| Current mood: |  apathetic |
| Current music: | Livin' At the Corner of Dude & Catastrophe - MC Frontalot |
| Entry tags: | bars, beer, food, germany |
Kneipeabend
The last part of the orientation week was an organized pub-crawl at 8 pm at the Lagerhaus. I know Germans are supposed to be punctual, but these are students, so I took my time, and arrived at 8:30. Apparently there was a soccer game yesterday, because everyone was wearing "Werder Bremen" scarves and other paraphernalia... and drinking. Along the way I met a few Germans who were out drinking, and we struck up a conversation. It's very strange because we were speaking entirely in German, but I was actually communicating at a decent rate. We were holding an actual conversation. We got off at the same stop, and they helped me find the Lagerhaus. When I got there, though, I couldn't find anyone. I wandered around the bar (which was surprisingly big--apparently the Lagerhaus is a performing arts venue, along with the "Cafe Lagerhaus" which was the bar) for a good ten minutes before I found a group of students from Spain, also trying to find out whether we were in the right place. We wandered around for a while longer, collecting more Spaniards and Mexicans, but we didn't find anyone else. One girl went around a corner to see if there was maybe another Lagerhaus, and she came back all startled, telling us (in Spanish) that she had seen someone lying in the street shooting up through a vein in his leg. The only words I could understand were "sin pantalones", but I got the general picture.
After that we went to a bar called Bermuda, and about ten more Spanish-speaking students showed up, and one from France. We started talking, because everyone else was only talking in Spanish. It was "Happy Aua", so I got two beers for € 2,50. They weren't actually beers--I don't like beer--they were a beer-based beverage called "Beck's Chilled Orange". Not bad, but it wasn't that great. Later on, the French student and I went back to the Lagerhaus. This was around 10, and finally the other students had arrived.
Oh yeah. On the way back, I was hungry, so I got a hot dog from a street vendor. It was really good, actually, but I'm still confused by it. It was topped with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, dill pickle slices, and... something else. It looked like it might have been bacon bits, and it was very light and crunchy... but it wasn't bacon bits. Does anyone know what it was? If I can't figure it out soon, I'm going to have to go back there and ask him--and I'm not prepared to find out that now there's no stand there, and never was. Gasp!
Anyway... I happened to have very little cash on me last night, so I couldn't afford a beer by the time I got to the Lagerhaus, even if I had wanted one. The strange result of this is that everyone asked me at least four times why I wasn't drinking anything. First I said I didn't have any more money, which was met with a kind of shrug and a look that seemed to mean "Why does that matter?". Next I tried saying that I had two beers already, which was kind of a lie, and even if it had been true, it didn't work. They had half-liter glasses of beer at the table. After that I just said that I didn't drink much, which was unbelievable for two reasons: First, they didn't understand that the phrase implicitly meant "alcohol", and second, how could I not like beer? I have yet to ask anyone how they could like beer, but I suspect the reason is simply peer pressure. They drink it because that's what people do--they drink, smoke, and talk. And somehow, none of that interests me.
At some point we left the Lagerhaus to head to a night club. I was kind of tired, and realizing that this type of entertainment wasn't really my thing, but I went along with it for a while longer. You never know until you try, right? So we got on the tram, and were immediately followed by ten thousand drunken soccer fans, singing, joking, and generally being less than sober. When we finally got to the club, there was a huge line outside. I figured that there were only two reasons there could be a line: 1, there's no room in the club, and they have to wait for people to come out before more can go in--in which case it would take forever for us to get in. 2, there was something taking time happening at the door--probably a cover charge, in which case I would probably be turned away at the door. So I decided that it was time to go home (particularly because I can't dance anyway, and probably shouldn't try).
So, I guess it's just not my thing. I tried it out, though, so now I know what it's like, and furthermore I realized that not everyone goes out to drink. It's mistaken to assume that those who do are the "popular kids"--they're just the ones that happen to enjoy the taste of beer and cigarettes, and have an endless ability to talk about nothing. So I'll stick to my own interests, and not try to be someone I'm not.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
salvar) wrote,
