***Note: I started this entry about 1 month ago, but just lost track of it. If I can remember anything about the Hashes on Saturday and Sunday of that weekend, I’ll share. But it really was a great time.***

So, as many of you might know, last week Dear Hubby and I took off for a just about a week in Paris. Both of our 40th birthdays are less than a month away (mine tomorrow, yikes) so we decided it was ok to play hookie for a week. With gracious help from my family taking the kids and giving us hotel rooms for early birthday presents, it was too good not to go.

As many of you might also know, Hubby and I are both hashers. If you don’t know what it is, go look it up, but essentially we run for beer. The Paris Hash House Harriers were celebrating their 800th run with a big weekend planned full of activities. There was a pub crawl Friday night, a trail and party on Saturday, and another trail on Sunday morning. We surrounded the weekend with some tourist-type stuff (I’ll put non-hashing stuff in another blog), and off we went.

Friday night’s pub crawl started at the Metro station Parmentier. After much translating, and a little swearing, we had figured out the Metro/Train/Bus thing and managed the 3 trains to get to the start. We found our Hare for the evening, Pull the Prick Out, waiting behind the steps. We were told that this was a no check, 6 stop pub crawl with stops very close to each other, so off we went. I think we took approximately 80 steps around the corner from the start to the first bar called UFO. It was about the size of an airplane cockpit, filled with 40 or so still-way-too-sober hashers. We ordered a few pints, and began to socialize. Immediately I knew that I should have taken “Countries of Europe” refresher course, because I spent most of my time asking people how far away their “place” was from Paris. Seriously, can you point to Luxembourg on a map?

Everyone who had signed up for the weekend was issued a name tag with their name IN BIG LETTERS on the front. Sort of took away the fun of leaning into the personal space of scantily clad female hashers to read their necklace, but it was cold and they were wearing sweaters anyway. So after giving up trying to figure out where where on earth Mijas is – Spain, BTW –  I just tried to learn names. Cosmo, Higgins, Colonic Irrigation (if Nathan Lane and Ricky Gervais had a lovechild, it would be Colonic), Mizukashi, Radio KaKa, Cock in a Box, Burning Sensation, Thunder Tits, Shaggy, Oooh La La – are just a few that I managed to pick up. (Or could still read by the 3rd beer check).

The next bar was 1/2 the size of the first bar, and had gas masks hanging from the ceiling. Another pint, and lots more people. I would love to tell you the name of this bar, but I really have no clue.

The third bar had a two guitar players and a female vocalist, and seemed none to pleased that the crowd was loud and headed their way. They decided that this would be a good time for a break. It looked a bit frou-frou for the hashers, but it served cold beer. At this point, I moved myself and Sticky up to the lead hashers to find the next bar, because with each ensuing stop the line for the Loo was getting longer and longer. And the next bar was – well — interesting.

I really wish I knew what the name of this bar was, or really where it was since we were all meandering around the streets of Paris following random Plops of flour and occasional marks of BS for Beer Stop. But the fourth stop was straight our of a Ronny James Dio nightmare. If there were anywhere in Paris I would expect to hear Rammstein on the jukebox, it was this place. Needless to say – it was my favorite. There was a chained off section leading to the basement – which immediately drew our attention to see what was down there. Using some bad high school French and my new exchange-student-hasher-buddy, Cock in a Box, we were told that it was going to be something like Karoake and would start at 11:00. Or, at least that’s what we thought he said….

The hash left, but Sticky and I decided to stay and check out this Karaoke-like thing starting in a few minutes. We get down to the basement, which has more skeletons and crosses than the Ozbournes, and we see a giant screen, 4 microphones, and some dude who looks like Mark Wahlberg from the movie Rockstar (yumm, just saying.) After trying to read the flyer and cursing the fact that I cheated a lot during my French classes, we were able to figure out what this was: MOVIE KARAOKE. They played movie scenes, and had the lines up on the screen and the “actors” recited them. It was actually pretty funny at first….and then we found out what the feature attraction was going to be that night: You Fuck My Wife. Really, I couldn’t make that up.

At this point in the evening, we decided to return to the hash. It wasn’t hard to find them, you know, with a trail and the fact that they had only walked 1/2 block down to the next bar. I don’t even know what kind of bar this was, we met up with everyone outside who was generously sharing a bottle of wine – sans glasses. I shared in the bottle-swigging, and declared that it made me Hemingway-esque.

Finally, we ended at the Quarter General, a spacious bar painted bright yellow so that even a pub crawl ending hasher could find it. I think. There was a raucous violin/bass ensemble that played jazz and had everybody dancing. There were a few hash songs sung – more beer and dancing. We had our fun, and caught the metro before it closed for the night. We were told that the trail the next day was a meager 12K — that’s about 7 miles to us Americans, I might possibly want to sleep a little before that.