Le Dome Brasserie Language Exchange

On Tuesday evenings, a bar just down the street at Gambetta and Clemenceau called Le Dome holds an evening of language exchange. They also do philosophers cafes and other such events. On May 8, Elena decided to head down. We actually wanted to go on May 2, but I was sick then.

So we got there at 8pm. Already there were over a dozen people there. We knew some of the people who would be there because it was on onvasortir.com (as I found out that night, we can called it OVS). So we found the OVS crowd and started chatting. About half--probably a little more--the people there were French and the other half were from somewhere else. I was the only American, there was a Spanish woman from Barcelona, A Swiss guy from Bern. Elena is Canadian.

I ordered a beer (it is a Brasserie-self styled as a "Maison de Biere" after all) and Elena got a coffee. Then we started chatting with the people around us. People moved around a bit. Sometimes someone would catch wind of a language being spoken, and they'd head over there to speak that language. I wished my French were better. One woman helped me quite a bit. She asked me a question, and then corrected my answer to say it exactly correctly.

At the peak, there were probably a couple dozen people. Mostly speaking English and French, with a smattering of German and Spanish. The gender ratio was favorable--many pretty women who had to put up with all us old men--actually there were a lot of lady-killers there, too.

I plan to go there again with Elena. It's a fun event and you can't beat the fact that it's only about a 3 minute walk from our place.