Diner en blanc

Diner en blanc: Thousands of people come together for a massive outdoor dinner. Everyone brings their own tables, chairs, food, wine, dishes, decorations, sparklers... You sign up to attend beforehand, but the location isn't announced until just a couple hours before the event – and even then, it's not the location, but a meeting point, from which everyone walks to the actual location all together and sets up their tables all at the same time, and then has a massive, good-atmosphere dinner party as the sun goes down. It's fantastic. Thought of by the French, of course!

Also, everyone wears all white, and all of these figures in white emerging out of the general crowd on a busy street on a warm summer evening is a sight to behold.

I only heard of this a couple weeks ago, thanks to a French office-mate who invited me along. Definitely look for this if there's one near you! It looks like it happens in several US cities too.

I can't really describe how beautiful it is in both idea and execution, but here are the pictures:

Diner en blanc!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Also, overheard in the bathroom, when we ducked/snuck into a hotel to use the facilities in the middle of the evening: "Das ist voll awkward!"

That's typical German use of an English adjective ("voll strange!") but I'd never heard the word "awkward" used in German before – it's not exactly an easy word to say. But since German doesn't have a word for "awkward," sometimes you have to borrow!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Also, can I just say that I'd like to know why the predictive text on my cell phone would recognize the word "butlery" but not "cutlery"? Also, why, when given the choice, would it choose to write "slave" rather than "plate"?? You can see this made things difficult when I was writing friends about what they needed to bring to the dinner!