The Things I Do for the Blog

Last week, I went to my first German nightclub. After getting rejected by several places (seriously, who'd think that Bonn would be so discriminating?) that I highly doubt were particularly full, we ended up at some place called Carpe Noctem. By the time we arrived it was well past 1:30 am, Friday morning. And while I have plenty of reasons to think that this was an anomalous experience, I was amused by how closely it hewed to what you might expect the Saturday Night Live parody version would look like.

In the 2 1/2 hours we were there and over a wide variety of music, they never once played a song which I would consider dance music. Getting drinks, they played "Wonderwall" and "Bittersweet Symphony," while later in the evening featured some classic 90s alternative music. But when we first hit the dance floor, they played several songs in a row of depressing, but vaguely industrial music that I didn't recognize, but the locals seemed very familar with, and I started to wonder if I was in a dark, basement club with a bunch of Germans rather desultorily dancing to Rammstein or something. If only everyone had been dressed in black, the illusion would have been complete.

The evening must have been a hell of a lot of fun though, I didn't feel tired at all while out and didn't make it back to my place until 4:15 am. That's way past my bedtime, so for my own piece of mind I tried to convince myself as I walked home that the sky seemed so bright due to city glow and not at all because of impending dawn.