Slavic Weekend in Toulouse, 30 Oct-1 Nov: banya and Mafia

In short: three days planned as one celebration

The announcement went out on 4 October and opened like this: “Three days after which ordinary weekends will seem far too ordinary.” The plan is simple: gather a good crowd of our own, come to Toulouse and lay on a proper Slavic weekend, “no formality, just atmosphere, a feast and adventures”. In the chat it goes by its Russian name, Slavyansky dvizh. It’s the first community trip where Toulouse hosts Montpellier rather than the other way round: in August the Toulouse team came to us, to a villa outside Montpellier.

The dates are Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November. Shared lodging is being rented for out-of-towners, so the organisers need an early idea of numbers: if you’re even potentially in, give a shout in the chat by 11 October.

Friday 30 October: the banya evening

We start “the way it should be done: with proper heat, oak veniks and shashlik off the fire”. A wooden banya twenty minutes from Toulouse, from 19:00 until midnight. Here’s what the evening is made of, according to the announcement:

• The steam room and the veniks. “That thick banya steam, the smell of oak, and the feeling of coming out after a good session a completely different person.” We warm up, we get to work with the oak veniks, we rest between rounds, and nobody is in a hurry.
• The big pool. Straight from the steam room into the water: “contrast, freshness and a full reset”.
• Shashlik on the fire. While some are steaming, others mind the meat: pork and beef, hot shashlik, a table, snacks, “a proper feast, the way people are meant to eat together”.
• The samovar. A real samovar, hot tea and unhurried talk, then karaoke, a guitar and conversation until midnight.

Everyone chips in €35 a head: five hours of banya and the meat for the shashlik. The venue is in the commune of Noé; the address comes with your sign-up.

A venik, for anyone who hasn’t been to a banya yet: a bundle of leafy oak twigs, softened in hot water and used to whisk the steam over your skin.

Saturday 31 October: Anti-Halloween

“Fairy tales and a little bit of Viy”: an evening not about pumpkins and plastic skeletons but about our own scary stories by candlelight. Good food and karaoke. (Viy is Gogol’s horror story, for anyone who skipped it at school.) The organisers have promised to reveal the programme separately; the moment it lands in the chat, we’ll update this page. For now it’s the day we know least about, and judging by the title, that’s deliberate.

Sunday 1 November: the lake, crayfish and Mafia

The weekend ends on the water: we drive to a lake to catch crayfish. That was the line in the announcement after which the chat started counting who still remembers how to set a crayfish trap. After the lake, Mafia: the game that has been a fixture for the community since April and that plays every weekend in Toulouse at the club of our friend who hosts it. So Sunday’s table will be a home game for the hosts and an away game for the guests.

Lodging for out-of-towners

For those coming from Montpellier, Nîmes, Sète and the other cities, the organisers are renting a shared villa or large apartments, depending on how many people sign up. The guide price is €100-120 per bed from Friday to Monday, three nights; if someone leaves on the Sunday evening, that gets discussed at sign-up. There are several villas and flats in the running, which is why the request to put your name down by 11 October: the headcount decides what gets rented.

The journey is by your own transport and shared cars, with the line-up put together in the chat, as on every trip. Montpellier to Toulouse is about two and a half hours by road; the train is an option too, but from the station to the banya in Noé you still need a car.

Who it’s for

For anyone who misses the banya: in Occitanie there’s almost nowhere to find one, and honestly, that’s Friday’s main argument. For the Toulouse crowd who have only ever seen the community on its trip to Montpellier: now it comes to them. For families: the announcement says nothing about children yet, so ask in the chat about the specific day. You won’t need French: the banya, the fairy tales and the Mafia are all in Russian.

If you’re new to the south and still looking around, we have a page on Russian-speaking Toulouse and an account of how the community works: it’s free, and for trips you pay only the real cost.

What came before

The community’s Mafia series began with the first game and karaoke on 18 April, grew into the two-city weekend at the villa in August and came back into town on 19 September at La Chistera. Shashlik over a fire has happened twice this year already: in May at the Shashlyndos and in September at Dacha Day. The banya is a first. The full chronicle of events is on the site.

About the community

Vibe Sud France is the Russian-speaking community of Montpellier and the whole South of France, more than six hundred people in a Telegram chat. It’s free and run by volunteers: the events are dreamed up and hosted by the members themselves. Being in the chat costs nothing; for trips you pay only the real cost, the banya hire, the meat, the lodging.