The Disneyland of Clubs

Praterdome: The Disneyland of Clubs. My night starts off in Haus Erasmus. After a relaxing day of a city walk, coffee, snowfall, and running, I am ready to party. I dress up and head upstairs to begin “pregaming.” The inside of Praterdome is a theme park for adults. It is located inside of Praterpark, a real theme park in Vienna. Thursday night is lady’s night at Praterdome. That means girls get in for free before midnight and get 10 euros of free drinks. Male students get in for 6 euros with 10 euros of free drinks. Every room at Prater is a different theme: Country, house, rap, etc. There is room after room, after room. When you enter the club, they take your picture and hand you a credit card. Whenever you buy a drink they swipe the card. This is ingenious for them because you have no idea how much you are spending unless you ask to look at the credit card terminals (which I did, because I am stingy like that.)

We show up at Praterdome a little after midnight. I walk into the main part of the club club, turn left into a room pumping house music and BAM ¾ naked men with enough self tanner to paint a house is dancing on a pole. Apparently on Lady’s Night there are male “go-go dancers.” All of those strippers are 132% homosexual. The key indicators of homosexuality in this situation are tribal tattoos and tramp stamps.

It seems that in every European club there is a gaggle of photographers walking around taking pictures for promotion websities. A Praterdome photographer comes up to me for a picture, so I grab the arm of the person next to me, who I assume to be one of my friends. Wrong. Totally random Austrian. He stands there and takes a picture with me, not smiling. We exchange no words, but now there is a picture of me on the Praterdome website with a total rando. There must be an innumerable amount of these photos floating around on the internet of my friends and me. The next day when I checked my pockets I had tons of business cards from the photographers advertising that they had pictures of that night up on their websites. So, what happens at Praterdome doesn’t stay at Praterdome, it is plastered all over the information superhighway.

The rest of the evening goes on: I get a Heineken, dance, meet some very nice Austrians and Germans, etc, etc. Now it comes time to leave the club. When you exit the club they nail you. Since we show up after midnight I have to pay 3 euros to leave. Boys have to pay 6 euros. We all got 10 euros of free drinks, but no one went up to 10 euros (way too much pregaming). One rather sneaky member of our crew walks right out an open door and pays nothing. Once we get outside the club it is FREEZING. One night bus later we find ourselves at Schwedenplatz with no direction home. There are 9 of us and not a single one knows how to get back to the 7^th district. So, 4 people hop into a cab and speed off towards home. 5 of us are left on the curb. In Austria the taxis are Mercedes and other really nice cars. These taxi drivers follow the law. Up ahead of where we are hailing taxis is a cop van (Cops here travel in groups of 4 people in VW Vans). We flag down several taxis that refused to take 5 passengers. Finally, we flag down a Turkish cab driver. One of our American friends explains to the taxi driver in a combination of English, Spanish, and German that we need to get 5 people in the car. He looks at the cop, looks at us, and opens the trunk. We think he wants someone to hide in the trunk when we drive past the cops. Nope. He pops up a 5^th seat and we are good to go. 10 euros later we are back in the 7^th district: the familiarity of peep shows and kabob stands. There are 7 kabob stands at our public transport stop. Everyone pretty much sells the exact same items for the exact same price, but it seems that every student has a favorite kebab vendor. I used to go to Cetiy, until he asked me out for coffee. I like kebabs, but not that much. So, I was standing near a kabob stand, waiting for my friends to finish when this African John and his “ladyfriend” start speaking to me in German. I reply with my stock phrase, “Ich spreche etwas Deutsch.” (I speak some German). As if to warn them that whatever they say to me I will not understand. Long story short I walked away with a free kabob.

Friday

I go to Bamboo. Bamboo is an all you can eat Asian buffet 2 blocks away from Haus Erasmus. From 3-5 PM they have “Happy Hour”, where it costs 6.90 euros (instead of 13 euros for dinner). Now, when I say Asian Buffet you probably think of the US version: tacky Jade sculptures, cockroaches in the food, meat that might be cat, but is probably rat. Forget all that. This is the nicest buffet I have ever been too. They have beef, chicken, prawns, shrimp, squid and assorted seafood for stir fry. They have vegetables I have never seen before. But hands down the best part of the buffet is the sushi. I’ve had good sushi (best ever in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with Laura) and the worst sushi (China Buffet in Brattleboro, VT with Molly). This sushi lands a little closer to Cabo than Brattleboro. We came. We ate. We left in pain.

That night we go back to the Ottakringer Brewery for a mini Oktoberfest party. It’s not a very good party. Having been to the Oktoberfest in Munich everything else pales in comparison. If Oktoberfest was the Minnesota State Fair, the Ottakringer Oktoberfest would be Corn Days. It was my Bentley colleagues’ birthday. I went up to the DJ and requested the classic “Birthday Sex.” (Or if you listen to it on 101.3 KDWB “Birthday Shh.” The DJ informed me that the song had not yet been released in Austria. So, no “Birthday Sex “ for the birthday boy.