An expat moment

My monthly social calendar has two important dates I hate to miss;

- first Friday is the English bookgroup at Le Chat Noir
- second Thursday is expats at Lulu's Bar

Both events are marked by their gossip and their alcohol consumption. At the cat we tend to drink red wine (you'd think French red would be the obvious choice but it tends to be Spanish - last time we made a huge error and drank the 'bio' tempranillo which resulted in sore heads, definitely not due to the amount we'd drunk) and at Lulu's we have a very bad martini habit - it's their fauly, they offer a great choice of martinis - there's the russkatini, the chocolatini, the saketini, the fuzzytini, and many more (we've worked our way through the list and know our favourites, have avoided the non-alcoholic one though)

So last Thursday was expats, and in total we were seven, 2 yanks, 1 indian and 4 brits. A decent turnout considering the crappy snowy weather and the slowness of the normally efficient public transport system.

We talked about the pros and cons of skiing vs. snowboarding - Kamesh had just been skiing for the 1st time & Dawn was going home to pack for a weekend of snowboarding.
Spent some time giggling about the fact that Rebecca's back doctor (who has a sideline in botox and liposuction) was sat with some friends and his wife just across the bar from us.
Discussed Karneval (thursday was weiberfastnacht, which is the women's day in Karneval, when men wearing ties run the very real risk of getting them cut off) and whether we like the idea of enforced jolity...
The film 'Sliding Doors' with Gwyneth Paltrow made a good subject, the idea that there might be a point in your life where the choice you make dramatically changes your future and from then on there's maybe a parallel you.
Sport of course got a mention, where to watch rugby (my house!) and the organising of bbq's for the world cup football this summer, importantly the Germany - Australia game on the opening day, we Brits are expecting the Germans to hammer the Aussies...Kamesh is promising to bring a crate a Fosters as long as we've got some shrimps on the barbie!

We're plotting an extra visit to Lulu's - the 3rd thursday (I think) of the month is a regular get together for Germans who want to 'brush up' their English, our plan is to go along and speak fast and maybe use as much slang and as many long words as possible, while Kamesh is planning to to develop a very Indian accent - could be fun! Will report back!