Okay so - Halloween. Yep, 4 weeks ago - I really need to blog more! I'm always too busy hanging out with my friend Procrastination Jones! I mean, he's always there for me when I'm down, but sometimes I feel like he's not really helping me with the root of my problems - hanging out with him is more of a veneer....... So, Halloween. I wasn't going to celebrate it. I know it's not big in France and to be honest I was tired and had work to do. But then Matt (I'm talking about the English one at ESC Rennes now) twisted my arm.
Halloween is a night of fun, games, and weird costumes, and at the latter, Matt is the master! He was searching for new ideas for costumes that we could do, and we thought of a few ideas, which included taping cereal boxes to ourselves with red marks on them, and carrying a knife (plastic of course, kids. Don't carry real knives - it's bad for your health!) - making us cereal killers! (We ended up giving that idea to Itzel for her to wear.... the French didn't really get the joke.....) and also WAIT A MINUTE! THIS STUPID BUS IS GOING PAST THE AIRPORT! I JUST WASTED 12€ ON A TAXI TO GO TO THE ONE BUS STOP WHEN I COULD HAVE GOT IT FROM RIGHT BY THE AIRPORT!!! GRRRRRRR we had another idea where we just blow some green or purple balloons, attach them to ourselves and go as bunches of grapes, but then we decided that wouldn't be practical.
We also thought about current affairs and considered going as Steve Jobs and Jimmy Saville zombies (but apart from being very disrespectful, we wouldn't know how best to make ourselves look like those guys), and I also thought of bleeding Euro coins and the baby that happened to be born earlier that day who was registered as the 7 billionth person on Earth at the moment (there's nothing scarier than the reality of an overpopulated planet and depleting resources).
Of course we didn't consider the usual boring vampires (although I did consider going as Edward Cullen and acting like a pompous twat for the evening) or werewolves (considered Jacob Black too - haven't got the bod, or the stubborn tenacity towards average-looking and bloody annoying women), or wizards, devils, zombies, Frankensteins or Nick Cleggs. We wanted to be different. We wanted to stand out.
And we did.
This, my friends, is how Matt and I won a costume competition. How we made countless people out on the streets burst out laughing. How we were asked for photos with many random people. How we took half an hour to walk through la Rue de la Soif, which is about 50-70m long. This, dear readers, is how Matt and I became celebrities that night.
What a night it was! Walking through the streets of Rennes I struggled to keep a straight face and act like I was dressed completely normally. People from all sides were looking at us, laughing and commenting in French (which scared Matt because he had to try and understand a lot of locals). The moment where you see a group of people walking towards a side street, going about their business, and then they catch a glimpse of you, stop, turn around and look amazed is PRICELESS! It is seriously so funny, and it happened repeatedly that night! Okay there were some annoying people too who just wouldn't let us go - chatting non-stop (usually due to drunkenness) but it was so much fun!
And the best part was - we discovered our new favourite bar.
I had heard about the Funky Munky a couple of times already, from people who had described the lovely atmosphere and the cheap cocktails. And tonight they were having a Halloween party. This was our destination. When Matt and I arrived, it wasn't exactly low-key. We were approached by loads of people, and warned by the bartender, who was dressed as Popeye, to be careful (I didn't realise how big the cardboard cut-outs were until this point). A few minutes in, the bartender announced the winners of the costume competition - 'The Facebook boys', and gave us a 1kg Chupa Chupps lollipop as the prize (Luckily Matt doesn't like strawberry flavour, because I don't know how we were gonna share that! I still don't even know how I'm going to attack it myself!) It was a great night, but I also felt a little bad for the others. They had spent lots of money on their costumes, and there were some great outfits (especially the guys from Coventry - Alina and Raj, fantastic effort!!!). How much did Matt and I spend? 1€ each.
We simply went to LeClerc and bought some marker pens, having gone around the side of the building to find a giant cardboard box that was perfect for the costume. (Wow, Dinan is a beautiful place. Just travelling over a big viaduct. Gotta bring the guys here!) Then we worked on it for about 4-5 hours, cutting the cardboard and designing the profile pages. I'm not the best drawer, but I must say I was quite proud of my efforts here. And yes, I added 10 friend requests. It may seem a little optimistic, but I was planning ahead. I had drawn a big button saying Ajouter comme ami(e) and sure enough, by the end of the night, over 10 people poked it. But yes, the cut-out remains in my room. In the cardboard box we found several posters advertising some perfume but featuring Emma Watson, the girl who played Hermione in the Harry Potter films and became a bit of a sex symbol by the Half-Blood Prince. I kept a poster in my room for a few days before disposing of it. It felt a bit weird having a perfume ad in my room.
So anyway, Halloween rocked! And we enjoyed the Funky Munky. Any readers who are in Rennes, check this bar out. The atmosphere is great, there is a real community feel to it, it is small yet sociable, and the bartender, Loeic, is the best bartender I've met! He's been in the business for years, having worked in many bars in the UK as well over a 10 year period before setting up his own in Rennes. As well as several bars in London, he has worked for Revolution vodka bars throughout the UK, including the one in Cardiff - which I usually visit on the rare occasion that I have money to go out in Wales. His English is probably the best I've heard from a Frenchman - he even has a bit of a London accent! And he has told Matt and I some interesting stories, including a customer who paid over £40000 in an exclusive club, buying everyone there drinks, just so that they would turn the music down a bit so he could hear his wife talk! God if I had that amount of money - well I'd probably take the wife somewhere else and donate £40k to Cancer Research UK, but that's probably why I'm not doing very well at Warwick Business School....
But seriously, there's a great range of drinks, the bartender speaks perfect English and French, and they also have some great events, including pub quizzes (making me nostalgic thinking about the Rising Sun near my house in Wales), but on stuff I actually know about! Gone are the questions about 60s music, ye olde expressions, pictures of celebrities who were big in the 70s, golf and other things for old people - we had a quiz just about rock music (which my team won, beating Matt to his great frustration mwahahahaha!!!) and tomorrow there's a quiz about Harry Potter. I've won 2 out of 2 competitions I've entered there, and I know WAAAAYYYY too much about the scarred spectacled sorcerer, so my winning streak there may just continue! But anyway, guys at the Funky Munky, if you're reading this, you are brilliant and very welcoming to us foreigners, and I wish you great success in your business!So that was Halloween. A few days after, I finally achieved my main goal for 2011 - my new year's resolution: to visit a new country before 2012. And thanks to the hardworking guys at the Well'Come team in ESC Rennes, I got my chance: a little-known town called AMSTERDAM!!!
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