The 21st birthday, for obvious reasons, is not nearly as important in Europe as it is in America. Considering how often I see highschool kids at the bars, it's apparent that drinking age is not so much celebrated or rebelled against in France as it is simply overlooked.
Regardless, it's special to us 'Mericans so when a friend turned the magic "21" we all decided to go out to a Discotheque. Now before you all, all of you, start to fantasize about the radical nature of European dance raves and such, hear what I have to say.
No one tells you about the jank bus that takes you 45 minutes out of the city and then trapps you in the boonies with no way to return except your own car or 2 buses that run at either 4:30 or 6:30am. Scary.
Also, aside from smoking, which is banned in all bars and clubs, the French love line dances they all know. Toward 3:30 in the morning, I witnessed a hundred French people line up and dance a sort of Latin/European Electric Slide.
Also, imagine a long dark hallway tucked into the back of the club. About half of the drunken mass of people trapped at the club (the other half dancing a perverted version of the Electric Slide) are squished shoulder to shoulder in this chamber, smoking. Smoking and smoking and smoking; and it's all trapped between two sealed glass doors where I sit smoking a poorly rolled, kind of wet, French cigarette split between myself and Jim.
In the end, we exit the foggy corridor unsatisfied and dismayed to find that we have been left alone on the dancefloor and the bus for home is minutes away from leaving.
- I feel uncomfortable and dizzy.
- I run for the door and barely make it in time to wait 20 minutes in the parking lot.
- I wobble home uncomfortably on my shitty 3-speed bike and by 5:45 am safely in my bed, ultimately not much worse for wear.
I am, however, struck by the realization that no one is scarred quite as easily these days as they were in past generations.
