Des Oiseaux de Nuit (Night Owls)

When the French party, they party all night long. They like to stay out until at least 6am. This is especially true of the boite de nuit (nightclub) crowd, but house parties can last until an equally late (or early, depending on how you look at it) hour.

I am bad at partying until the wee hours of the morning. In California, the bars closed at 2am, which meant they started kicking people out around 1:30am, which meant I was usually home and in bed asleep by 2:30/3am!

I have not yet been able to adjust to the French way of partying.

They start their parties around the same time as I did in college (around 9/10pm), but then just keep on going and going and going like the energizer bunny until, if it were a weekday, I’d be waking up to go to work.


Clearly he was modeled after French night life.
source

The drink of choice on these ridiculously long evenings of partying is vodka redbull. Having had a bad experience and not liking the effect of the combination of these two substances, I abstained from the drink my first night at a Belgium nightclub. This resulted in me tired, cranky, and wanting nothing more than to be at home sleeping, sitting in a corner looking miserable by 3am.

Round two at a Belgian club, I decided to give this drink a try, thinking that maybe the only reason the French (and Belgians) are so good at staying out so late is because they are fueled by energy drinks. Despite my best efforts to “get wings,” come 3 am, I was tired, cranky, sitting on a bar stool and asking FBF if we’d be leaving soon.

My Made in America body doesn't want to be up past 3 regardless.

I have not remained completely untransformed, however. It has only taken two years, but I am now able to stay up an entire extra hour before hating the world. Just last weekend I was dancing at a house party until 4 in the morning!

At the rate of half an hour of additional party time per year I reside in France, it should only take me 4 more years to enjoy partying à la française!