Le Techno

This blog causes me immense stress. Twenty minutes ago, I got into the shower, knowing that I would write this entry when I got out. By the time I had rinsed the last bit of conditioner out of my hair, I had become a wide-eyed, frenzied jumble of half-formed sentences, funny anecdotes, pithy descriptions, and ironical, would-be-witty observations. Now it is all gone and I only have a surfeit of things to write about and a deficit of motivation to actually write it. I put on some Tom Petty and am sitting on my bed and am trying to calm down. Breathe.
Too much happens in Paris.
I am going to explode.
Here is what I will do: I will write about one thing in detail, and then, at the end of the entry, put a list of other happenings. If you want to know more about one of said happenings, I will be open to inquiries.
The Technoparade now receives my undivided attention. Pronounce it “techno-par-odd” if you want to sound French. My story begins on the eve of the parade.
Friday night, some IES girls and I stumbled upon this rugby convention/party by the Eiffel Tower. For those of you who don’t know, the rugby championship is happening in France right now, and last Friday there was a match in Paris, L’Afrique du sud v. L’Angleterre. So we found this big, closed-in tent, filled with TV screens and beer and wine and food and screaming rugby fans. The IES girls stood in a clump and spoke English and giggled. I stood awkwardly three feet away, trying to look French (I think I did passably well—I went to a vintage shop in Montmartre earlier that day and bought some seriously French vêtements). After a while, I managed to weasel my way into a conversation with a bunch of young French people. They were all very friendly and nice and patient with my English and laughed a lot (at me?). Anyway, the upshot of the conversation was that they invited me to join them the next day at the Technoparade.


The Technoparade is an annual event in Paris, to celebrate techno music—it actually is the inaugural event in a week of techno-related celebration. It consists of a procession of double-decker buses that drive, very slowly, through Paris (starting at Bastille, looping through Montparnasse, and ending back at Bastille, for those who know the city’s geography). Techno DJ’s—apparently some who are pretty famous, if you know anything about techno, which I don’t—are on top of the buses, blasting music, dancing like maniacs, and yelling things like “Paris 2007!” “Levez vos bras!” Oceans of people surround the buses, dancing even more maniacally, elbowing and jumping and screaming their way through the crowd. The parade lasts from noon to 8 o’clock at night, and people apparently stay for the whole time.
I met up with my French homies at about 5—they came to meet me and two other girls, and brought us back to the parade with them, although they had already been techno-ing for several hours—and lasted until 6, which I thought was a formidable feat. It was incredible. People were dancing like there was no tomorrow, and when I gained enough space around me to move an arm of leg, so was I. People stood on benches and on top of bus-stop booths dancing and screaming. I don’t know or particularly like techno music, but it was impossible not to feed off of the energy.
There were a lot of people. A lot. And many of them had been drinking or taking other unidentified drugs since noon. I thought I was going to die. I saw a girl faint and get trampled. Someone gave me a flat tire and I felt certain that if I stopped to put my shoe back on, my life would end, my body slowly disappearing beneath a pulsing river of gyrating hipsters. But the Frenchies were really great, and made sure that we all stayed together and more or less uninjured. Christophe, a particularly tall garcon, saved me more than once with some strategic elbow thrusting. It was quite an hour.


Wow that took a long time. Okay quick list:
1) My host brother is alive. And fun and nice. I hope he wants to be my friend.
2) I saw a corgi pooping today.
3) Other things I’ve seen—Saint Chapel, Sacre Coeur, Musée D’Orsay
4) Really good ice cream
5) I got stalked by a drunk Frenchman in the park (don’t worry, mom, it’s not as scary as it sounds)
6) Americans R Dumb (there are some specifics to back up that observation)
7) The word truc. It’s absolutely the most popular word in Paris and I love it and I want to write a whole entry about it.
8) A waiter at a café told me I had a beautiful accent, and then informed me that Boston was not, in fact, in the U.S., but in Spain.
I think that’s it for now. This was an absurdly long entry. I’m sorry and I applaud you if you read it all. From now on I will try for shorter, more frequent entries. We’ll see how that goes.