Woodstower…

Again, for most of the day I slept or relaxed as I only ended up going to sleep around 6am...

I was being a lazy ass as usual, finally getting into the rhythm of not doing anything (finally...just like Seychelles, it takes me about 3 weeks to adapt to a much slower pace of life...one I don’t really enjoy), but then Fatiha invite me to join her and 2 other friends from Saturday night (Jeani [pron. Jean –ee], a guy and Laurance [like Laurence but with a French accent], a lady......it’s France, don’t ask. Lol) to go to the Grand Park Miribel-Jonage.

We drove outside the Lyon city limits to the “periferique” (outskirts as I understand it) to the grand parc which is a HUUUUGE ass ground where people braai [barbeque], go to concerts and just chill...a similar vibe to Newlands [famous Rugby stadium near Cape Town] or Tokai [a forest in the southern suburbs popular in summer for picnics & barbecues], but not so forest-y. And its immense...I can’t even compare it to anything in SA...the grounds are just huge.

After we got there we went to where the festival, Woodstower was being held. It was almost done but there was a small band playing and on another side there was a small cadre of theatre people performing a play amidst their self-made stage. The play was “la tete du Sophocles” (the head of Sophocles). I caught it near the end and could understand anything because they were shouting and using a microphone, but basically this guy Sophocles gets his head chopped off. They were so innovative with the stage, having loads of costumes changes, making their own sound effects and the stage had a sail on one side that could come out to imitate the sail of a boat and they had a homemade launching device that they used to launch one guy maybe 10-12m into the air and land on a crash mat held by two other guys...he was a crow J it was really cool..and loads of people were watching and laughing.

We then went to chill by the river where people were swimming and lying on the grass...around 5pm they had a play or opera on the water. They had 3 floats made, onto which 3 guys climbed and rang bells, and then there was a lady on another barge, the barge being her dress and we later found out there was a guy playing piano underneath. (They set up speakers in front of the water for the sound). There also was a guy on a big contraption that held a horse. It had 2 gerbil like wheels that had 2 guys in them, using them to turn and move the big horse which was mounted on top of the wheels on which sat the guy. I had no clue what it was about and neither did any of Fatihas friends.

play on the water...

We left around 7pm and got pizza.....nom nom nom. Cold pizza for breakfast baby!!

view from Croix Rousse