Interesting evening

Well, I was bought my first drink by a complete stranger last night, while we were out and about in Altstadt enjoying our last weekend of freedom. It was rather random and alarming, considering the guy (while rather funny and with very good English, part of a strange phenomenon here where guys will try to talk to you in your own language, presuming I guess you don’t speak theirs, or that it’ll impress… I don’t know, usually it’s not all that good anyway, but this guy’s was just about perfect) was a little ‘happy’ due to either alcohol, drugs or both. Don’t panic concerned parents, I wasn’t in any danger from these strange Austrian men. But I’ll get to this incident in a moment, after a nice summary of our evening in Altstadt (which is btw, in case you haven’t taken all this information down from previous posts, the nightlife area of Linz, is very cool with millions of pubs, bars, clubs (maybe, sorry, haven’t seen any like in the German movies, so don’t really know if they do other sorts here and I just haven’t recognised them!)

First event of the day. Host parents having big (well, 8 people, but still means lots of flaffing about) dinner party, so lots of doing random small things just to look like we were helping (both Bibi and I wanted to help, but were refused!) and a bit of stress in the house. Left at 5:50pm… Got into Linz, walking to Maria’s, and were stopped by two men in suits. ‘Uh-oh’ I thought, they want to talk about Jesus… Yep, two Mormons (that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints yeah?)… They asked if we’d heard of them before, and I told them, ‘yeah, but in English’… Suddenly, we were away from Jesus, and onto randomness… One of them was from America (possibly the worst American accent I’ve heard) and the other from Germany. Suddenly we were into English (it’s that freaky phenomenon again), and the American was talking about Dumb and Dumber…. Don’t ask me why… Not a clue! Chatted to them for a bit, said that yeah I knew about Mormons, had a friend, but I was Christian… ‘oh ok’ they said, ‘that’s nice’ And that was that… I looked at my watch, said ‘we’ve gotta go’ and we were off… Kat, is that normal? Do they usually give up so easily, or let themselves be sidetracked so easily? Was funny….

I was with Bibi and Maria, and we set out from Maria’s (she lives in the centre of Linz, very handy!) sometime after 9, after they tried to find me something different to wear from Maria’s (large) wardrobe, as all my clothes seem to be in the wash, and they thought I wasn’t nearly colourful enough! Couldn’t find anything, I’d worn the wrong bra to go under all the possibilities, so I was happy sent out in what I’d started! We first went to Walker’s (where I’d spent Friday night too, but with other people, and only until 10:30pm because of trains) but wasn’t anything happening there, so prepared to move on. Stepped outside, and the rain started to POUR down. Cats and Dogs and Hippos were falling from the sky so we stood around for a while under shelter, then ran, under newspaper, into the centre of Altstadt. We dropped into a few places, looking for people we (well, Maria – she’s very useful to have around when we ‘fahrt gehen’) knew and settled in a place with not too loud music (the place before, Segabar, had SUCH loud doof doof music it was just stupid) where we sat and played hangman on the newspaper, and wondered where everyone was. Met a friend of Maria, he asked that inevitable question ‘Australien… Gibt’s Kangarus da?’ and I told him yes, too many, I’ve tried the meat (can’t actually remember if that’s true or not, but I know on the Kakudu trip was something about eating kangaroo, and it gets such a funny response – they can’t imagine wanting to eat the big furry jumping things, they’re too novel!) etc etc… Moved out from there, after Maria’s 3 tequilas and something else… (that was her alcohol for the night though) and roamed a bit more before settling into the Living Room. This was where the slightly too enthusiastic guy comes into the picture…

The Living Room is a very skinny but long bar place, with two levels, first go in and there’s a long counter and booths and dancing area, then up just afew stairs into a section with more booths and a shorter counter. We sat down at one of the booths, and almost immediately these two guys came over and started to talk to us (well to Maria. Bibi and I thought she knew them, can never tell with her!) It came out that I was from Australia, and the attention switched to me, one of the guys having disappeared. Suddenly he reappeared with 2 rum colas, and gave one to me (I’d just like to mention at this stage that it was actually the friend of the weird guy who did this, I think for his mate… Anyway!). The other guy told me to drink it, I had a little sip, and while I don’t mind rum and cola (for alcohol), my brain was going into paranoid/stubborn mode and I wasn’t that keen on drinking it (actually it was more stubborn than anything) The eventually it was drunk by the happy guy (never found out his name) and they disappeared, after he had displayed his enthusiasm for shrieking and being ‘happy’. (Can you tell this week has been a bit boring… this was probably the most exciting thing that’s happened all week…. I need a life….!) Other people we know (well Bibi and Maria, I vaguely recognised the faces) came and sat down and we talked to them. Suddenly Happy Guy was back again, sitting next to me, trying to get me to have fun by shrieking with him. My stubborn thing kicked in again (You know, when the more people tell you to do something you don’t really want to do, the more you resolve not to) and eventually he went away (finally) after trying and failing miserably to convince me I wasn’t having fun because I didn’t want to shriek (not scream, shriek!) he came back a couple more times, before we finally decided to run away to somewhere else…. So there you go!

After that we heard him in Segabar (went back, just to check it really was so loud), and then went back to Walker’s briefly then walked home to Maria’s, at about 3am (Linz is fairly safe). We have no idea where everyone was, or why the streets were so empty at that time (normally they’re full of ‘happy’ people at that time) but it was a fairly quiet night everywhere… And home by 3am… For Maria and Bibi they tell me that’s about 1.5 hours too early!

Got home at 2ish pm, and have just blobbed about, proofed an English essay thing (ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! I understand the pain of teachers when they say SPELL CHECKER!) and will go and eat something soon… Is funny with the English though, some pages are now just covered in writing (I do try not to change too much, but so often they’re just typos!) but others are just about perfect… Bit suspicious… But now I know all about Stephen King… Wow his books sound so pattern based…!

And I think that’s all… Will check emails, and add anything relevant! Nup nothing relevant, except the best reaction to my early home coming, thankyou person who squealed in the middle of meeting on reading my sms....!