Brenna and Ruth
Tuesday, March 9th, 11:21PM
Back in the eyewear in which they came.
We had a couple beers and hung out...
Afterwards, at about midnight, Ruth took off and Brenna and I went to Zapata, a bar on the ground floor of an anarchists' building in the area. The building looked like a regular five-or-six-story German building -- except it had spray paint all over it and generally looked like a messy radical artists' colony of some flavor.
Zapata was a dark place with gothy art on the walls -- not unlike Elysium here in Austin in feel. We got a couple of Beck's (the cheaper local beer) and listened to a couple of guys do laptop beats up on the stage. Sounded pretty good. I believe they mostly mp3J'd and kind of glitched their recordings out a bit. It wasn't a full-on live performance. Chill. We sat along a thick table towards the back and drank our booze.
Of all of the places I went on this vacation, this one felt the most like Austin. In a good way.
After about an hour some guy came across us and sat down. He kept saying "Hello, glad to meet you" auf Deutsch and shaking my hand strongly. And he kept on. And kept on. He had calloused hands like a manual laborer, but otherwise looked like what around Austin I would call a frat boy. Brenna eventually interpreted this hand-shaking as meaning "Would you buy me beer?" -- so we bought him a Beck's. But he kept on introducing himself in a German mumble and firmly shaking my hand. (Example number two of crazy people who look clean and dress like normal people.) Brenna thought he was just a bit drunk or on drugs or something, but I can't remember ever having so much to drink that I felt inclined to go up to a stranger and shake his hand over and over for forty-five minutes. I can't say he was unpleasant, though. I mean, he seemed genuinely happy and like he was having a really good time. So whatever. To each his own. Glad to help out.
At about two in the morning we took off. The metro had closed down so we started a long walk to a bus station before the bitter cold and exhaustion finally caught up to me and I decided paying 15€ for a cab would be well worth it.