Organise it with us: a party or trip in the South of France

If you have an idea - a hike, a day at sea, a party, a games night or a trip to another town - write in the Vibe South of France community chat on Telegram - Montpellier, Toulouse and the whole South of France or to the project email contact@vibe-sud-france.com. We’ll read it, work out whether there are enough people and hands, and we may well take it on together with you. Vibe South of France is a free, volunteer-run Russian-speaking community in the South of France, with 700+ members in its Telegram chat; it was founded by Anastasiia Tij.

Plenty of our meetups have started exactly like that. The hike to Montferrand castle in March 2026 began when one of the members suggested it, and the organiser turned the idea into a group announcement. One summer evening in 2025, at 22:46, someone posted “Who’s up for the beach tomorrow??” in the chat - and by midday a group was sitting on the sand at La Grande-Motte. And the dance night in February 2026 was dreamt up on a Thursday and happened on the Saturday.

Meetups the community has already organised in the South of France

Each meetup below has its own story page in the events chronicle. The numbers come from those pages, and the pages got them from chat messages and the organisers’ own accounts.

Barbecues and days out in nature

• BBQ weekend at a campsite, 31 May - 1 June 2025: about 80 people, 15 of them children, and 11 cabins. Finding the place took real effort: the organiser wrote to and rang at least 15 campsites, because almost everywhere cooking over an open fire is not allowed. This is the trip the community grew out of.
• Shashlyndos at Saint-Just park, 24 May 2026: the date was chosen by a vote, the meat was worked out at a kilo of raw meat per adult, a professional shashlyk cook stood at the grill, and there was a violin and a salsa workshop too.
• Dacha Day, 20 September 2026: the end-of-season get-together at a private venue twenty minutes from Montpellier, with two cooks - one at the grill, the other at a kazan of Uzbek plov.

Hikes

• Hike to the ruins of Montferrand castle near Pic Saint-Loup, 29 March 2026: about 40 people including children, a climb of roughly an hour and a picnic by Lac de Cécélès. For the families, the organiser ran a poll on the children’s ages so she could pick a route everyone could manage.

At sea

• Sailing yacht from Carnon, 2 July 2026: twelve people, a sunset and dinner on board. The boat was booked for three hours, and it turned into about five.
• Catamaran from Le Grau-du-Roi, 8 August 2026: a whole day at sea, from 11 to 17, on a boat for up to twenty people. It grew straight out of the yacht trip: people loved it and wanted the same again, only bigger.
• Sailing catamaran from La Grande-Motte, 29 August 2026: the third trip to sea that summer, and this time the sheets and winches were in the guests’ hands.

Mafia, karaoke, a concert

• The first Mafia night and karaoke, 18 April 2026: a table for 11 players, with onlookers stepping in for anyone who got tired.
• A villa weekend near Montpellier: a Gatsby night and two-city Mafia, 28-30 August 2026: the Montpellier and Toulouse teams at one table, a 1920s dress code, and the game hosted by Katerina. The organisers later called it “our biggest evening”.
• Karaoke at a bar in central Montpellier, 10 July 2025: fifteen or so people and songs in Russian, Ukrainian and French until late into the night.
• Concert at La Chistera, 23 October 2026: about 50 people, roughly 20 of them from our own circle and more than 30 French and English speakers.

Celebrations

• Maslenitsa in Le Crès park, 22 February 2026: about fifty people, with pancakes covering four or five tables.
• 8 March at a bar in central Montpellier, 7 March 2026: the bar needed a head count by 1 March, so sign-up went through a poll in the chat.

Sport and activities

• The Végapolis ice rink - twice: on 24 August 2025, when it was forty degrees outside the rink’s walls, and on 4 October 2026, for the opening of the skating season.
• Altissimo climbing gym at Odysseum, 27 September 2026: everyone was invited through the channel, meeting at 13:00 - and people turned up in a crowd.

Trips

• A week at a hytte in Norway, 21-27 July 2026: a trial collab with a local community - a sauna, an outing to a lake and an amusement park near Oslo.
• The Slavic Weekend near Toulouse, 30 October - 1 November 2026: four meet-ups over three days - a Russian banya in Noé for 20 people, an Anti-Halloween with Slavic folk tales, a lakeside picnic with crayfish catching and Mafia with Katerina. It is the first trip where Toulouse hosts Montpellier rather than the other way round.

How do you organise a party or trip with the community?

It all starts in the chat: someone suggests something, a group forms, and together people agree on the date, the place and the details. Then one of us takes on running the meetup, and it usually comes together roughly like this.

• The place. The organiser finds and books a venue: a campsite where barbecues are allowed, a boat with a skipper, a banya, tables at a bar. We don’t name private venues - villas, dachas, the banya - on the site; the address goes to those who have signed up.
• Announcement and sign-up. The announcement goes out in the chat and is repeated in the channel. People sign up through a poll in the chat or by messaging the organiser directly, and sometimes the date itself is put to a vote. On the yacht and in the banya there are physically few places, so speed decides everything there.
• Money. Cost price only. If there are costs - hiring a boat or a banya, the meat, a cook - everyone pays their own share, and at the ice rink and the climbing gym each person paid for themselves at the till. The community keeps no kitty and makes no money from meetups. The beach, the hike and Maslenitsa cost nobody anything: for the beach everyone brought their own snacks, and at the hike and Maslenitsa the shared table was made up of what people brought.
• Getting there. We sort out cars in the chat, and anyone without one gets picked up.
• People. The organisers and hosts are volunteers. On the very first campsite trip the organiser and the games host worked as volunteers (bénévole), and a team of helpers spent half the night chopping salads.

If you’d like to run a meetup yourself and get the details right - booking deadlines, roles, cleaning the cabins - we have a practical guide to group outings and etiquette for group trips.

What should you write to suggest a meetup?

The more specific your first message, the sooner it becomes clear whether it can happen. Tell us:

1. The idea. What you’d like to do: a hike, a party, a day at sea, a game, a trip, something of your own.
2. A date, or at least a month. Places on a boat or at a villa are few and venues have to be booked in time, so the earlier the better.
3. The town. Where it should happen and where people will be coming from.
4. How many people. Even roughly, and whether there will be children.
5. Whether there’s a place. Have you already found a venue, a boat or a host - or shall we look together?

And if you’re ready to take on part of the work, say so too: that’s how it often goes in the chat - one person has the idea, another finds the place, a third brings a guitar.

Where to write: the chat or the project email

• The community chat. 700+ members, so your idea is seen straight away by anyone who might want to join in or help. Link: the Vibe South of France chat on Telegram.
• The project email contact@vibe-sud-france.com - if you’d rather not discuss the idea in front of everyone.

There are no personal phone numbers or addresses on the site, and that’s our rule: only the chat and the project email.

The community’s founder, Anastasiia Tij, also invites anyone who would like to stay at a villa with us: write, and we’ll talk it over. Shared accommodation on trips has happened before - at the Gatsby weekend you could stay at the villa for the whole weekend, and for the Slavic Weekend a shared villa or a large apartment is rented from Friday to Monday for people coming from out of town.

Will we take on any idea? Honestly, about the limits

We are volunteers. Each of us has a job and a life of our own, many have children, so we don’t promise to take on every idea or to make any date work. Sometimes it all comes down to numbers: the sailing catamaran in August 2026 was announced on condition that the boat filled up, and the trip was confirmed only a week before. Sometimes an idea waits for its season. And sometimes it all comes together in two days, like that dance night.

This is not an order and not a deal. We get a group of our own people together, split the costs if there are any, and decide everything together in the chat. How the community itself works and where it came from is on the about Vibe South of France page; for the city guides where our people live, start with Montpellier and Toulouse.