Day 22: Le Debit de Boissons

22 septembre 2009
The first day of autumn in Nantes was nice and warm. I wore my shorts to school so that I wasn’t too toasty. Writing class was really frustrating today. Mme Cherafoui returned some of our homework and went over some of the mistakes from the homework. She chose a lot of mine, which was okay. What was frustrating was that I was getting docked for rules and things that I have never even heard of. With one rule I told her that I’d never heard that rule before. She proceeded to ask the rest of the class if they had seen it and they all had, so she then told me that it was a special presentation just for me. Ugh. Some days I wish I was in level 4 where they actually review grammar and their phonetics class is more studious of phonetics.
We did talk about something interesting in class though. We read an article about how “le debit de boissons” aka any type of place that sells drinks has changed over the years in France. This information can come in handy, such as the following:
Le bar- the current term for a place where you get alcohol, normally nocturnal
Le bistrot- a familiar term for a bar
La brasserie- like a modern tavern; a café where you can eat at any hour
Le cabaret- drinking & a spectacle (generally naked women, but could be a singer or dancer as well)
Le café- a more general term for a place where one can buy drinks (alcoholic or not)
Un salon de the- a more elegant café which does not have alcohol available
La tavern- an old term for where you go to eat quickly
Le troquet- the familiar term for a small café or bar
At the beginning of the twentieth century, France had a plethora of cafes. They were very popular for diverting one’s attention (no TV back then), specifically males. It began to be associated with alcoholism as well. In the 30s the number of bars (I am using this loosely to term le debit de boissons) began to decrease. In the 60s the domestic revolution shifted the world to one of radio, television, and the comfort of home. This is when cafes began to be refugees for younger persons. Today 50% of young French persons go to a café at least once a week, at least 15% go at least once a day. Many bistrots turned into bars (signaling Americanization and modernization). These bars attract 20-30 year old urban middle class anglophiles. There is now music and other forms of entertainment. This concludes your summary of the drinking history of France and an explanation of why I’ll be going out to bars and such.
I had lunch at the RU with a girl from IRFLEE. I had mashed cauliflower, veggies, and a possible chunk of pork (as always, I am not sure), and some mixed berries (cranberries, raspberries, who knows what else berries) for dessert.
Theatre went a little bit better than writing. A French boy came in and did some of the acting exercises with us for a while. We then practiced a scene and preformed it at the end of class (there are only about ten of us in theatre). Mme Cherafoui (my writing and theatre teacher) told us a little about the show we’ll be performing for our final (in front of people- zoinks!). We should be getting the script next week!
We spent a whole hour and thirty minutes talking about one song in oral French today, and by “we” I mean my teacher Mme Sanson. For an oral class, we don’t do much talking. We actually had to turn in a written paper today (which makes no sense- writing homework for an oral class). At this point in time I had a headache and we were talking about eating odd parts of animals, which made me want to throw up. The song we listened to was about the differences between Quebecois and French.
I went to the store and got some brown sugar. The brown sugar here isn’t refined so it has a different taste and has really large crystals. I got some brioche (sweet bread) which isn’t very sweet and which I don’t like very much. I also bought a Vienneta which is like a Swiss ice cream log of sorts. Having a freezer is definitely going to be my vice, but now I will get to try the pear ice cream (that worries me!) that is at the store. I’ll be glad when my bourse (stipend) comes in, I would like to have a wider food variety. It is really hard to know how healthy you are eating here since the vitamins and mineral amounts aren’t listed on packaging. I need to try to find something with more calcium (how I don’t know) because I am getting some pretty bad calf cramps at night.