(Christmas trip 2009, Part 4)
Reaching the five posts milestone should probably mark a spot where the blog’s themes, if any, should be quite apparent. Looking at those previous four posts, I think the blog’s about nothing but being whiny about the weather. In fact, it’s a downright depressed ranting of someone who has a personal beef with snow and cold.
Is it too late to change the direction this blog is heading?
Probably not, but to be truthful, I still have a lot of reporting to do from the trip to Tampere and beyond to do, so I’ll stay the course and whine.
It’s the evening of Christmas Day, I’m at Tampere after a spur-of-the-moment pact forced me out of the comfort of my home city. More precisely, I’m sitting in a pub called London, watching a group of guys dance to the beat of What is Love (or some other classic 90′s euro-dance song) and ripping their shirts off. Truth be told, this really isn’t all that surprising. It is something primordial that just happens when Finnish people are drunk and hear “good old dance hits” from the 90′s. I actually have a theory that any Finnish party out there can be saved by a well-timed application of Dr. Alban, Haddaway, 2 Unlimited or some other classic. This of course means that you accept “saved” meaning loads of drunken men on the dance floor.
And these guys are pretty much embracing the concept of drunken men on the dance floor, maybe even doing some more inappropriate things to it. So of course the next thing in the natural order of events is that they’re getting thrown out of the bar. You just don’t dance drunk and shirtless in a Finnish pub without repercussions. We are serious people.
Let me reveal to you a little secret, but handy rule that you should follow when confronted with a situation where a group of merry people are getting thrown out of a bar and you are sitting there, watching it go down: You should go and join them. So, I finish my drink as fast as I can, introduce myself and then me and my new friends are heading away from London and to the next possible party location. Their group consists of 3 Finnish guys, 2 Estonian girls and an Estonian guy. Awesome company. They accept me as one of their own in a second.
Ah, yeah, I didn’t talk the girls in this post yet, did I? Quick rundown. They’re the two I mentioned in the previous part as “A duo of surprisingly trendy girls is sitting in the corner”, and turns out they’re with the guys who were on the dance floor. One of them is the wife of one of the Finnish guys and the other is her niece. The Estonian guy is the boyfriend of the niece. And the two other Finnish guys are the husband of the sister of that one guy who is married to the Estonian and the other one is maybe this guy’s brother. I’m not really sure. And don’t ask me to repeat their names, I may remember like two. If forced.
It’s a real shame that the girls are Estonian, since they actually have some style and elegance. And this is a shame only because it would have been nice to write at this point of the story “and so finally I run into some stylish Finnish people on the trip”, but alas.
The girls decide that we should head to Gloria, a nightclub which is pretty much as far as you can get from London along the main street. Lots of slipping on the icy streets, singing and whining of “are we there yet” later, we are at the door, but since the wife and mother of three (as I later find out) doesn’t have her I.D. card with her, so the bouncer tells “Sorry, but you’re not getting in tonight.”
Don’t blame him, she looks young.
This isn’t the only bar we turned away from. The I.D. is a problem only at the first venue. Couple of the guys being too drunk turns out to be a big issue for the bouncers. I think a sensible person would just ditch his new friends and go inside a nice and cozy bar after getting the second “Sorry, the rest of the group can come in, but he’s a bit too tipsy to come in” at a door. It just highlights how solid my brain is frozen at this point that I’m sticking with the group, that manages to end up at a random nightclub only after an eternity of walking in the cold.
The name of the place is eluding me because I really don’t care at this point, just want to get away from the chill. I think the feeling is shared by everyone in the group. You have to remember – it is nuclear winter out there. We do end up changing the nightclub/bar/pub we’re at a couple of times after this, but describing all that in detail would just be me repeating the story above a few times, so I’ll just let you know where we eventually decide to stay. A bar called Groove.
The hours fly by, and while I don’t tear my shirt off, I do spend a good deal of the evening on the dance floor, following the ultimate rule to male dancing: “if you dance, dance like there’s no-one watching.” Groove has a nice RnB/Hip Hop atmosphere to it and the DJ is playing everything great, from the current radio hits to older Eminem to real classics like Tricky. The Estonians start thanking me at some point (I’d say at the “handshaking phase of the evening” when you just have to shake hands with everyone and thank them for everything) for bringing them here – the music selection is just that awesome. I make a mental note to thank the receptionist for explaining the bars to me. By the morning I will have forgotten all about that note as I have other things to worry about.
I end up talking a lot with the girls as the guys are getting way too drunk to have a decent conversation with anymore. They’re originally from Tartu, one of the two Estonian cities I’ve actually been to. And I know my way around the place, so it’s fun to get a native view on what it’s really like. “Boring” seems to be the answer. But still, hearing stories of familiar places rekindles the flame I have for that city. I will have to go there again next summer for a couple of days at least. Road trip, anyone?
Eventually the night comes to an end and we part ways. I still have no idea what these people did for their living or what their names were. They hop in a cab and head home. I walk two blocks, smile and nod at the receptionist and head upstairs to the 14th floor to get some well-deserved rest.
I finally have the feeling that coming on this trip is going to be totally worth it.