Burial of life of a young girl

It sounds really scary when it is directly translated to English. (Don’t use auto translation for this).  I guess a better translation is ‘burying life as a single girl’ and it simply means a bachelorette party!

Our friends Phillipe and Marie got married in earlier this year, and my husband and I were invited to their enterrement de vie de garcon/jeune fille in Avignion. Since they were supposed to be (I will tell you why “supposed to”  later) bachelor/bachelorette parties, the boys and girls separated and had their own activities. The guys played paintball in the forest, and we girls spent some luxurious time at a Hammam (steam bath) in downtown Avignion.

There are many people from the Maghreb or Mid-Eastern countries living in France for historical reasons. Hamamm has been serving as a social place for these people for years. This tradition was adapted to the French society and many French people (especially women) enjoy visiting Hamamm for relaxation and their beauté.

Now, you get changed into a bathing suit (I would strongly recommend that you bring a bikini as you need to take off your top!), and a bath towel.  We first entered a place with beautiful mosaic tiles,and showers.  You take your shower and put black paste (close to gel) of soap called savon de noir. You rub all of your body with it and rinse it. Then you go to a hot steamy place (so steamy as to you can’t even see the corner of the room) until your masseur calls you. She will then put on a special glove and rub your body with gommage exfoliant to remove skin’s outermost dead skin cells. Gommage means eraser in French, and you will know why people call it that!  After the treatment, you will be surprise to see your old skin cells all over your body almost like eraser dust. But then your body feels so soft as a newborn baby (I exaggerate a little, but really soft) and you fell like princess.

After everybody finished the treatment, we were invited into a dimly lit room where we enjoyed Arabic mint tea. Then we had couscous for dinner. Our girl talk continued over Arabic sweet pastries and the future bride could not suppress her laughter.

It was 10:30pm when we finished dinner, but of course our night was not finished yet. We spent some time in a bar in the centre of Avignion, before we finally decide to go to ‘TOTO Club’. I did not know that it was but I just decided to follow them.

We drove about a half an hour from Avignion, passed through middle of a forest and finally saw a neon sign ‘Discothèque TOTO Club’!  I did not even know the word ‘disco’ still existed. When we parked our cars, guess what we found?  Our boys’ cars were parked there too!  We got inside, found our partners who were as looked surprised to see us. We were all in this dated, tiny place with mirror balls spinning from the ceilings, which was packed with lots of young, dressed up people. And we danced until the sun started to show its face.