I envisaged the big cities posing me the most problems. Fitting New York, Chicago, New Orleans, et al, into manageable blogs would be tough tasks, given their size and attractions, not to mention our close friends who live there. Yet now, as I type this in the Jeep heading away from this wonderful town, I feel no words I choose can do justice to our four-day sojourn here, a stay that saw us arrive and meet new people, and leave having made good friends. It was exciting, it was funny, it was emotional, it had a million-dollar tiger. We planned to stay one night; we went home four days later. Baton Rouge, you are in my heart now and always.
Before I explain the emotional effect of this Mississippi river town on both Dean and I, perhaps it would help to describe how we ended up there in the first place. Rewind two years or so, and Dean is searching Facebook for the popular actress Katie Holmes. It will come as no surprise to you to learn that Dean was not successful in befriending Tom Cruise’s wife. What Dean did manage, however, was to become friends with a girl from Louisiana called, wait for it, Katie Holmes. Studying at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Katie and Dean’s friendship was integral to the two of us visiting this town. This is the beauty of the revolution we live in today. The world is smaller than it ever has been, broken into manageable pieces by new media and technology that allows a boy from London and a girl from the Deep South to become good friends, chatting most days, without ever meeting each other. If Dean had not decided to find a Scientology celebrity on Facebook, we may never have wound up in Baton Rouge and, in turn, I may not have had an amazing week there, a week which included one of the best days and nights of my life.
Returning to the present, Dean was excited about meeting Katie face to face for the first time, while I was simply interested in sampling a new city in America. As we drove up to Baton Rouge, in pleasant sunshine, we had the car stereo turned up high and became increasingly excited about a stay in a University town. I could never have guessed that I would be feeling so utterly dejected about leaving, just a few days later. Reading this, you may find it hard to understand why this is the case. Baton Rouge is not exactly famous, or commercially important to anybody from Britain. They say that the people make a place. For Baton Rouge, this is especially true. So, Sam, Katie, Ashli, Katelyn, Megan, Emily and Dominique (and everyone else we met), thank you making our trip to America that little bit better.
Before explaining what Dean and I actually did in Baton Rouge, and why that contributed to the amazing time we had, a word or two is due about the cityscape. With palm trees and oak-lined avenues, beautiful lakeside walks and impressive colonial mansions, Baton Rouge looks fabulous, particularly on a sunny day. The State House (Baton Rouge is the state capital of Louisiana) was particularly grand, with a towering structure supported by the State Senate and State House of Representatives on either side of it, reached by a walk up step that bare the name of every state in America. Built by a rather narcissistic and egotistical Governor, it bestrides the town, visible from a fair distance, and yet strangely fits perfectly despite its gargantuan size (the tallest State Capital building in America).
The Mississippi River is also prominent in Baton Rouge, which also enjoys the position of being America’s fifth largest inland port. A key moment in our stay was on the banks of the river during the early evening of our second day in the city. Sam was keen for Dean and I to watch the sun set over the opposite bank of the river, and Katie and Dean, and Sam and I, standing at slightly different viewpoints, were not disappointed by a glorious Magic Hour, with red lights sparkling over the water, and a crescent moon slowly emerging from the darkening sky like a half-finished halo high above our heads. Drawn in by the peaceful sounds of the lapping water and Sam’s engaging conversation, the dramatic vista and her passionate explanation of her life, interests and future plans, there was no other place I would have wanted to be.
Louisiana State University (LSU) is the dominant infrastructure in Baton Rouge, and adds to its aesthetic appeal. Sorority Row, for example, with its colonnade style houses looking out on to the lake, and marked by well-grown oak trees and the flights of local pelicans, was a particularly attractive part of town, both for the view and, of-course, the lovely Sorority girls who lived there. Looming large over the university campus is the main football stadium, home of the LSU Tigers, and housing over 90,000 people. Next to the stadium is a one-million dollar dwelling for the Tigers official mascot: Michael the Tiger, a fearsome beast who stalked his cage and regarded his British photographers with initial resentment and subsequent indifference. It is certainly a million miles from the University of Nottingham, who have no stadium, let alone a tiger. We knew already that college sport is huge in America, and LSU was no exception. The colours of purple and yellow were everywhere to be seen, and students and alumni alike take pride in their institution’s sporting success.
The campus itself is staggering, with impressive columned buildings (particularly the union building, plus the Music and Dramatic Arts department and the Law building), bustling quadrants, neat coffee shops and retail outlets, and expansive parkland where students relax, sunbathe or play pick-up games of Frisbee, football (ours and theirs), or baseball. It was hard, when walking around, not to feel like studying here would have been inspiring and a lot of fun, and consequently be jealous of those that do have that opportunity. Certainly there was something about LSU that Dean and I feel very much at ease with and at home. No doubt the girls we became close friends with aided that, but the campus itself had a feel of familiarity: Nottingham uni-park, with beautiful women and palm trees. And a tiger.
Comfortable in our surroundings, then, Dean and I already forewarned our hotel reception that we may be extending our stay from the initially booked one night. Our first few hours in Baton Rouge helped us come to this understanding. We were picked up by Katie and her friend Ashli, who has such an enthusiastic attitude about her, constantly energetic and interested, keen to learn and chat, with an impressive turn in comedy, that we were already laughing and enjoying ourselves within just a few minutes. Less funny was Ashli’s driving ability, which was frankly terrifying. We visited the State Capital building, posed for photos in the Senate and House of Representatives, and then headed for the girls’ Sorority, Chi Omega. Dean had visited a Sorority before, but this was my first experience. Obviously there is something appealing about going into a beautiful house, full of wood-panels, lush sofas, grand pianos and, well, women. Within a few moments of being inside Chi Omega, we had completed two girls’ crossword puzzle for them, and befriended two new girls in Emily and Dominique, before then being introduced to Megan, whose soccer shirt was obviously the subject of some interest for Dean and I. A huge fan of both ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Friends’, Megan and I went round-for-round on key trivia from both of these cultural institutions.
Reluctantly leaving the house (admittedly, we had not eaten all day), the girls took us to a bar-restaurant called Chimes. This was a busy bistro, with sports on television, loud music, and good food. It was here that I tried my first po’boy, with the famed local catfish inside. Ashli impressed us by ordering alcohol with the frequency and tenacity of the very best British chavs (in-joke), Sam became the first American I have ever seen order a salad, and Dean and I settled in to our first night in the city. Excited by what lay in store, our hotel room turned into a rock concert as we prepared ourselves for the evening plans. There may be, somewhere in the vast entity of digital technology, a video of me dancing around the room to ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ by Busted, but sadly this is restricted viewing.
Katie and Ashli picked us up again from our hotel. Mercifully, Katie was driving. We were taken to a trendy bar called Tsunami, situated on the top floor of the Baton Rouge Art Museum, and featuring a balcony looking out over the Mississippi. Tsunami would fit in well with any fashionable London nightspot, with its ambient lighting and music. Made to feel so welcome by the girls, we enjoyed debating the finer points of modern music, art, film, television, cultural and political differences between the UK and the USA, and observations of the awkward first date taking place between the cigar-smoking man and high-heeled woman at the table next to us. Following on from Tsunami, Sam, Katie, Ashley, Dean and I headed on to Happy’s. This was a rather different bar, with a digital juke box, sticky floors, and one drunk man with a dog. Feeling the warmth of both the company and the drinks, conversation flowed freely, videos were captured, photos taken, and music enjoyed (provided by Sam’s $15 dollar coup d’état of the juke box).
Even later, as the night turned into early morning, we were taken to the Baton Rouge institution that is Louie’s café, a joint that served full portions of food into the small hours, including a supersize portion of burger and chips for Dean and one of the larger plates of hash-browns in culinary history for me. The girls bemoaned their early starts the next morning; Dean and I toasted our lack of any need to set an alarm (despite a brief flirtation with attempting to organise a morning coffee meet-up). Perhaps it was because we were back in a student environment, slipping into our university ways like old friends greeting each other at an airport arrivals gate, but Dean and I were more relaxed than at any other part of our trip, safe in the knowledge that we had good friends to show us around, and a picturesque town within which to get to know them all better.
Wednesday, then, and with a blazing hot sun shining down on Baton Rouge, we emerged bleary-eyed in our Jeep, heading towards the central campus area to meet Katie, Sam and Ashli and look at a giant tiger. Michael, the tiger in question, is housed in an enclosure that took millions of dollars to build, and is brought out on to the field alongside the cheerleaders at every Louisiana football game. Once, we were told, Michael managed to remove himself from his bindings and run with glee through the stadium, while cheerleaders, marching band members and spectators alike, panic-stricken and bemused, raced for the comparative safety of the exits. The image, of a rampaging tiger and screaming American sports fan, still makes me chuckle days later.
Katie, Ashli and Sam were enthusiastic tour-guides, showing us where they live and work, taking us into their world in a friendly and personal way, allowing us glimpses of real life in this part of the world, introducing us to their friends and teachers, their classrooms, coffee joints and quadrants. After much working, we returned with them to the Chi-O house, where we lounged on sofas or at the piano, planning the night ahead and getting to know this lovely group of girls even better. Our progress from strangers to close friends was interrupted only by Dean and I heading out to the front lawn, looking glorious in the late afternoon sunshine by the tranquil lake, to kick a real, proper, British football around. If I had one criticism of America, it would be their complete lack of understanding of the beautiful game, that steadfast grip they refuse to yield up for stop-start sporting pursuits like American Football and basketball. It felt good to wrap my foot round a bonafide ‘soccer-ball’ once again, even if it did delay our trip to the riverside to watch the aforementioned sunset by just a few minutes. Eventually, however, and after Sam stepped in to stop us bending it like Beckham any further, we headed for the river’s edge. In one’s life, there may only be a few moments of near-perfection, where the place you are in and what you are feeling merge together in unison and harmony, where everything and everyone fuse together in a symbiosis of symmetry and synchronization. That’s how it felt on the outpost overlooking the river, with the sun slowly setting.
Another period of hotel-based reflection and preparation followed before Sam and Katie took us to meet Katelyn and Ashli at The Bulldog, a pub-bar close to the university that had cheap beer and shots, combining flowing booze with genial company and a bustling trade. It was here that the girls taught us a secret Chi-O chant regarding the drinking of shots, which alas I cannot commit to paper as to do so would break an impressive dedication to preserving the secret sacraments of Sorority life. Sororities, for all their Hollywood-ised sexual motifs, actually exist as important traditional communities, where girls can enjoy university safely and securely, where they can more easily make close friends and partake in both academic and charity work. They are like large, residential societies, and as such come with their own rituals, conventions and initiations, alongside philanthropic efforts that UK colleges could certainly learn from. Many of these traditions are secret, protecting a bond between members of the Sorority that, in some cases, stretch back many years. In this way, there is a code, a sense of honour, duty and companionship that is admirable and should be noted. Certainly, the Chi-O girls we met were well-mannered, interesting, intelligent, kind and fun. The girls we became such good friends with illustrate all these attributes and demonstrate why Sororities (and Fraternities, I suppose) work.
We lost track of time in The Bulldog, and eventually only myself, Dean, Katie and Sam remained out of the initial group. From the campus walk to the Chi-O lounge chat, from the Mississippi sunset to the subsequent Best Western Hotel sunrise: it was a perfect twenty-four hours.
Our travels in America have provided us with so many wonderful moments and places and people. We have slept little and partied much, driven far and walked extensively. Consuming food and alcohol and culture and new sights as much as Dean and I have, it is not surprising to learn that in an epic adventure there will inevitably be moments of epic fatigue. The sheer wall of tiredness that hit us later the following day, after an almost unbroken twenty-four hours, was immense, and it was only with a supreme effort that we made it back on to campus by the early afternoon, for a few hours of football and guitar playing, not to mention snoozing, on the main parkland of the University. That night, the majority of the girls had booked tickets to see British star Robert Pattinson pout his way through the latest ‘Twilight’ film, leaving Dean and I in the capable hands of the beautiful Sam, who took us to Bogie’s. I can only describe Bogie’s as the most ‘college bar’-looking college bar in the entire United States of America. Think ‘American Pie’, think red cups and short skirts, think loud music and strange fashions. Dean, of course, was in his element, and began speeding down a road to all-out intoxication, working his way through a number of introductions set up by Sam, even managing to find coordination within his inebriation to dance with complete strangers. Sam and I enjoyed Dean’s descent into utter ridiculousness, observing his antics from the relative safety of general sobriety (give or take a vodka-water with extra lime or two). How much Dean remembered the next day is a question for the great man himself. I can only tell you that, during the course of the evening, Dean made near perfect strangers shout famous quotes from the London Underground at our camera, posed for photos wearing a tiara, and convinced two sets of girls that he and I really were the Jonas Brothers.
You will have noted that I have described three nights in Baton Rouge. It was initially only meant to be one. I cannot explain how pleased I am that we stayed for longer. Indeed, we even considered driving back to this safe haven of laughter, friendship, romance and sunsets after just one night in neighbouring Texas. In hindsight, however, it is better to leave wanting more. Certainly, I know that Dean and I will spend time with all the lovely people we met in Baton Rouge once again. A European travelling trip is in the offing for many of these girls, and we will be counting the months until we can join them in Paris and welcome them in London.
From a personal point of view, I was able to get to know someone’s lifestyle, geography, culture, their hopes and fears in the town where they live, and remain excited to reciprocate in a few months time. It is hard to meet people and leave them, to say goodbyes that mean ‘see you soon’, to drive away (at 7pm the next day, rather than the intended 1.30pm) with so much unspoken and yet so much experienced. We kept hearing the song ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City throughout our few days in Baton Rouge, but it was only after leaving that I fully understood the lyrics. These girls were our fireflies, and our trip to America has been enhanced in so many ways by being with them. We’ll be ‘calling Baton Rouge’ forever. Trust me.
“I’d like to make myself believe that Planet Earth turns slowly,
It’s hard to say but I’d like to stay awake when I’m asleep,
Coz everything is never as it seems.
To ten million fireflies I’m weird coz I hate goodbyes,
Got misty-eyed as they said farewell…”
Owl City, ‘Fireflies’.
Before I explain the emotional effect of this Mississippi river town on both Dean and I, perhaps it would help to describe how we ended up there in the first place. Rewind two years or so, and Dean is searching Facebook for the popular actress Katie Holmes. It will come as no surprise to you to learn that Dean was not successful in befriending Tom Cruise’s wife. What Dean did manage, however, was to become friends with a girl from Louisiana called, wait for it, Katie Holmes. Studying at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Katie and Dean’s friendship was integral to the two of us visiting this town. This is the beauty of the revolution we live in today. The world is smaller than it ever has been, broken into manageable pieces by new media and technology that allows a boy from London and a girl from the Deep South to become good friends, chatting most days, without ever meeting each other. If Dean had not decided to find a Scientology celebrity on Facebook, we may never have wound up in Baton Rouge and, in turn, I may not have had an amazing week there, a week which included one of the best days and nights of my life.
Returning to the present, Dean was excited about meeting Katie face to face for the first time, while I was simply interested in sampling a new city in America. As we drove up to Baton Rouge, in pleasant sunshine, we had the car stereo turned up high and became increasingly excited about a stay in a University town. I could never have guessed that I would be feeling so utterly dejected about leaving, just a few days later. Reading this, you may find it hard to understand why this is the case. Baton Rouge is not exactly famous, or commercially important to anybody from Britain. They say that the people make a place. For Baton Rouge, this is especially true. So, Sam, Katie, Ashli, Katelyn, Megan, Emily and Dominique (and everyone else we met), thank you making our trip to America that little bit better.
Before explaining what Dean and I actually did in Baton Rouge, and why that contributed to the amazing time we had, a word or two is due about the cityscape. With palm trees and oak-lined avenues, beautiful lakeside walks and impressive colonial mansions, Baton Rouge looks fabulous, particularly on a sunny day. The State House (Baton Rouge is the state capital of Louisiana) was particularly grand, with a towering structure supported by the State Senate and State House of Representatives on either side of it, reached by a walk up step that bare the name of every state in America. Built by a rather narcissistic and egotistical Governor, it bestrides the town, visible from a fair distance, and yet strangely fits perfectly despite its gargantuan size (the tallest State Capital building in America).
The Mississippi River is also prominent in Baton Rouge, which also enjoys the position of being America’s fifth largest inland port. A key moment in our stay was on the banks of the river during the early evening of our second day in the city. Sam was keen for Dean and I to watch the sun set over the opposite bank of the river, and Katie and Dean, and Sam and I, standing at slightly different viewpoints, were not disappointed by a glorious Magic Hour, with red lights sparkling over the water, and a crescent moon slowly emerging from the darkening sky like a half-finished halo high above our heads. Drawn in by the peaceful sounds of the lapping water and Sam’s engaging conversation, the dramatic vista and her passionate explanation of her life, interests and future plans, there was no other place I would have wanted to be.
Louisiana State University (LSU) is the dominant infrastructure in Baton Rouge, and adds to its aesthetic appeal. Sorority Row, for example, with its colonnade style houses looking out on to the lake, and marked by well-grown oak trees and the flights of local pelicans, was a particularly attractive part of town, both for the view and, of-course, the lovely Sorority girls who lived there. Looming large over the university campus is the main football stadium, home of the LSU Tigers, and housing over 90,000 people. Next to the stadium is a one-million dollar dwelling for the Tigers official mascot: Michael the Tiger, a fearsome beast who stalked his cage and regarded his British photographers with initial resentment and subsequent indifference. It is certainly a million miles from the University of Nottingham, who have no stadium, let alone a tiger. We knew already that college sport is huge in America, and LSU was no exception. The colours of purple and yellow were everywhere to be seen, and students and alumni alike take pride in their institution’s sporting success.
The campus itself is staggering, with impressive columned buildings (particularly the union building, plus the Music and Dramatic Arts department and the Law building), bustling quadrants, neat coffee shops and retail outlets, and expansive parkland where students relax, sunbathe or play pick-up games of Frisbee, football (ours and theirs), or baseball. It was hard, when walking around, not to feel like studying here would have been inspiring and a lot of fun, and consequently be jealous of those that do have that opportunity. Certainly there was something about LSU that Dean and I feel very much at ease with and at home. No doubt the girls we became close friends with aided that, but the campus itself had a feel of familiarity: Nottingham uni-park, with beautiful women and palm trees. And a tiger.
Comfortable in our surroundings, then, Dean and I already forewarned our hotel reception that we may be extending our stay from the initially booked one night. Our first few hours in Baton Rouge helped us come to this understanding. We were picked up by Katie and her friend Ashli, who has such an enthusiastic attitude about her, constantly energetic and interested, keen to learn and chat, with an impressive turn in comedy, that we were already laughing and enjoying ourselves within just a few minutes. Less funny was Ashli’s driving ability, which was frankly terrifying. We visited the State Capital building, posed for photos in the Senate and House of Representatives, and then headed for the girls’ Sorority, Chi Omega. Dean had visited a Sorority before, but this was my first experience. Obviously there is something appealing about going into a beautiful house, full of wood-panels, lush sofas, grand pianos and, well, women. Within a few moments of being inside Chi Omega, we had completed two girls’ crossword puzzle for them, and befriended two new girls in Emily and Dominique, before then being introduced to Megan, whose soccer shirt was obviously the subject of some interest for Dean and I. A huge fan of both ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Friends’, Megan and I went round-for-round on key trivia from both of these cultural institutions.
Reluctantly leaving the house (admittedly, we had not eaten all day), the girls took us to a bar-restaurant called Chimes. This was a busy bistro, with sports on television, loud music, and good food. It was here that I tried my first po’boy, with the famed local catfish inside. Ashli impressed us by ordering alcohol with the frequency and tenacity of the very best British chavs (in-joke), Sam became the first American I have ever seen order a salad, and Dean and I settled in to our first night in the city. Excited by what lay in store, our hotel room turned into a rock concert as we prepared ourselves for the evening plans. There may be, somewhere in the vast entity of digital technology, a video of me dancing around the room to ‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ by Busted, but sadly this is restricted viewing.
Katie and Ashli picked us up again from our hotel. Mercifully, Katie was driving. We were taken to a trendy bar called Tsunami, situated on the top floor of the Baton Rouge Art Museum, and featuring a balcony looking out over the Mississippi. Tsunami would fit in well with any fashionable London nightspot, with its ambient lighting and music. Made to feel so welcome by the girls, we enjoyed debating the finer points of modern music, art, film, television, cultural and political differences between the UK and the USA, and observations of the awkward first date taking place between the cigar-smoking man and high-heeled woman at the table next to us. Following on from Tsunami, Sam, Katie, Ashley, Dean and I headed on to Happy’s. This was a rather different bar, with a digital juke box, sticky floors, and one drunk man with a dog. Feeling the warmth of both the company and the drinks, conversation flowed freely, videos were captured, photos taken, and music enjoyed (provided by Sam’s $15 dollar coup d’état of the juke box).
Even later, as the night turned into early morning, we were taken to the Baton Rouge institution that is Louie’s café, a joint that served full portions of food into the small hours, including a supersize portion of burger and chips for Dean and one of the larger plates of hash-browns in culinary history for me. The girls bemoaned their early starts the next morning; Dean and I toasted our lack of any need to set an alarm (despite a brief flirtation with attempting to organise a morning coffee meet-up). Perhaps it was because we were back in a student environment, slipping into our university ways like old friends greeting each other at an airport arrivals gate, but Dean and I were more relaxed than at any other part of our trip, safe in the knowledge that we had good friends to show us around, and a picturesque town within which to get to know them all better.
Wednesday, then, and with a blazing hot sun shining down on Baton Rouge, we emerged bleary-eyed in our Jeep, heading towards the central campus area to meet Katie, Sam and Ashli and look at a giant tiger. Michael, the tiger in question, is housed in an enclosure that took millions of dollars to build, and is brought out on to the field alongside the cheerleaders at every Louisiana football game. Once, we were told, Michael managed to remove himself from his bindings and run with glee through the stadium, while cheerleaders, marching band members and spectators alike, panic-stricken and bemused, raced for the comparative safety of the exits. The image, of a rampaging tiger and screaming American sports fan, still makes me chuckle days later.
Katie, Ashli and Sam were enthusiastic tour-guides, showing us where they live and work, taking us into their world in a friendly and personal way, allowing us glimpses of real life in this part of the world, introducing us to their friends and teachers, their classrooms, coffee joints and quadrants. After much working, we returned with them to the Chi-O house, where we lounged on sofas or at the piano, planning the night ahead and getting to know this lovely group of girls even better. Our progress from strangers to close friends was interrupted only by Dean and I heading out to the front lawn, looking glorious in the late afternoon sunshine by the tranquil lake, to kick a real, proper, British football around. If I had one criticism of America, it would be their complete lack of understanding of the beautiful game, that steadfast grip they refuse to yield up for stop-start sporting pursuits like American Football and basketball. It felt good to wrap my foot round a bonafide ‘soccer-ball’ once again, even if it did delay our trip to the riverside to watch the aforementioned sunset by just a few minutes. Eventually, however, and after Sam stepped in to stop us bending it like Beckham any further, we headed for the river’s edge. In one’s life, there may only be a few moments of near-perfection, where the place you are in and what you are feeling merge together in unison and harmony, where everything and everyone fuse together in a symbiosis of symmetry and synchronization. That’s how it felt on the outpost overlooking the river, with the sun slowly setting.
Another period of hotel-based reflection and preparation followed before Sam and Katie took us to meet Katelyn and Ashli at The Bulldog, a pub-bar close to the university that had cheap beer and shots, combining flowing booze with genial company and a bustling trade. It was here that the girls taught us a secret Chi-O chant regarding the drinking of shots, which alas I cannot commit to paper as to do so would break an impressive dedication to preserving the secret sacraments of Sorority life. Sororities, for all their Hollywood-ised sexual motifs, actually exist as important traditional communities, where girls can enjoy university safely and securely, where they can more easily make close friends and partake in both academic and charity work. They are like large, residential societies, and as such come with their own rituals, conventions and initiations, alongside philanthropic efforts that UK colleges could certainly learn from. Many of these traditions are secret, protecting a bond between members of the Sorority that, in some cases, stretch back many years. In this way, there is a code, a sense of honour, duty and companionship that is admirable and should be noted. Certainly, the Chi-O girls we met were well-mannered, interesting, intelligent, kind and fun. The girls we became such good friends with illustrate all these attributes and demonstrate why Sororities (and Fraternities, I suppose) work.
We lost track of time in The Bulldog, and eventually only myself, Dean, Katie and Sam remained out of the initial group. From the campus walk to the Chi-O lounge chat, from the Mississippi sunset to the subsequent Best Western Hotel sunrise: it was a perfect twenty-four hours.
Our travels in America have provided us with so many wonderful moments and places and people. We have slept little and partied much, driven far and walked extensively. Consuming food and alcohol and culture and new sights as much as Dean and I have, it is not surprising to learn that in an epic adventure there will inevitably be moments of epic fatigue. The sheer wall of tiredness that hit us later the following day, after an almost unbroken twenty-four hours, was immense, and it was only with a supreme effort that we made it back on to campus by the early afternoon, for a few hours of football and guitar playing, not to mention snoozing, on the main parkland of the University. That night, the majority of the girls had booked tickets to see British star Robert Pattinson pout his way through the latest ‘Twilight’ film, leaving Dean and I in the capable hands of the beautiful Sam, who took us to Bogie’s. I can only describe Bogie’s as the most ‘college bar’-looking college bar in the entire United States of America. Think ‘American Pie’, think red cups and short skirts, think loud music and strange fashions. Dean, of course, was in his element, and began speeding down a road to all-out intoxication, working his way through a number of introductions set up by Sam, even managing to find coordination within his inebriation to dance with complete strangers. Sam and I enjoyed Dean’s descent into utter ridiculousness, observing his antics from the relative safety of general sobriety (give or take a vodka-water with extra lime or two). How much Dean remembered the next day is a question for the great man himself. I can only tell you that, during the course of the evening, Dean made near perfect strangers shout famous quotes from the London Underground at our camera, posed for photos wearing a tiara, and convinced two sets of girls that he and I really were the Jonas Brothers.
You will have noted that I have described three nights in Baton Rouge. It was initially only meant to be one. I cannot explain how pleased I am that we stayed for longer. Indeed, we even considered driving back to this safe haven of laughter, friendship, romance and sunsets after just one night in neighbouring Texas. In hindsight, however, it is better to leave wanting more. Certainly, I know that Dean and I will spend time with all the lovely people we met in Baton Rouge once again. A European travelling trip is in the offing for many of these girls, and we will be counting the months until we can join them in Paris and welcome them in London.
From a personal point of view, I was able to get to know someone’s lifestyle, geography, culture, their hopes and fears in the town where they live, and remain excited to reciprocate in a few months time. It is hard to meet people and leave them, to say goodbyes that mean ‘see you soon’, to drive away (at 7pm the next day, rather than the intended 1.30pm) with so much unspoken and yet so much experienced. We kept hearing the song ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City throughout our few days in Baton Rouge, but it was only after leaving that I fully understood the lyrics. These girls were our fireflies, and our trip to America has been enhanced in so many ways by being with them. We’ll be ‘calling Baton Rouge’ forever. Trust me.
“I’d like to make myself believe that Planet Earth turns slowly,
It’s hard to say but I’d like to stay awake when I’m asleep,
Coz everything is never as it seems.
To ten million fireflies I’m weird coz I hate goodbyes,
Got misty-eyed as they said farewell…”
Owl City, ‘Fireflies’.
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