Lifestyle | 26.11.2010Too cool for boules - Berlin's petanquists spin the metal balls their way
Boules is cool again, or so they say, with registered clubs mushrooming all over France and the UK. But there's a whole other petanque culture to be found on autumn evenings along Berlin's canal banks.
"Please, can you get as little information as possible from that Guardian article," my brother says to me, looking strained with exasperation when he learns I'm planning to write about his favorite pastime. He is referring to a piece published over the summer about the new trend for boules in France. The author took the occasion of a celebrity boules tournament set up by fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld in St. Tropez, and then described at length how the stereotypical Gallic pastime was suddenly in again.
The article was illustrated with photos of supermodels and film-stars idling around, gaily flinging metal balls all over the place while wearing straw hats, white shoes and similarly breezy fin-de-siecle attire.
But it wasn't the sight of his favorite social game being hijacked by a bunch of giddy, overpaid fools that so offended my brother - a man who does get frustrated with that sort of thing - it was that the journalist made a distinction between this and "the little image in his head" of normal, traditional boules, also known as petanque: a game for morose, alcoholic French pensioners in string vests and flat caps.
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