the garonne was eerie and beautiful, and all in all it was a great night.