You are not Julius Caesar, Napoleon

4/26/2016

This weekend, I went to a festival celebrating the guy cocky enough to compare himself to Julius Caesar. It was fantastic.

I love history, so the festival of Napoleon III was pretty cool. I was able to take a walk in his park and see hundreds of people walking around Vichy in period costume. That was pretty incredible to see. Like, 150 people in crinolines take up a ton of space, but when they dance the skirts are so pretty!

I was able to experience a French military camp and learn quite a bit about medicine from the period, which my host mom loved because she’s a doctor. I also got to closely examine one of the first domestically available sewing machines, which nearly fell of the table when the inside machinery was being shown to me. Those things are heavy. I learned about guns and bullets from the French Second Empire and watched the bullets get dipped in bacon grease so that they could slide more easily out of the gun when shot.

Then I watched a guy pour boiling water into a metal kettle and then into a metal cup to make tea and I wondered how he didn’t burn his fingers off because hot water is not a fun thing to be burned with. I asked him if it was hot and he HANDED ME THE CUP. I didn’t really know how to politely say that I didn’t feel like getting another burn from hot water, so I touched it and handed it back to him as quickly as possible while he smoked his era-appropriate cigar.

Then I wandered over to the games of the era and tried to knock down some pins with foam balls. I failed miserably. Then, I wandered over to an amazingly gorgeous chess set and almost got shot in the head with an arrow. Luckily, burning-hot-cup guy said “Mademoiselle, s’il vous plait”, and I moved just in time.

Then my friend Marian called me to see if I wanted to get lunch, so I met her back in the center of Vichy, where we got a sandwich and ate in the park, then went to an exhibit on the Suez Canal, which was mostly just portraits of Napoleon III. Then, we got a coffee before finding a good place to watch the three o’clock parade of dancers, musicians, and imperial family. It was so cold and I was wearing capris and a light jacket. I no longer trust any type of weather. While we were having our coffee, some guy sitting near us in the café told us how ridiculous all of these people in period costume were and I was just like “Dude. Had I known about this earlier, I would be one of those weirdos.”

Finally, the parade got to the opera, where we were, and so many people crowded us against the barricade that I thought I was gonna die from being squished. We watched a ton of people dance in the park after Napoleon and Eugenie opened the “ball” with a beautiful waltz.

After a few dances, Marian and I went to meet up with a friend of hers and her kids, then a friend of Paola, Marian’s friend, met up with us and she talked to me about how I absolutely had to go to the ball that night because she’d been one of the dancers four years ago and she absolutely loved it because of the skirts and the music and that it was just incredible. So I was convinced to go to the ball, even though I’d made my mind up on Friday morning to go.

Then, the six of us took a horse-drawn carriage ride through Vichy and I was given a tiny tour of the city while we were in the carriage before I had to get in line to buy my ticket to the ball.

The ball was absolutely spectacular. Everyone had changed into ball gowns, there was a live orchestra, and then there were other musical performances during the course of the ball to give the dancers a rest. I sat there for two hours completely lost in 19^th century France and it made me sad that nobody asked me to dance. But of course, who’s going to ask a tiny American to dance at an imperial ball. Then, I went home and had dinner. And that was all I got to experience of 19^th century France, though I wish the festival would go on for a week so that I could go listen to historians talk about the achievements of the era because I could sit in history lectures for years without getting bored.

But next weekend is the Star Wars convention so I am definitely looking forward to that.