Acrobatic pizza and conversation

La Cerise sur la Pizza, home to the Friday night acrobatic pizza performance and a not-too-shabby pizza.

Reporting back from a weekend's adventures, I indeed did make it to the restaurant I mentioned in the end of my last entry, La Cerise sur la Pizza, 96 Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011, appropriately timing my visit on a Friday night for not just a meal but some pizza acrobatics. Yes, at La Cerise, servers spin what I can only assume must be a special, extra tough dough while performing what might be described as low-key break dancing. The performance came unannounced mid-meal and filled the room with smiles reflecting a cross of confusion and wonderment. (Seriously, who decides one day to learn how to break dance while spinning pizza dough? And what compels them? And which came first: a venue seeking a pizza acrobat, or the pizza acrobat seeking employment?)

Pizza acrobatics in motion

My couchsurfer for the weekend, who joined me at the restaurant, also brought some acrobatics to my weekend, though of the mental variety. I finally decided to wade tentatively back into the waters of the couchsurfing community after a hiatus since last fall when some well-meaning surfers accidentally broke my stove-top burners. This past week I accepted the couchsurfing request from a Brazilian neuroscientist passing through Paris as part of a mini Eurotrip after having visited a lab in Spain. Upon her arrival, she quickly made it clear that she'd be relying on my ability to speak several of the languages I'd listed on my couchsurfing profile as her English was more than a bit rusty. I spent the past few days speaking some bizarre blend of English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and no, I've never studied Portuguese. We shared conversation not restricted to the confines of any given language as we slipped back and forth in a quest for words that would get a message across. Amazingly enough, somehow this worked. I genuinely found myself in awe to discover I could connect with a person across such a hodgepodge of languages. +1 for life overseas in an international expat community.