Alright, so here's the blog that basically conclude's
Angie's last entry.
As you well know, we spent the beginning of last night hanging out in our hostel dorm getting to know a Hungarian brother and sister named Anita and Sabi (his name is actually "Saboich"...but I don't want to commit to that spelling) and an Australian fellow named Shane. Our conversation had turned to something completely morbid and uterly disturbing about serial killers, properly commiting suicide, and a story about some American in the late 1800's that lured tourists to his "house of horrors" where he actually murdered them
en masse with acid vats, lion dens, spike pits, etc (I have yet to find anything about this on the interweb)... It was about this point that we decided to go out for dinner (which in Eastern Europe always leads to ruthless intoxication).
We started off at some University bar, where the only table was amidst a huge crowd of students attending some sort of Lithu-African drum party. We were absolutely surrounded by thin, Eastern European girls gorging themselves on beer towers and fried bread, heavy browed Russian brutes delicately nibbling at salads and an entorage or obese Lithuanians dressed in gaudy African regalia beating an assortment of hand-drums. General absurdidty ensued, during which much beer was consumed, ample servings of nearly everything on the menu devoured, and the bill was eventually settled with no-ones tab being over $10.00CAN. Awesome.
It must have been that the group was some sort of student enthnic submersion project as there was an organised audience participation component where maracas (made of beer cans filled with rock salt...
so Eastern European) and cheap Djembes were liberally distributed amongst the crowd.
Inevitably, we ended up with one such drum on our table, and after discovering that I'm an absolutely brilliant hand drummer it was well received that we should probably steal the drum. In fairness, I did voice a contrary moral opinion, but it was quickly shot down by the Hungarians. Fair enough, I now had a drum.
Out to the streets we headed, an air of confident possesion of our new instrument high on our faces. We pushed through crowds or writhing, drunk, horny college students without much contestion but at the door, one of the
enormous, Soviet monsters guarding the door reached out in front of me. I pushed forward, confident that if I ignored him he wouldn't stop me...this drum was
mine after all. There was a definite moment of tension with all participant theives and then, "BAM" the doorman just struck a beat on the drum and smiled. Well, what else to do but lay out a Djembe dance party?
We stepped out into the first snow we've seen this year and started a full out tribal dance / drum show which was liberally participated in by all the smokers freezing their asses off out front. Even the doormen started to move with the beat...though they looked rather like albino gorillas trying to avoid stepping on the cold ground. Well enough.
So here we were, 5 beautiful foreigners dancing off down the snow-covered cobblestone, hurling snowballs and stringing the random English adverts we passed into some semblence of a song: "
megaSpeak Razr love time good good cozy bar sexy tan!"
And then back to that notorious bar, Ibysh, where we found our old friend Mantas and kept him stuck behind the bar until 6am. At one point Angie was leaned drunkenly over the bar taking uninvited photos of Mantas for a full 5 minutes. I've seen these photos...he was clearly not impressed, but then it
was his fault for feeding her triple Camparis.
*stumble, stumble, stumble
1:30pm rolls around and we find ourselves in a rather rough state. Angie is still decidedly drunk, and the two Hungarians look like someone is routinely bouncing a hammer off their skulls...I however, came out unscathed from the whole ordeal and corralled us into a pancake Sunday "brunch".
Here we stayed, gorging ourselves on all sorts of crepes and deserts for a full 2 hours. Before we finally packed up for the day (at this point, about 4:30pm) Sabi made a point of stealing the absurdly small salt shaker.
Note of advice:
Do not call Hungarians, "Gypsies" This is not a funny joke to them, and I very nearly lost two new friends over it. Let them take as they will, and never, ever call them Gypsies!
