Aix is a college town. Of the 140,000 inhabitants, almost half are students. When I read my guidebook called Go France: On a Budget!, curiously wondering what it would say about Aix, it said, "expect to find drunken debauchery on the weekends, as this is a college town full of bars and nightclubs."
So, when Karinne, Karinne's French roommate Beranger, Jill, Sam, Zach and I wandered to O'Shannon's, an Irish pub where a table is always open, we were suprised to find exactly what the book said "drunken debauchery", but in mass-- and in green.
There were close to 400 students clogging the street surrounding the bar. Some had their faces painted with four-leaf clovers. Some were wearing ridiculous leprachaun hats. Some were trying to jig like the Irish, just in a very French way. All were drinking Guinness enthusiastically-- so enthusiastically I know several stray drops found my coat and shoes, which now need a washing.
I attempted to use the bathroom in the pub, but was told that the line of people I had passed upon entering weren't waiting for the bar, but for the toilets, and that I was looking at about a thirty minute wait. After deducing that toilet paper would surely not be an amenity the bathrooms would possess after a night like this one, I decided to hold it.
After about an hour of pushing through the crowd and having half English, half French conversations with the intoxicated, jigging locals, Zach and I squeezed our way out to return to my wonderfully quiet, never crowded apartment.
Zach now has the terribly wrong impression that every night out in Aix is a night of "drunken debauchery". I keep telling him that is not the case, and that St. Patrick's Day simply brought out the latent Irish in the huge student population of Aix.
It was fun. It was green. If O'Shannons is any indication, I don't think I could handle Dublin on the 17th of March. I'm content with my Aix, forever infilitrated by students who, I would argue, are only "debacherous" on very special occasions.
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