This Light Looks Good On You

Written on Thursday, December 6th:

I can’t believe it’s already been almost a week since this happened, but last weekend was overflowing with wine: specifically, le nouveau Beaujolais (the new Beaujolais). Apparently every fall, the Beaujolais region of France (which is about an hour away from Lyon) comes out with a new wine, and it’s a big deal. There are many different variations of the wine, because there are many different vineyards/wine makers, but they’re essentially all the same. As I recall, the nouveau Beaujolais hit stores in Lyon at the end of October, but it was discussed and worthy of parties for the entire month of November.

Last Friday, November 30th, Ruby and I went to “une soirée vin et fromage” (a wine and cheese evening party) that was put on by “Lyon International,” an group that organizes events for international students in Lyon. We got there embarrassingly early; there was practically no one there and they were still setting everything up. Fortunately, soon after, some of Ruby’s friends from her class showed up, as did Trevor, Morgan, and Rachel (friends from our program), as did a lot of others, and the wine tasting began. There were many different wine makers there were their version of the nouveau Beaujolais, as well as those with some other kinds of wine. I tried them all.

We also got to eat a bunch of cheese, which is always great. As we were drinking our wine and eating our cheese, various different people/families associated with Lyon International came up to us to get to know us. This was the other purpose of the event: you get to talk to different French families in the hopes that at the end of the night, they’ll like enough to invite you to their house for dinner. I think I spent too much time dancing to the tunes of the “rockabilly band” they hired for the night and not enough time talking to the families to get invited, but I did have some good conversations with some of them. But I actually did end up getting invited to dinner by association through Ruby, who was laying on the charm all night. All in all, it was a really fun evening, hanging out with friends and meeting new ones, and drinking lots and lots (too much, it turned out) of wine.

The next day, we had a program trip to the Beaujolais region to be guests at a family vineyard, and taste more… you guessed it, nouveau Beaujolais. Well, I’d had quite a bit of nouveau Beaujolais the night before, as did Ruby, Morgan and Rachel. As we were seated at the lovely wooden tables in their guest dining room, surrounded by the beautiful French countryside, as the wife of the family, Marie, was cooking us a enormous and delicious French lunch and her husband, Ludovic, was instructing us on how to observe, smell, and finally taste the wine correctly… I was trying not to vomit all over lavender and sunflower Provencal tablecloth. The mere smell of this wine was almost too much to handle. Which was so sad, because I love wine, and I really didn’t want Marie and Ludovic to mistake the look on my face for disgust at their proudly finished product. The four of us that shared the challenge of stomaching the wine kept stealing glances at each other from across the table in moral support.

After a while, though, happily, it was much easier to handle to smell, and even taste, of the wine. Also, the fresh baked bread, endive salad, and beef stew over rice that we ate not long after the wine tasting helped quite a bit. We even got home baked chocolate chip cookies (among many other things) for desert. I hadn’t had a chocolate chip cookie since I’d left America.

After lunch was finished, we headed over to the bread baking furnace room. (There’s probably a better way of saying this, but, you know). Marie demonstrated to us how to make bread from complete scratch, from mixing the flour, water, and yeast together right down to taking the fully baked bread out of the oven. It was really cool to watch, and the best part was, she made a loaf for each of us! We got to take home freshly baked bread, right out of the oven, that we saw made from scratch. And let me tell you, it was unbelievably good.

Since the Weekend of Wine, things have been much busier than weeks prior, mainly because the school strike is over! Phew. So yes, I’m back in school. Also, anticipation and eagerness has been in the air all week because this weekend is the Fête des Lumières (the Festival of Lights). This is very exciting: the main day of the event is Saturday the 8th, but it’s technically from the 6th (today!) until Sunday the 9th. Basically the entire city of Lyon turns into an artistically mesmerizing spectacle of lights. There are different “stations,” as in different things happening with lights, at various places in Lyon. There are 80 stations in all, spread out around the entire city. Friday and Saturday nights are some of the only nights of the year that the metros run all night long (and, of course, as a consequence, there’s a transportation strike today because the metro drivers are pissed that they have to work all night long on these other nights. Typical France…) I think our plan as of now is to buy some bottles of wine and walk around the city looking at all the lights. Why take the metro when you’re bound to miss something if you do?

Additionally, there’s a Ferris wheel set up in Bellecour right now, and it is enormous, and Morgan and Sarah and I went on it last night. From the top, you can see the entire city, and even without all the lights set up, it was incredible. Lyon really is an amazing city, and no one even realizes it because it’s so overshadowed by Paris. But it’s really beautiful. Also, a couple of the light exhibits had been started to be set up which we saw from the Ferris wheel, which just made us even more excited for the actual festival. I can’t wait to go on the Ferris wheel again.

I’ll definitely take pictures and post them on my next blog post so you can see what I’m talking about. It’s pretty hard to explain and might be worth looking up online, if you’re interested, and I’m sure my pictures won’t do it justice. In any case, expect to hear about a lot of lights next time.


Written on Sunday, December 9th:

The festival of lights is incredible and it's made me realize that I genuinely love Lyon. I finally feel at home here, and I love this city. Last night was completely out of control, there were more people in the streets of Lyon than I have ever seen before, I mean truly packed, everywhere. It was because it was the "biggest" night of the Fête des Lumières, the metros were running all night long and they left the lights on all night, which they hadn't done the past two nights. I didn't take pictures, but I have friends who did and I'll post them at some point. I couldn't have taken pictures if I wanted to, because my camera is out of commission, but I'm kind of glad I didn't. You can't really capture the magic of it all, and it was nice just looking at everything and taking it in.

After walking around and looking at the lights, Sarah, Patrick, Nathan and a friend visiting from Grenoble, Charlotte, went to a club where there was a live drum&bass show. Nathan and Patrick (and Charlotte actually too, which didn't surprise me because she's British) love Drum&Bass music, and I'm actually getting pretty into it. Some of it is really, really good, and a lot of fun to dance to. After that little show, we ended up going to, of course, La Marquise. It was PACKED, the busiest I've ever seen it, but once we got inside it was a lot of fun, and they kept playing Drum&Bass there too! We danced until 5:00am for the third night in a row, and finally called it a night (morning). This weekend has been incredibly nocturnal, but if there's any weekend where it'd make sense to become a night crawler, it's this one (lights, lights, lights).

Tonight, I will not be staying out until the wee hours, but I am going to go walk around and try to see some more lights, ones I haven't seen already. And I'd also like to go on the Ferris wheel again, with all the lights out this time.