I’ve been postponing blogging about this past Saturday night because there was simply so much to say. After getting back from Berchtesgarten (the small city below Kehlstein), we took a quick trip back to the apartment to get ready to go out. Sarah had received a call from coworkers & we agreed to meet them at a bar in Lehing — the quarter where Sarah works.
We met Sarah’s colleagues right outside the U-Bahn station in Lehing. Christian & Mathias are two students from Universitaet Hamburg who are interning at Sarah’s company. Both are in their early to mid-20s and German through & through (Christian less so — he has an American mother, claims Philadelphia as a home town, and speaks perfect American English down to the curses). Neils & Henni (Hendrik) were somewhat older, likely late 20s to early thirties. We ended up going to a local bar, Nage & Sauge, from the U-Bahn station. Nage & Sauge was what I consider a trendy student bar. Johnny Depp’s Cry Baby was playing on a projector screen, there as indie pop pumping from the jukebox, and the clientile consisted mostly of the young & well off. I like the bar a lot though, as did everyone else. They had a thermometor attached to the urinal so you received an LCD readout detailing the temperature of your piss. How cool! They also serve my new favorite liquor-based drink. It’s essentially Jaegermeister (a different brand, in truth) mixed with herbs. It’s excellent.
We ended up leaving Nage & Sauge around 11:30 though because Sarah wanted to go to a club. And Sarah usually gets her way. We started out by taking a taxi to Karlsplatz (Stachus), which is actually quite near work. The club we were trying to get into was a little too high class for us though, and we weren’t admitted. I wasn’t really surprised, to be honest. We were seven guys & one girl, and most of us weren’t dressed to go out. Doug & I were both wearing jeans, tennis shoes & a t-shirt. We looked more prepared to chop lumber than go clubbing. Even though most of us didn’t care, Sarah was pissed! She actually went up to the doorman & cursed him out for not letting us in.
From Karlsplatz we took another taxi over to Ostbahnhof, which is a little outside of downtown Munich. There, in an area which can best be described as converted industrial buildings, are more than 50 clubs packed into an area no more than an acre or two in size. It’s actually a great place, although it’s somewhat seedy & the clubgoers are mostly in their teens. In addition to a multitude of clubs, there are Imbisses (Sandwich shops w/ hot-dogs & Doener Kebap) all over the place. It’s perfect — once you’re drunk, you’re only a step or two away from food.
Unfortunately we were turned down again at the first club we tried. Again, the problem was that we had too many guys in our group, so we decided to split up & try another club. We went to Boomerang, and Henni, Christian, Mathias & I all ended up getting in. We found out later that the rest of our group ended up getting turned away and going home. Boomerang was a lot of fun — it was a younger group, of course, but it was packed, the music was loud, and there was plenty of room at the bar to watch people dancing. Everyone was having fun & people were up on the stage dancing. After leaving Boomerang, we went to Americanos, which was actually a “smoking club” (Munich has strict no-smoking laws, even in bars, so you have smoking clubs which also serve alcohol). I didn’t really enjoy my time there, since it was wall-to-wall people & smoky. We ended up leaving after only a couple minutes & sharing a taxi back to Sendlinger Tor. I had hoped to wait a bit for the U-Bahn there and avoid having to take a taxi home, but I found out that I still had another hour until the U-Bahn began running again. To make things worse, the station was closed, so I didn’t even have a place to sit & wait. I was forced to pay to take another taxi home.
I finally got back to my apartment around 4am and found Doug asleep on my floor. He told me in the morning that John had made him share a taxi home with them & so he just curled up on the spare mattress and went to sleep. It was an enjoyable night, but the Taxis made it far too expensive for my taste.