Playing The Silver Ball

One of the things I love most about travel is the way it connects us to experiences that we just can't find by staying at home. It might be an afternoon spent in a beer garden in Germany or an hour walking through a centuries old cathedral in Ecuador or getting hopelessly lost in the souks in Marrakech. The memories that come from being there are indelibly connected to a particular time and place forever. This statement applies even if there's something intentionally or accidentally almost the same in the United States. It's the details or the sounds or the smells that can't all be matched exactly.

One of the enduring images of France from my first four trips as a kid or adult to the countryside or Paris is seeing Frenchmen playing pétanque, a deceivingly simple game where two or more players throw slightly larger than fist sized metal balls towards a smaller wooden ball known as the cochonnet ("piglet" in French, but also sometimes called a jack). The goal is to get your balls closer to the cochonnet than any other player either by skillfully throwing or rolling your ball so it ends up right next to the smaller ball or by rudely knocking your opponents' balls out of the way. Think bocce if you grew up in America with that game; it's close enough for this post.

The memory of pétanque in my mind's eye before I left for Paris this past September was of old men in gorgeous parks or on rough gravel paths slowly tossing balls to beat their opponent in the middle of the day to pass the time. And because it was so stuck in my head as something so completely French, I knew I had to find a way to play on this trip. So forget about the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and all the other top ten tourist destinations. For me, I had to play some pétanque on this Paris trip before I came back home.

Pétanque at the Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman amphitheater in Paris' 5e Arrondissement. Appropriate, I guess.

Pétanque is not a complicated sport. All you really need to play a game is at least four balls that can be thrown reasonably well, a smaller ball to throw towards and a flat or almost flat surface on which the balls will roll a bit. Because it's so uncomplicated, it probably should come as no surprise that the origins of the game can be traced back a long way. Like to ancient Rome. The game was imported to France by Roman soldiers, who played a game similar to the French game today. In between subjugating less militarily sophisticated peoples, I guess.

The real invention of the game we know as pétanque today, however, can be traced back to 1910 in a small town near Marseilles in southern France. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a popular game in that area called jeu provençal, a ball game similar to the one the ancient Romans played where the participants took three steps before throwing the balls towards the jack. As luck would have it (for those of us who are fans of the modern game), there was a player in southern France at that time who was unable to take the requisite three steps due to severe arthritis so the rule was changed to require the feet of the participants be stationary before starting the throwing motion.

It caught on. And the game took its name from the throwing posture (pétanque roughly translates to "feet planted" in French). I suppose the rule change opened the sport to a whole new generation of participants. These new players would be the old men I envision in my childhood memories. I'm not judging here; pretty soon I'll be one of those guys, I guess.

The rules of the game today are substantially similar to the first time it was played just ten years into the last century. Play starts in a circle drawn in the dirt to denote the throwing point (they actually make prefabricated circles to place on the ground now) where the players will stand. The cochonnet is tossed first to establish the target and each contestant takes turns throwing a single steel ball towards the mark. In games with teams of one or two participants, three balls per player are typically used; where teams of three participate, just two balls per player are involved.

Once the initial one ball per person is thrown, the order of play is determined by distance from the jack. Those furthest from the cochonnet toss their next ball first; those with good aim or good luck go last. The game is played this way until all balls are in play. Points are awarded for the balls closest to the jack. One point is awarded for the closest ball; if a player has multiple balls closer than their opponents, then they can pick up more than one point in that particular round. Repeat this until a player reaches 13 and the game's over. Don't know who's closest? Don't worry. Most serious pétanque players carry some sort of tape measure.

I couldn't leave France this time without playing this game. Just couldn't.

A foursome playing pétanque in the middle of the day in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Once I'd made my decision to play pétanque on this trip, I was faced with the dilemma of how exactly to do that. I didn't own a pétanque set. I also didn't particularly want to just go to a Parisian department store, buy a few balls and start playing in some random park by ourselves. I really wanted to play with someone who lived in Paris but I wasn't sure I could just walk up to some random Frenchman in a park and challenge him to a game or two.

I thought therefore that I'd try to find a pétanque tour which in my mind would involve some discussion of the history of the sport followed by a spirited game or two with someone with a deep understanding of the nuances of what is obviously on the surface an extremely straightforward pastime. There had to be some company that offered something like that, right? 

Well, maybe not so much.

I found one: a company called Localers, who offers seemingly every kind of tour you can imagine in Paris, from the traditional (Versailles Palace & Gardens Tour) to the very decidedly non-traditional (Pokémon Hunt in Paris). Hidden amongst this range of experiences was a couple of hours pétanque game for out of towners. I had to do this.

Unfortunately for me, Localers apparently only operates this tour on Thursdays and Fridays in the summer and our arrival in Paris on Saturday, September 17 put us exactly one calendar day after their last tour of the summer. But all was not lost. After a few emails, they agreed to move their last tour of 2016 back a day to our arrival day of Saturday. I appreciated this. Pétanque was on!!

The Cour d'Honneur of the Palais-Royal. A perfect place to play pétanque.

Enter Corey, an expatriate American and our pétanque buddy for the afternoon. We met Corey just outside the Grand Hôtel du Louvre in Paris' First Arrondissement and made our way circuitously to the gardens of the nearby Palais-Royal, a seventeenth century mansion in the center of the city built by Cardinal Richelieu who served as a chief advisor to King Louis XIII. The Palais was later the home of Louis XIV who became known as the Sun King. The central gardens of the Palais (or the Cour d'Honneur) is where we'd spend a little more than an hour playing pétanque.

The Cour d'Honneur of course was not the public garden that it is today when it was built in the 1630s but instead the private domain of some of the richest and most powerful men in France. It remains today much the way it was first conceived, with a spectacular fountain in the center of the yard surrounded by sculpted hedgerows and allées of identical trees spaced rigorously and regularly to define wide paths for walking and talking or just playing a game of pétanque.

Our route from the Grand Hôtel du Louvre to the Palais-Royal that afternoon took us through a number of Paris' covered arcades in the immediate area before stopping in to the L'Avant Premiére, a bistro just about a block north of the entrance to the garden. This would be our final stop to pick up one more thing to make our pétanque experience completely authentic: a stiff drink in a to go cup. Now whether the alcohol makes the experience more enjoyable or gets you to play better or has any positive effect is debatable but (a) tradition is tradition and (b) I've never been one to turn down a drink when offered so I was all in.

All you need to play pétanque in Paris: a pair of steel balls and a cup of liquid courage.

Unfortunately for me, the drink of choice when hanging out in a French park playing pétanque is a pastis, an anise flavored drink consisting of a couple of shots of anise liquor mixed with water in a one to five ratio. If there's anything I dislike more to eat or drink than anise, I don't know what it would be. I absolutely hate this stuff. But when I wrote tradition is tradition in the previous paragraph, I meant it and I've never been one to back down from a challenge so I left the L'Avant Premiere with a cloudy cup of anise flavored nastiness ready to go.

So after a half hour or so walk, some conversation about what it's like to live in Paris today and carrying an open cup of alcohol into a public park in a city without an open container law, we were ready to play. We drew a line in the dirt, divvied up the set of eight silver balls (in four different patterns so you can tell which balls belong to whom) between the three of us (two each as per the rules) and were ready to toss the cochonnet for the first time. All this in the courtyard of a place which was built more than 100 years before the country where I live gained its independence. Pretty heady stuff.

Now I get that playing this game is something that millions of people have done in their lives and it really should be no big deal but I have to tell you that throwing that first heavy silver ball towards the jack for me was incredible. It made me feel that I was taking part in something uniquely French that I'd never experienced before. Especially since I rarely take the time to slow down on vacation and just stop and play for a bit. I can now say that I've played pétanque in Paris and that makes me feel connected to that city and country in a way that I wasn't three months ago.

Chasing the cochonnet with two other balls in play.

There's definitely an art to this game. Tossing the ball overhand with a slight upward flick of the wrist to put a little backspin on the trajectory was essential. It stopped the balls from rolling a long distance. Getting good at striking your opponents' balls to knock them out of the way also seems like a critical skill to master. Making contact is easy. Doing it in a way that gets your ball closest to the target is a little trickier.

Over the week we were in Paris we watched men and women old and young play pétanque a few times. We saw people solely practicing knocking another ball out of the way and we saw a variety of throwing styles from the traditional standing upright to more of a crouching or squatting position. Everyone who we watched play seemed to have their own custom set of three balls with a cloth at hand to wipe and polish them after every round and at least one player had a measure of some sort to determine the winner. This stuff is important in France. 

We even made our way to a pétanque store later in the week to check out the prices of a set of balls. You can easily drop close to 300 Euros (about $315 as of the date of this post) for a set of three balls. They are available in leisure and competition varieties and come in slightly different sizes, weights and hardnesses to allow you to maximize your advantages over your fellow players. Accessories such as cleaning cloths, the cochonnet, a carrying case and some sort of measuring device are extra, of course.

Corey doing the math on a close point. Can't guess on this stuff. Too much at stake.

We played a single game to 13, as we should. It took us probably slightly more than an hour and we actually stayed pretty competitive, losing to Corey 13-9-8. Although admittedly Corey went Inigo Montoya on us and played left handed to make things closer. While we played, we talked about the culture of the game today and sipped on our steadily diluting anise flavored drinks. And believe me the taste of a pastis definitely gets better as the ice melts. It was almost tolerable by the end of the game.

Pétanque today is not a sport reserved for old men in striped shirts and berets with nothing to do to pass the time. As we found out by walking around the city for the week after we played, the game is played by all ages and both sexes. Corey described to us how Gen Xers and Yers are adopting the game, often while wearing flannel shirts and growing the longest beard possible. There are even pétanque bars in a few spots in the city for those who want a little more than one pastis with their game.

I love connecting with a place on a different level than the typical tourist when I travel. For me, tossing a couple of sliver balls around and talking to someone who lives in the city for two hours or so was the perfect way to establish a deeper connection. It helped us understand and appreciate Paris and France a little better and deeper than we ever had before. 

If things ever get too much for me to handle in this world, I'm buying a one way ticket to Paris, dropping $300 or so on some pétanque balls and whiling away the hours in some Parisian park sipping a drink and chasing the cochonnet every afternoon. Vive le France! This was incredible!

Too lazy or immobile to pick up your pétanque balls? Don't worry, they make magnets on strings for that.