This weekend there was a music festival just a short walk from our apartment, in the town of Renens.  It was called Festimixx, and it took place both Friday and Saturday.  There were many art vendors and food booths, as well as three stages of music. The best part though was that entrance was free, so on Saturday Melissa and I went over to check it out after dinner.

The atmosphere felt very much like a neighborhood block party. There were games and balloons for kids, and a large proportion of the attendees were sitting at picnic tables talking and enjoying the worldwide cuisine. Our big mistake of the day was eating before coming. The multiple food booths at the festival represented countries from all over the world. There were kebabs, egg rolls, noodles, sausages, and even a hog roast. We were too full for dinner food, but did manage to squeeze in an ice cream cone.

We only stayed long enough to see one act at each stage, but from our small sampling saw a diverse range.  The main stage had a salsa band, complete with a Spanish singer.  They played well, but for me it was more interesting to see all the people dancing in the crowd, most doing salsa dancing, and most looking like they knew what they were doing.  The next stage we visited had a high school choir singing American pop hits.  I hope it never gets old for me to hear American songs sung with a French accent.  So far it’s always made me giggle. The last stage we saw had a community band playing what sounded like pep band music.  Melissa and I were both in band in high school, so it brought back some memories.  I have a short video below of the community band.

Out of everything we saw at the festival though, I think what I will remember most is learning a new French phrase from the sign posted below.  The sign is saying that they hand out free earplugs, and the phrase in French for earplugs is des tampons auriculaires (ear tampons) 🙂

We also started watching Orange is the New Black through Swiss Netflix this week.  It’s almost the same as watching it in America, the dialogue is in English, but there are also French subtitles we couldn’t figure out how to remove.  It’s turned out to be educational having the subtitles though, we’ve both learned some new colorful words and phrases not taught in polite French.  Also, if you watch close enough you can find gems in the translation like the picture below, where someone is saying, “The job candidates look like rejects from Animal House.”  Which when you read the subtitles teaches you that in France the movie Animal House was called simply, American College.