Well I don't have any good pictures for this post but the story is pretty interesting! Most of the group met up at a brewpub called 1516 for drinks around 21:30 or 22:00. Because there wasn't enough room for all of us to sit together at one table, (there were about 14 of us) we split into two groups. I went upstairs with Aaron, Mark and Paige and the four of us had shared five pitchers by the end of our night there! Although Aaron told us he wasn't going to drink much because of a soccer game he had the next morning, for whatever reason something clicked and he decided he was going to chug the rest of the beer he was drinking, buy and consume three shots of Jäger, tell us all, "Goodnight, see you tomorrow!" and finally chug a second beer. We then busted out Aaron's camcorder and documented the after effects so hopefully we'll get that uploaded soon.
I heard some native English speakers behind me at some point during the night and asked them where they were from. One was from New York and one was from Ohio but the entire group was a part of the IES Study Abroad program, one that I looked into. I decided not to do it because it was a lot more expensive than the others but after talking with them a bit about it, I'm REALLY glad I didn't do it. Their group is over 100 kids! Our group has 17!
A few hours later we decided to migrate to a club called Flex - said to be one of the more popular clubs in Wien. We had to catch the U-Bahn before the last run of the night at 23:30! Aaron and Mark decided to call it a night and headed home but I went the other direction to Flex. I came out of the U-Bahn station and started walking the wrong direction. (I was given some horrible directions!) But someone came up to me while I was trying to text for better directions and said something in German. "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" I said. He responded in English and asked what I was doing standing all alone and I said, "Flex?" He pointed me in the right direction and Flex was only a few blocks down the river. "Danke Schön!"
The club was dark and smokey but FINALLY we were in a place with a lot of young people. I grabbed a bottled beer and started chit-chatting with some locals. Most of the young people spoke decent English but I did encounter some that were not very good at all! After some talking our group of Americans (now down to about 5) decided to hit the dance floor. It was pretty chaotic! I met a guy from Germany who took me up to the stage to dance! We were up in front of everyone, just dancing and having a good time. He was a skier and was pretty impressed that I skied, too! After a while the other kids in our group started to leave, one by one. Then the bouncers started kicking people out for the night. I went with my new friends to the U-Bahn station where I thought we were going to wait for the Nächt Bus (Night Bus - Some of the tram lines turn into bus routes that go all night long. I'm still trying to master this schedule, though)... Turns out it was about 4:30AM and we were waiting for the U-Bahn to open up again at its regular 5AM start time! Apparently that's how everyone does it around these parts. So I ended up getting home about 5:30 this morning. Hopefully that won't become a regular occurrence.
Tonight we're going to try to find some different bars and do more exploring. There is another club called B72 that we're going to try. All the young people come out of the woodwork on Friday and Saturday night so it was nice to see more kids our age on the U-Bahn and walking around the city. Wish us luck! :)
