Saturday Night Was A Good Night (I)
Well, to be honest, it started out pretty shitty. In a sudden rush of spontanety I had bought tickets for a gig with 'Tiger Baby' and 'The Fashion' at Loppen, a quite alternative club in the heart of Christiania, the hippie community in the west of Copenhagen. Problem was, nobody else wanted to come.
First off, the timing was bad. Last Saturday night was also the night of important international soccer/rugby games. Probably would have been better to go out instead of watching Denmark screw up their last chance of reaching the European Cup by losing to Spain and seeing how the French Roosters were surprisingly upset by the English in the rugby world cup. But anyways. Another reason for people not coming were scheduling difficulties: I bought the tickets on Thursday, so a lot of them already had plans for the night. And thirdly, the bands didn't seem to tickle anyone else's musical taste buds but mine.
So at 8:35 p.m., when my last hopes of either Andrea or Johan, who had still been undecided, joining me had finally vanished, I packed my 350D and made my way to Loppen. The ticket said, entrance was at 9 and knowing that in Germany concert organizers are a bit over-punctual sometimes, I didn't wanna be late. Big mistake. When arriving precisely at the full hour, I was one of maybe 15 people present at place and it didn't even seem a bit like things would get started here soon. So after showing my ticket (and noticing, that it would have cost me 15dkk less, had I bought it directly on location instead of a ticket sale) and getting a freaky-cool blacklght-active stamp on my wrist (whooooo....), I decided to have a quick look around.
The Loppen is actually a quite nice, very alternative little place. For me the atmosphere was somewhat similar to the 'Krone' in Darmstadt or the 'E-Werk' in Erlangen, although it looked quite different. Completely tagged walls in the staircase, old wooden floor, boarded up windows and very dim light in the main hall. The place seemed to have been a warehouse back in the days with huge wooden beams cutting through the room and extending on the low ceiling. The whole place was maybe 10x50m, including two bars, coatrack, a couple of tables and chairs and the stage, which was surprisingly located on one of the longer sides of the room but therefore had the useful side effect of people being able to watch the bands from the side while being seated.
Ok, all in all 'the look around' was enough to keep me busy for 1.5 minutes. As you can imagine, not much activity concering the bands in that time. So I decided to go outside, freeze my ass off for a while and pretend I was busy doing 'something' on my cell phone. After having read my own adress book at least 5 times for no particular reason I went back inside to watch the progress. Ten more people and still no band in sight. Very well then, I thought I'd take a little walk through Christiania. After all, I had only been here at night once and then very briefly. I wouldn't get much further this time. After 400m the shawarma stand caught my eye, I got myself some falafel, walked back and finished them in front of the club. At 9:40 I took another peek inside. Maybe 50 people now, but still very quiet.
I went to the bar and got myself a beer. For those of you who don't know: I NEVER DRINK F***ING BEER! Unless I'm already hammered or short on cash. Neither was the case. I just thought it would keep me busy for while and who knows, maybe get used to the taste (yeah right...). While I was on it, I asked the bartender what he thinks about when the band would start: "Ten. Ten thirty. Maybe." Great. Another half hour of boring myself to death. Fine. Luckily, I still had my camera with me. Let's take some crazy-cool shots of the tagged up walls. Said and done. Whoopie, another 5 minutes of killed time.
Ok. Why not go outside AGAIN, freeze my ass off AGAIN, and stare into some air AGAIN? Hell, I was so bored, that seemed a pretty good plan. So I went outside, gripping my still nearly full bottle of Tuborg Grøn, sat down on a bench and started writing an SMS to a friend in Germany. I was just about to write her how crappy the night had been going so far, when suddenly two danish girls, about my age and drunk as fuck, approached me. And that's when the fun started.
The conversation started out by them having an utterly important 'sporgsmål' (question) for me, that being "What's your name?". After having found out my name, age and reason for being in Denmark and being totally excited by the fact that I understood the word 'sporgsmål', Brit and Reggae – yes, that's her real name, I asked twice – told me, they were gonna get cheap beers at the nearest 7eleven and that I just 'totally' had to come with them. As at least one of them fulfilled the cliché danish attributes of being tall, fit and pretty and as I was just longing for some entertainment, I was more than willing to oblige. Plus, they told me that the concerts wouldn't start until 11 (it was about 10 now), so what the heck. So we started walking. I might have to add, that it was around 5°C and the two of them were wearing nothing more than thin, skimpy dresses (they had left their jackets in the club). I was sporting t-shirt, sweater and jacket and let me tell you: I was damn cold. To my relief, the astonishment for the tough danish girls quickly faded away, when they started whining about the cold after about 20m. But that didn't lower their spirits at all. Reggae cried "Pitstop!" every 10m, which meant stopping, saying "Skol!"and drinking. And Brit soon found out that she could at least keep her right hand warm by keeping it under my left arm. After 5 minutes walking cluelessly into the totally wrong distance – a danish guy was friendly enough to tell us – and another 10 of actually finding the store, we were all cold down to the bone marrow but at least tipsy/hammered. Brit bought three beers, handed me and Reggae one and off we went. The way back we were half running, just wanting to get somewhere warm. By that time, Brits arm was around my hip.
Having reached Loppen at about half past 10, we chugged our remaining beer as we weren't allowed to take bought alcohol inside. Inside the fun continued. Reggae unknowingly went behind the coatrack and people started handing her their jackets and coats which was obviously confusing to her but the more entertaining for me. Meanwhile Brit, who now had her arms all over me and her head buried in my chest, hugging and cuddling up to me, and I had a very intellectual convesation that went something like this:
Brit: So where do you live...here...in Copenhagen?
Me: Islands Brygge, and you?
Brit: Amager, wow that's really close!
Me: Yeah...
Brit: Hey, let's dance!
Me: Um...
Brit: C'mon, let's dance! (starts dancing)
Me: ...there isn't even music playing.
Brit: (stops dancing) hmmm.... (short silence) So where do you live?
It went on like this for about half an hour, when suddenly 'Tiger Baby' started to play. Thank god. I thought. Then Brit grabbed my arm and dragged me in front of the stage, still trying to animate me to move my lazy ass and constantly reminding how I had promised her a dance, which I might actually accidentally have done. Reggae had run off and was nowhere to be seen. So no help there. The music wasn't very danceable so Brit quickly adjusted to the situation by positioning herself in front of me and putting my arms around her. I was absolutely helpless. After a while I could free my arms by telling her that I wanted to take some pictures. Just fine with her. One step left, one step back and she was suddenly on my backside clutching me from behind. Then I saw my only way out: Reggae. With an innocent "Hey, where did Reggae go?" I could focus Brits attention to something else then myself. "Yeah...where is she?! Let's go find her!" and off we went. Luckily I had already located her and after being able to entangle the two in some drunk conversation, I could smoothly back out of the situation and actually start enjoying the concert. And that's it, I lost sight of her by the beginning of the 'The Fashion' set and nothing that could have happened actually did.
Don't get me wrong, Brit and Reggae were very entertaining and funny, and I was really thankful to them for picking me up. But Brit just a got a little bit too clingy for my taste and let's be honest: completely drunk girls are just major tun-off.
First off, the timing was bad. Last Saturday night was also the night of important international soccer/rugby games. Probably would have been better to go out instead of watching Denmark screw up their last chance of reaching the European Cup by losing to Spain and seeing how the French Roosters were surprisingly upset by the English in the rugby world cup. But anyways. Another reason for people not coming were scheduling difficulties: I bought the tickets on Thursday, so a lot of them already had plans for the night. And thirdly, the bands didn't seem to tickle anyone else's musical taste buds but mine.
So at 8:35 p.m., when my last hopes of either Andrea or Johan, who had still been undecided, joining me had finally vanished, I packed my 350D and made my way to Loppen. The ticket said, entrance was at 9 and knowing that in Germany concert organizers are a bit over-punctual sometimes, I didn't wanna be late. Big mistake. When arriving precisely at the full hour, I was one of maybe 15 people present at place and it didn't even seem a bit like things would get started here soon. So after showing my ticket (and noticing, that it would have cost me 15dkk less, had I bought it directly on location instead of a ticket sale) and getting a freaky-cool blacklght-active stamp on my wrist (whooooo....), I decided to have a quick look around.
The Loppen is actually a quite nice, very alternative little place. For me the atmosphere was somewhat similar to the 'Krone' in Darmstadt or the 'E-Werk' in Erlangen, although it looked quite different. Completely tagged walls in the staircase, old wooden floor, boarded up windows and very dim light in the main hall. The place seemed to have been a warehouse back in the days with huge wooden beams cutting through the room and extending on the low ceiling. The whole place was maybe 10x50m, including two bars, coatrack, a couple of tables and chairs and the stage, which was surprisingly located on one of the longer sides of the room but therefore had the useful side effect of people being able to watch the bands from the side while being seated.
Ok, all in all 'the look around' was enough to keep me busy for 1.5 minutes. As you can imagine, not much activity concering the bands in that time. So I decided to go outside, freeze my ass off for a while and pretend I was busy doing 'something' on my cell phone. After having read my own adress book at least 5 times for no particular reason I went back inside to watch the progress. Ten more people and still no band in sight. Very well then, I thought I'd take a little walk through Christiania. After all, I had only been here at night once and then very briefly. I wouldn't get much further this time. After 400m the shawarma stand caught my eye, I got myself some falafel, walked back and finished them in front of the club. At 9:40 I took another peek inside. Maybe 50 people now, but still very quiet.
I went to the bar and got myself a beer. For those of you who don't know: I NEVER DRINK F***ING BEER! Unless I'm already hammered or short on cash. Neither was the case. I just thought it would keep me busy for while and who knows, maybe get used to the taste (yeah right...). While I was on it, I asked the bartender what he thinks about when the band would start: "Ten. Ten thirty. Maybe." Great. Another half hour of boring myself to death. Fine. Luckily, I still had my camera with me. Let's take some crazy-cool shots of the tagged up walls. Said and done. Whoopie, another 5 minutes of killed time.
Ok. Why not go outside AGAIN, freeze my ass off AGAIN, and stare into some air AGAIN? Hell, I was so bored, that seemed a pretty good plan. So I went outside, gripping my still nearly full bottle of Tuborg Grøn, sat down on a bench and started writing an SMS to a friend in Germany. I was just about to write her how crappy the night had been going so far, when suddenly two danish girls, about my age and drunk as fuck, approached me. And that's when the fun started.
The conversation started out by them having an utterly important 'sporgsmål' (question) for me, that being "What's your name?". After having found out my name, age and reason for being in Denmark and being totally excited by the fact that I understood the word 'sporgsmål', Brit and Reggae – yes, that's her real name, I asked twice – told me, they were gonna get cheap beers at the nearest 7eleven and that I just 'totally' had to come with them. As at least one of them fulfilled the cliché danish attributes of being tall, fit and pretty and as I was just longing for some entertainment, I was more than willing to oblige. Plus, they told me that the concerts wouldn't start until 11 (it was about 10 now), so what the heck. So we started walking. I might have to add, that it was around 5°C and the two of them were wearing nothing more than thin, skimpy dresses (they had left their jackets in the club). I was sporting t-shirt, sweater and jacket and let me tell you: I was damn cold. To my relief, the astonishment for the tough danish girls quickly faded away, when they started whining about the cold after about 20m. But that didn't lower their spirits at all. Reggae cried "Pitstop!" every 10m, which meant stopping, saying "Skol!"and drinking. And Brit soon found out that she could at least keep her right hand warm by keeping it under my left arm. After 5 minutes walking cluelessly into the totally wrong distance – a danish guy was friendly enough to tell us – and another 10 of actually finding the store, we were all cold down to the bone marrow but at least tipsy/hammered. Brit bought three beers, handed me and Reggae one and off we went. The way back we were half running, just wanting to get somewhere warm. By that time, Brits arm was around my hip.
Having reached Loppen at about half past 10, we chugged our remaining beer as we weren't allowed to take bought alcohol inside. Inside the fun continued. Reggae unknowingly went behind the coatrack and people started handing her their jackets and coats which was obviously confusing to her but the more entertaining for me. Meanwhile Brit, who now had her arms all over me and her head buried in my chest, hugging and cuddling up to me, and I had a very intellectual convesation that went something like this:
Brit: So where do you live...here...in Copenhagen?
Me: Islands Brygge, and you?
Brit: Amager, wow that's really close!
Me: Yeah...
Brit: Hey, let's dance!
Me: Um...
Brit: C'mon, let's dance! (starts dancing)
Me: ...there isn't even music playing.
Brit: (stops dancing) hmmm.... (short silence) So where do you live?
It went on like this for about half an hour, when suddenly 'Tiger Baby' started to play. Thank god. I thought. Then Brit grabbed my arm and dragged me in front of the stage, still trying to animate me to move my lazy ass and constantly reminding how I had promised her a dance, which I might actually accidentally have done. Reggae had run off and was nowhere to be seen. So no help there. The music wasn't very danceable so Brit quickly adjusted to the situation by positioning herself in front of me and putting my arms around her. I was absolutely helpless. After a while I could free my arms by telling her that I wanted to take some pictures. Just fine with her. One step left, one step back and she was suddenly on my backside clutching me from behind. Then I saw my only way out: Reggae. With an innocent "Hey, where did Reggae go?" I could focus Brits attention to something else then myself. "Yeah...where is she?! Let's go find her!" and off we went. Luckily I had already located her and after being able to entangle the two in some drunk conversation, I could smoothly back out of the situation and actually start enjoying the concert. And that's it, I lost sight of her by the beginning of the 'The Fashion' set and nothing that could have happened actually did.
Don't get me wrong, Brit and Reggae were very entertaining and funny, and I was really thankful to them for picking me up. But Brit just a got a little bit too clingy for my taste and let's be honest: completely drunk girls are just major tun-off.
ccseabass - 2007-10-16 21:48