Looking for a Lovely Afternoon...

As always, I am looking for ways to be involved in the community where we live (which is not easy as an outsider who is still learning the language). Saturday, I was happy to have my husband back from working abroad. We had noticed signs up in town for a medieval festival this weekend. Thinking that this would be a nice cultural event for us to attend as a family, we arranged our day in order to attend. Our town has a medieval quarter with very old buildings (where people still live by the way), uneven cobblestones, etc. You can still see these huge hooks on the sides of the buildings on Rue du Boucherie where the butchers used to hang their meats. There are also 2 churches from that period one of which has a crypt. It is pretty cool considering how old this stuff is. Having been pretty much home bound for a week, I was ancy to get out of the house. The chance to eat lunch "out" with D is pretty much a big event as I hadn't seen him for a week and really hadn't seen anyone else either. I am always a little reticent about "facing the world of France" when I am out of practice speaking French, and I always feel better with D. since he speaks much better French than I. Anyway, we set out about lunchtime to walk into town with SA in tow.

Upon entering the medieval quarter we saw decoration banners and signs and little shops and stands with crafts and artwork for sale. The shopkeepers were dressed in medieval attire. We stopped at the creperie for lunch where we sat for the usual 2 hours, but as you might guess, we ended up taking turns walking SA around in the jog stroller during the meal. What better way to see the sights of the medieval festival! Right? Yes, but I noticed a strange phenomenon. What I had hoped to be a fun, family, educational event, turned out to be a bit like Halloween. The fair people of Billom were not content in simple period dress. Most people were dressed up as someone scary looking- we saw dracula, bloody prisoners dragging chains, a green faced monster man, and really tall faceless men in black robes with hoods. Some of the less scary were a woman with a dog head, a little girl dressed up like a genie, a little boy dressed like Peter Pan with a green face, and several people with white robes and Obie won kanobie ears/ Spok ears- I think maybe they were supposed to be nymphs? Anyway, I guess they thought it would be more fun to dress up as mythical characters. As we looked at the schedule of events we noticed that there was a spectacle of torture later in the afternoon! This did it for me. Highly disappointed in my town's medieval festival and my reimmersion into the world of France, we began walking home, but on the way we encountered a guy with a whip and a metal face mask who had a green faced, insane looking, bloody prisoner on a leash who kept lurching out at everyone. Luckily SA didn't seem to notice or be scared by these bizarre figures. I tried to divert her attention to the "doggies" and the "naay" (horse) until we made it out of the medieval quarter. So much for our lovely afternoon of medieval history! Luckily, Sunday afternoon we managed to leave town and visit Vichy where we shopped (a real treat as everything in our town as well as Clermont-Ferrand is closed on Sundays), went to the park, and had fruit smoothies (nonexistent in France except for this cute little place called the "Juice Cafe" which is run by an English lady!).