Last night I realized that I forgot the feeling of coming home drunk by bike at 5 o’clock in the morning. There are usually two options, you either become more responsible, because you know you are drunk and by the time you get home the alcohol effect is totally gone, or you fall off the bike several times or forget the way home. Because it was Alice’s birthday, the first weekend when we were all here, the last weekend before school starts and the last weekend before me and Marketa start work…we had pretty good reasons to go out last night. Before going out, we met at the kolegium for Alice’s birthday. We ate some cake and very good Turkish breads (which I will learn how to make), we sang karaoke and drank Becherovka (a strong Czech herbal alcohol).
Aarhus on Saturday night looked the same as before holidays and probably the same as it has always looked and will look. Drunk people everywhere, there is no age limit for being drunk in the middle of the night on the street here, so the landscape is very diverse. Usually you expect a lot of violence in such a scene, but there is non here. People are talking to themselves, screaming, falling etc…but nobody is violent. The difference this time is that they seem to have a new rule about age limit in clubs. Before leaving the age limit was 18 or 21 in some clubs, but now they have 20 on Friday and 23 on Saturday both in clubs and bars. We managed to sneak in a bar when the bodyguard left for a few minutes. The atmosphere inside was a bit unexpected. This was a regular bar turned into a club and it was full of Danes. We were the only strange international people there. Though I was only with friends, the club’s vibe was bad. They were playing only old or new, but crappy, Danish pop and just a few older English songs, and there wasn't a style of music…they were playing rap after house after pop and oldies…it was chaotic. We weren't really enjoying, but the Danes seemed to be more than excited about the music. Everybody was dressed very posh, as if it was some expensive club. The girls here look just like the girls who everybody talks about some much at home. They wear a tone of make up and colourful showing off clothing. They are eager for attention and hit on guys. They clearly come out because they want to leave with someone and they get really wasted. They seem to enjoy it, even if from the outside it looks disgusting. But, from what I understood, the habit of girls hitting on boys is very common in the Northern countries. They are usually the ones who invite out boys and buy them drinks…These are all pure observations and I might be wrong because I didn't leave here for so long. This semester I will maybe focus more on the behaviour of Danes and go out more. In my “circle of trust” things are working better and better. Yesterday something really nice happened. Because we weren't in an international, but a purely Danish environment, protection instincts came to surface and every time a guy was getting to close to one of us the others would step in and slowly rescue them. It was a very nice feeling of inner protection and trust, realizing that you can rely on the people that don’t speak the same language as you.