27 Jan 25

It was a strange night at the paella party. Laurent and Nanou invited two couples; the women were friends of Nanou’s since high school, one couple Algerian and the other couple about to be married, everyone in their 50s. Dinner took a lot longer than expected for the rice to cook in the large paella pan and we ate around 2230. Throughout the meal Laurent DJ-ed from his phone and afterwards Nanou and her girlfriends got up from the table when David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” came on. Everyone had their phones out filming it: the three of them with their arms around each other shouting in a somewhat drunken, French-accented “let’s dance!” Then they went outside to smoke though, and one of the women collapsed on the street and had to be carried back inside. But she wasn’t drunk (she only had two small aperitifs), and no one knows exactly why she passed out. Her color was bad and she just lay there on the floor with the large dog Rocket nervously wagging his tail and nudging her.

So we turned the music off and all sat in the room together and revived her, then Nanou made a pot of coffee. In maybe an hour they had a bottle of champagne out and the Algerian guy, his guitar. Nanou’s friend was smiling and sipping coffee and looked embarrassed but OK. Then Laurent, with the torch he used for caramelizing sugar on the crème brûlée, burned his fingertip really badly when a piece of liquefied sugar somehow got on his skin and made a nasty blister. It was after midnight. I got asked a few times “you don’t drink, not at all?,” but people were really nice about it. And the Algerian guy, with his guitar, said in English yeah it’s not good for your health.

In the morning I helped Nanou remove the leaves from the dining room table and we had a quiet breakfast. Laurent and Nanou were up until about 4. There was a decent amount of paella left, the part that got stuck to the bottom of the pan but was still desirable Laurent explained, and several of the large gambas with their black beady eyes and long antennae which I always find disturbing. Perhaps too much like an insect on my plate. Laurent put the pan in the back yard so Rocket could help clean it out. Then the two of us gathered our things for a drive to Luxembourg and spent the afternoon touring the European court of justice where Laurent works, then the old part of Luxembourg, the vieille ville as they say in French.

The court of justice includes 27 member states throughout the EU, requiring an elaborate process for translation during court hearings. Laurent badged us in to the private conference rooms for a tour: there were 20-some cabins off to the side of each room where interpreters conveyed translation to the lawyers on the main floor. Tomorrow the new president of the commission was being confirmed and Laurent would need to be on hand for a long day of official proceedings including detailed seating charts and people in colorful robes, the media. It felt strange walking through the large empty buildings with crystal baccarat chandeliers and highly collectible art, me posing by a large Rodin so Laurent could take a picture with my phone.

For our last dinner we sat around the crowded kitchen table eating cheese and bread and mom played songs from her phone: Cat Stevens, Gordon Lightfoot, Gram Nash. Nanou sang the words in her accented French and sometimes got them really wrong, a source of playful tension between her and Laurent as his English was a lot better than hers and she often felt bad about that. We all tried to encourage one another and everyone was really nice about my French, especially their friends at the paella party.

Today mom and I drive back to Germany with our bag of treats from France and I need to get back to work on a blog I’m ghostwriting for Microsoft. It’s hard-going and I’m not sure how well it will turn out. I try to remind myself these things don’t matter much. I have another week and a half here, and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, travel