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Tuesday, October 19

And Then I Got Drunk

I suppose that I'd better recant the two very heavy nights of drinking that I had towards the end of last week. It is my duty to entertain and to educate (Kim!), I guess.

Last week was the "Orientation Week" for the foreign students here in Heidelberg, and was the first time that I got to meet a few people who will be studying law here with me, rather than just other random foreigners who were on the language course in September. It also gave me the opportunity to find out which modules I could do and wanted to do for the coming semester. Very handy, overall.

Of course, I missed numerous parts of it, on account of hangovers or all-round tiredness. I need to learn to go to bed before 4am, especially if I haven't been out drinking, and have just ended up doing crap on the Internet. It wasn't as if it was anything constructive, such as writing here! I still have the habit of surfing and surfing until stupid o'clock in the morning, no matter how much my eyelids are drooping. There's always. One. More. Link. To. Click. Damn. It.

Anyway, through this orientation week, I had dinner arranged for Thursday with practically the entire group of overseas law students. That would be about 50 of us, if not a few more. Unfortunately, this interrupted my usual Thursday evening with my group of friends from the language course.

We have discovered, you see, that it is Happy Hour between 6 and 8 at one Irish pub in Heidelberg (O'Reilly's), and then quiz night at another (The Dubliner) at 8.30, accompanied by a load of drinks offers. From there, we usually head onto iPunkt (home of the now legendary 4-litre cocktails), and more often than not end up in Bar Drei, which I shall tell more of a little later.

Yes, it's a long evening of drinking, and invariably ends up with very few of us making it to classes on a Friday. Just like Thursdays back in Melksham, to be honest. Those were the days: Double vodkas for a quid, cans of Red Bull for a quid, but still managing to spend 20+ each night, and then struggling in to double Physics at 9 in the morning. Christ, did your body ever let you know that you'd hit it with a lot of toxins the night before! But we still did it every Thursday, without fail. Good times.

So this particular Thursday, I met everyone in O'Reilly's at 6, had a swift couple of beers, and then headed on to the centre of town to meet everyone from my law class. Of course, it was pissing down with rain, and the bus took forever, but such is life. We all bundled into the back room of this Greek restaurant, and proceeded to rearrange the tables completely, whilst getting very (un)comfortable, squeezed up on the benches, shoulder to, erm, chin, if the truth be known.

And I think that seven commas in one sentence is a new record for myself.

It was a good night, much better than I was expecting. The food was excellent (mmmmm, Moussaka), and the company was good. I got to talk German for a solid 2-3 hours, which rarely happens when I'm with my normal friends, since we're all English / Irish / American. Admittedly, the fact that I have a strong English accent when speaking German was pointed out a number of times, but at least I was saying everything more or less correctly, even if the pronunciation wasn't perfect. So be it.

I said my goodbyes, and walked down to the Dubliner, where everyone was already quite, quite pissed. It was just after 11, so I'll give them that one. I was almost stone-cold sober, since I'd only had 3-4 beers all night, but I set about catching them up.

Well, I would have done, but the bargirl COULDN'T HAVE BEEN ANY FUCKING SLOWER IF SHE TRIED! That is the one thing I hate about Germany: every pub does table service, and slow table service at that. You simply cannot get served if you stroll up to the bar itself. It takes forever for a waitress to come over to get your order, then another eon for her to bring you the drinks, and finally 6 ice ages before she realises that you've finished and want to pay and then get the hell out of there.

Give me a good old English pub any time! I want to walk in, inhale 3 litres of smoky atmosphere, elbow my way to the bar, order my beer, put up with an elbow in my back, pay and then walk away from the bar with beers in hand. I'll even bring the glasses back when I go to get another one, if I see it's a bit busy! I've worked behind a bar, so I know that this one helps in a big way.

Stupid German pubs / bars.

We then went on to iPunkt, with the condition that we would go to Bar Drei a bit later, even though it was miles out of town. iPunkt is a great bar, we love it. Admittedly, it's getting a touch tiresome that we're there ALL of the time, but where else in the town (in the country?) does 4 LITRE cocktails at an affordable price?

Well, affordable in that when you divide the price between 4 or 6, it's worthwhile. And you still get a hell of a lot of cocktail for your money. For the less mathematically inclined amongst you, 4 litres between 4 people is 1 litre each. That's a lot of cocktail, and they're fucking strong too. Especially if you go for the Long Island Iced Tea, which we do quite often.

The best thing about the cocktails (apart from the sheer 4-litre-ness) is that they don't come with glasses. Instead, there is a bundle of 3-foot long straws put in the middle of the jug (more of a glass bucket, come to think of it), and everyone grabs and sucks.

The straws. This isn't some orgy thing. It does get very social though, because everybody is standing on the rungs of the stools, trying to get a better angle to attack the straws. They tend to kink as soon as they bend, which means no fluid gets through, no matter how many blood vessels you split on the insides of your cheeks. By standing up, the straws are going straight up, which makes it easier to drink. Plus it's good for the ego, since everyone has to look up at you!

Me, arrogant? Never! Oh, and the rest of the bar looks at you when the waitress brings it over to your table, since it has a motherfucking roman candle stuck in half a pineapple on the rim. That and the fact that it's about 3 foot tall with all of the straws sticking out. Fucking great stuff, I swear. Pictures soon.

This Thursday, we had only planned to get one before heading on to Bar Drei, but as these things tend to happen, we of course went for two. I had more than my fair share, what with my big manly lungs. Ahem. Hence I was beginning to get a bit pissed by the time I got to Bar Drei.

Hmmm, Bar Drei. How can you even begin to describe that place?

It's located in the student village, way out of town, and is in the basement of one of the halls there. We discovered it through a friend a good few weeks back, and have fallen in love with it. Mainly because it is absolutely dirt cheap, but also because of the character of the place.

It's a tiny little room, not much bigger than your average living room, but is chock-a-block with tables and chairs. It is also persistently rammed with people. It's fucking brilliant, I swear! Another great thing is that through the frequency of our visits we know the vast majority of people in there, so you spend the first 10 minutes of any night saying hello to a smorgasboard of people from across the globe, all congregating for the promise of cheap alcohol.

Yet another plus point for Bar Drei (the name, incidentally, means "Bar Three". No, I've no idea why either): it stays open until the last person leaves. This can be 1am, it can be 5am, it can be gone 6 in the morning. If there are sufficient people still there drinking, it stays open. This makes it the perfect late-night, post-drinking watering-hole, and we inevitably head there when we're already a bit pissed.

Unfortunately, this tends to make each night very fucking late, and gives you a hell of a hangover whenever it is you wake up the next day. Offsetting this slight negative aspect is the fact that they make sandwiches there. How many bars will make a sandwich for you at 4am?! They're good little sandwiches too, just enough to allow you to continue drinking for another hour or two.

Have I made the point about how this is a fucking great little bar? I think I have.

We rocked up there on Thursday night sometime around 1am, and I was pleased to see another couple of friends already there. They are good friends of the girl that I might possibly be slightly interested in thinking about getting to know a bit better. She was alas not to be seen, but I ended up spending most of the night chatting away to them whilst sat at the bar. I'm not exactly sure about what, since we were all a touch pissed, but we had a good laugh, I think!

I also seemingly didn't buy that many drinks, since people kept coming up to me and telling me that they owed me a drink. I've no idea where or when from, but I'm not going to complain! Vodka-lemonades all night, and I was battered by the end of it.

Oh, and in other news that evening, the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who was only here on a flying visit, managed to break the sink in the toilets just by sitting on it. I have a picture on my phone, which I'll get up here at some point. Promises, promises. It was fucking hilarious, to be honest. His sheer incredulity at having broken it, and this sink just hanging off the wall. Good times.

I was in fact amongst the last group to leave the bar, some time around 4.30am on Friday. I think (although my memory goes a little hazy by this point) that there were only 3 of us left by then (myself, Jamie and Laura), which I guess entitled the barman to say 'no more, off you go', but in German.

We went up to Jamie's kitchen, since he lives in that very building, the git, where he made me a random sandwich. There was definitely some cheese in it, possibly some salami, and a whole load of curry powder, for no apparent reason. I'd say that no sandwich has ever tasted so good at 5am, but I have been proved wrong by Saturday night's sandwich in the same kitchen. More on that, and the rest of Saturday night, a little later.

By this time it was gone 5am, and I needed to get home. Unfortunately, so did Laura. As I said, the student village is a good distance from town, at least 90 minutes walk, but thankfully I only live 10-15 minutes away. Laura, on the other land, lives right in the middle of town. There are no busses at that time of night (stupid small towns, why can't they all be like London and its glorious night bus system?), so I randomly said that she could stay at mine.

No, not in that way, before you all get ideas. I like Laura, but not in that way. Sure, she's great to be around, a wicked laugh, and a good-looking girl, but my sights are set on a different target. I will get to that tale soon too.

Ever the gentleman, I offered her the bed when we got back to my place, and I took up residence on the floor, on top of a towel but with my spare quilt over me. Always prepared, see? We chatted shit for ages, although I have absolutely no recollection what about, before I realised that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to sleep on my rock-solid floor.

This, coupled with the fact that daylight was just about peeking its head through my curtains, and also because I had to be up at 9 to go register for a Spanish class, led me to tell her that we were going to have to top and tail it in the bed. I needed at least an hour or two, if only to sleep off the being drunk.

I don't think it quite worked, to be honest. I'll get into Friday's events in a little while, got something else to do first!


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