After many years, a French Antenna organised an international event representing also an occasion to brush up on the French language skills. The journalist Matteo Lai decided to spend a special Easter and took part in this very smart event whose main organiser was Ines Alvergne. There were few organisers, all of them very generous and open minded.
Between the 25th and the 29th of March 2016, during the Easter weekend, a group of four amazing girls, Ines Alvergne, Romane Bossard, Noemi and Juliette Bouletton, organised one of the fewest AEGEE events in France and, in particular, in Lille, Flanders, near the French border with Belgium. The main organiser was Ines, a nice twenty-year-old student who enjoyed an Erasmus project in Cordoba, Spain, and currently studies Political Science at ESPOL at the Catholic University in Lille. In order to arrive to Lille, I took a Ryanair flight from Cagliari to Brussels Charleroi and I got to Lille bus station (Gare de Lille Europe) by a Flibco bus in the evening. The transfer lasted two hours but I felt very excited when I recognised the accommodation (a dojo) I had seen on Facebook.
Ines gave me a warm welcome to the house and I immediately broke ice by introducing myself to the participants. Some of them arrived later than me, but it was an unforgettable group of crazy people: Yoly Villalba, Peter Burger, Michael Neumann, Joep Heirman, Clara Ferrer Lopez, Michele Savino, Diana Poniros, Katerina Klimovà, Vicky Tzouvara, Ioanna Drympeta, Lorenzo Benozzi, John Cobbledick, Fabian Kebler, Eugenia Casariego Artola and Dimitri Anagnostaras .
The event began officially at 7 pm with French wine and cheese tasting. All cheeses and wines were very delicious so that I asked myself why there were not more because I was very hungry. The cheeses were Chévre, Comté and Camembert; whereas the white wine was “Sauvignon” from Alsace and the red ones were “Bordeaux” and “Cotes du Rhone”. After the light dinner, the organisers decided to accompany us to the most beautiful places and the coolest streets of the nightlife. They also invited the participants to taste some beers like the Belgian Rince Cochon. It was just the beginning because, the following day, Juliette proposed us to visit a brewery in Lille where we learned something about the production process of beers in Flanders. That brewery was the “Brasserie Cambier” (in rue Jean Monnet). The owner of the factory made me curious so I bought two kinds of the beers which were made there: Mongy Blonde and Mongy Triple. About this brewery, you can also explore their website http://www.brasserie-cambier.fr/.
During Saturday evening, it was the turn of the European Night: many AEGEE members know what I am talking about but I can not avoid to express my happiness in seeing a French organiser, Noemi, drinking a glass of “Giogantinu”, a typical Sardinian white wine, although at the beginning she was not persuaded because the bottle did not look good. Later we were involved in a night tour among some pubs and then in a disco. On Sunday, the participants had a lot of fun with a <<crazy 50>> city tour, something like a treasure hunt which allowed us also to listen to a chorus inside a restaurant during lunch time singing the French national anthem, la Marseillaise. At dinner, I could not miss some French dishes so I tried some meat and potatoes and that was all very good.
On Monday I visited the Zoo in Lille (in Avenue Mathias Delobel) where we laughed a lot taking some pictures near to the animals. In the afternoon, we went to the Beaux-Arts Museum in Place de la Republique, one of the largest art museums in France. Inside this museum, for example, you could look at some works by Donatello, Raphael, Van Dyck, Tissot, Rembrandt and Goya. In the evening, we tasted the French crepe: I admit it was much better than the ones I usually eat in Sardinia once a month.
Afterwards, Ines announced it was the moment to vote “The Best of”, as it
happens in many AEGEE events. If I may say so myself, I was voted as the best participant, the craziest and the best male ass [I laugh]. Why was I awarded no less than three prizes? I can not tell you that and it will remain a secret between the participants and the organisers of this Easter French adventure. If some other AEGEE members will visit France, I suggest them to study a little French language: it could get useful because French people are very attached to their native idiom. Anyway, I learned some French words (also rude words) and sentences thanks to Juliette and Noemi’s workshop. Au revoir, mademoiselles [I laugh] (which in English means “Goodbye, young ladies”).
After this international event, I am convinced that not all French girls are snobbish. I participated in a very cool event organised by an AEGEE antenna which was born a little more than two years ago (on the 4th of July 2013) thanks to enterprising girls like Ines and Romane (the current President of AEGEE-Lille) who believe in cultural exchange and contribute to make French a language much more spoken in AEGEE.
Written by Matteo Lai, AEGEE-Cagliari.