When I was young, Halloween was so far the best party of the year with New Year’s Eve. I used to dress up as a witch every year with my orange wig and my black cloak full of cobwebs. My friends and I went from a home to another asking for Trick or Treat and had a lot of fun. As I am from Brittany, we once finished by eating “crêpes” at a neighbor’s home. One of them, used to dig in pumpkins and we could see light emerging from it at the entrance of her house: it was wonderful!

I did not had such a thrill for Halloween for a long time but as I moved to Paris and met American students, I had one goal: to spend Halloween with them because Halloween is still an important party for American today. I was looking for a moment of change of scenery and gathering thanks to this celebrating day. I was not disappointed.
Halloween still exists! Even in France! At 7 o’clock in the afternoon, Parisians are waiting to enter at Viva Fiesta at La Bastille. Everybody wants to find a fancy dress. A crowd has invaded the shop. Don’t think it will take you ten minutes to get one: you have to wait outside the shop and then inside. The sellers are superbly disguised so as you are waiting one hour in such a freak! No, the atmosphere is friendly! Children with their mum. Teenagers and grown-ups expecting to find a great fancy dress to spend a funny night. So did I.

As I met my friend Hannah at L’Horloge, Porte de Pantin, she was dressed up as Matilda from Danny DeVito’s movie. Around a beer and surrounded by other friends, she explains to me: “Matilda was one of my hero when I was young. She is powerful and even when she has troubles, she always find a solution to get over it. I love her 90’s style. I find it so cool being dressed up as one’s hero”.

Hannah invited me to a concert of a band whose she knows the drummer. Lord Huron play its indie-rock songs in the US and in Europe. They are becoming more and more popular in the US because their song The Night We Met has been used by the famous TV serie 13 Reasons Why. People love them as the audience tonight has paid 25 euros to see the band at the Trabendo, an intimate concert hall in Paris, 19th arrondissement.

On top of these reasons, they played different instruments and share real feelings through their music. Thus, I think we can qualify them as artists. During one hour and a half, we were transported to the US thanks to their enchanting songs. We even discover a new instrument: like a magician, one member of the band made songs just moving his hands above an electronic device. Hannah agreed: their music is likened to Bon Iver music.

The stylish and charming members of the group cursed the audience even after getting rid of their Halloween masks: people were singing, they knew the lyrics by heart and clapped in their hands. Hannah and another friend, Grace, loved the show and so did I. She had already saw them in the US. However, Romain, a French student in cinema and also Grace’s boyfriend criticized the show: “They may be good artists within two years but for the moment I did not get into it”.

After a little chat between the drummer of Lord Huron and Hannah, who were both exciting about the fashion of scooters in Paris, it was time to go to O’Sullivan at Pigalle. Eating a burger -of course!-, Hannah confides: “In Paris, they are the Americans who only speak English and don’t try to speak French at all and they are the others. Those who want to speak French and discover the French culture. I try to hang out with both of them « .

Indeed, we met some other American friends of Hannah: dancing near the scene of O’Sullivan night bar, the three blond American girls, sunglasses on the head, were dancing while listening to Nada Surf, Greenday, or The Cranberries. A definitely 90’s Anglo-Saxon playlist. The bar was full of dressed up young people partying. It was an international party, I would say an “Erasmus party”.

Nevertheless, we could find some Parisian atmosphere as soon as we were waiting to take our coats back. The line was huge and the employee particularly slow. Parisians were criticizing at him and complaining. We could feel some hunger. I am new in Paris and not used to this stressing atmosphere. Hannah and I were calm, even when we discovered after having waiting during 45 minutes that as we wanted to leave the bar, we could have taken our coat back without waiting on the line!

I had a lot of fun tonight. Even the taxi-driver of our Uber made us laugh: “If I do 15 errands before 3 o’clock, I have a bonus”. Thus, I went back home in a Taxi movie atmosphere(Franck Gastambide, Luc Besson), happy from this American night. As fun as when I was a child!

Alizée Le Diot