TheRadicalReality

Truly a lot better than your worst thoughts.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Introducing... 2006!!!!!

Hola, hola, hola!!! (*trumpets*) Ok, lucky readers. Here you have my first post of 2006. I just got back from Toulouse yesterday night and, yes, I did have a good time (as you all did too, right?). Good thing about going to France is that I get to practice my basic French and drink lots of good wine. And the more wine I drink, the more I practice the language, and finally everything falls into some sort of vicious circle in which I do enjoy myself a lot, but probably give a lot of headaches to the poor native French trying to understand what I say… I remind everyone here that my French is very basic and that, being Spanish also a language derived from Latin, I do tend to make a up a lot of words which might mean nothing in themselves, but which I disguise with a poor imitation of a French accent and just go on with my life, while people keep darting me with these menacing looks of “bien, mon amie, vous etes plus agréable avec la bouche a fermé” (“well, my friend, you look nicer with your mouth shut”)...

Anyways, things worked out just fine. No messy confusions or anything like that. Only inconveniences showed up when trying to decide our lunch on a Chinese Restaurant on January 1st (yep, guys, French dudes owning restaurants were probably recovering from New Years’ Night, so only “ethnic” food was available on the streets that day, at least at lunchtime)… Why the problems? Well, just picture yourselves trying to understand a menu written in French… Got that? Cool… Now picture yourselves trying to understand a menu written in French of Chinese cuisine!!! When we understood the French part, we didn’t understand the Chinese one. And when we got the Chinese part down (you know, international things like low-mein and that), we got completely lost with the French part… Luckily they did have numbers on the side of the dishes list, so we made a random combination of odd and even numbers and ended up having a pretty good meal…

As for New Years’ Night celebration in itself, well I have to say that I was very impressed by the festive spirit of Toulousians. After all, the night was mighty cold and a bit rainy, but people just didn’t give a shit about the ugly weather and they kept strolling down the boulevards and intricate alleys of Toulouse’s Old Town, throughout the whole night, making the city extremely friendly and welcoming for any foreign visitors without any previous plans… (I don’t know what is it with Mediterranean people that they gotta keep moving while celebrating something)… “Bonne Année” shouts were heard on every corner and smiles where all around… When the clock reached twelve on December 31st, we were having dinner on a cute little restaurant (nothing fancy, but good and tasty)… On the first minute of the year everyone stood up and started sharing kisses and best wishes. We got kissed on both cheeks by everyone in the place and amused them back a bit with a few happy sentences in Spanish. Later that night, we did what most Toulousians seemed to be doing in the streets… That is, kept moving from bar to bar… A few hours later we were… (how can I say this), well… a happy couple, slightly drunk… But it was all for anthropological reasons… I swear!!!. ;)

8 Comments:

Blogger .- said...

making up words
fantabulous

5:43 AM  
Blogger Happy and Blue 2 said...

Sounds like a great time. Woohoo for you..

6:40 AM  
Blogger Walker said...

You always have a great time don't you.
Sounds great and the people too.
Happy New Year :)

11:46 AM  
Blogger portuguesa nova said...

Awesome.

You Latins are quite lucky from that regard...you can get away with just using your own words in a local accent and still be understood in a whole lotta' countries.

I think English speakers can only pull that off in Germany.

2:29 PM  
Blogger Stacy The Peanut Queen said...

I'm glad to hear you had such a wonderful time! Any pictures???? Please???:)

The PK and I just stayed home at Palace Peanut, got a little "happy" ourselves with whiskey and rum and watched the ball drop on TV (in Times Square).

3:02 PM  
Blogger elle said...

Happy New Year!! It sound like you had a wonderful time!!

2:10 AM  
Blogger PBS said...

You sound like you were a very happy couple and had lots of fun! Happy New Year!

4:53 AM  
Blogger An Extraordinary woman in a mediocre life said...

hehe.. makiing up words....its like you can read my mind....a making words up post on its way to my blog shortly!

Happy New Year darlin :D

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

12:50 PM  

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