a Nietzchian birthday

Over the weekend Philippe's friend Olivier came to stay with us. Friday, Philippe had to work all day, so I proposed a day trip to Eze, which is a city situated on top of a small mountain near Monaco. Nietzsche once lived here and apparently he would take contemplative walks from the top of the mountain down to the sea and then climb back up. I did this trail once last summer with my friend Luba and an energetic guy from Holland who was visiting the region and knew Luba from a friend of a friend kind of thing. It was in the middle of summer, and incredibly hot and dry when we decided to take the Nietzsche trail. Half way down the mountain, the souls of Luba's sandals came unglued from the heat and fell off so we had to help her hobble down on one foot before she took out the white kleenex of surrender. Basically crawling down the mountain, over heated, lack of water, brings back nightmarish visions of the supposedly contemplative walk. I have to check, but perhaps, Nietzsche was nearing the end of his life and the sypholous made this seem like a good idea to him.

Once in Eze, of course, Olivier saw the sign. Nietzsche trail. It must be said that Olivier once did a trail called la route de saint Jacques de compostelle, a hike he began in the west part of France and ended in the north-west of spain. A hike that took him 60 excucruciatingly long days to complete. When I tried to dissuade him from the trail with the story of my friend's shoe, he laughed unsympathetically at me, handed me a fig newton, and moments later we were on the trail. I was little better equiped this time in my puma tennis shoes, instead of flip-flops, so the trail wasn't as nightmarish as the last time, but the bus that brought us back up the mountain is another story..

Friday also happened to be Olivier's birthday. Philippe and I planned on taking him to a local restaurant called the 'Vieux Murs' to celebrate. Just before we were going to leave, Philippe received a call from his sister, who was in Cannes working during the film festival. She works in publicity, and its her job to make contact with companies and spread the 'buzz' by way of newspaper articles, pictures, etc. Her job, was basically to hang out in nightclubs, drink and offer champagne, and try to get people hooked on to her publicity campaign. Needless to say, that we ended up in a Cannes nightclub that night. The club was called 'Le Cercle' which is actually a Parisian club, that transported itself to Cannes for the festival. The place was dead from about midnight until 1 am, but afterwards it was much more lively filled with subtle business advances and cocktails. Around 3 am and a few glasses of champagne later, I was found doing the cabbage patch in front of an open window, for all the patio to see. At this point Philippe gave some sound advice ' Leave when you're at your highest'. I think we should have left 10 minutes earlier.

Happy Birthday Olivier : )