The famous pub crawl

I signed up for the famous pub crawl on Friday night. The hostel apparently is part of the "Nightcircle" - which is organized by a VERY international guy with a Bavarian heart called Zeno. Here is his MySpace entry.

Anyway - we met at the hostel. 4 US geeks from Chicago - currently spending a few weeks in Europe - talking about movies all the time - it was even for me too much, a guy from New Zealand - spending money I don't have - haha I am so funny, an English couple and two spanish guys that came so late, we had to pay the taxi double for the waiting. So much for diversity ...

So in principle this is what happens (more on the website): You pay 3000 ISK and for this you get free drinks in Bar11 for two hours, free entry to a place called Pravda, a free shot and a free cocktail later on and a free hotdog.

If you read the last sentence you probably got the point of the whole Friday / Saturday nights in Reykjavik. And it was just like that. We started at Bar 11 - totally empty except the girls behind the bar, Zeno and two relatively young girls hanging around. Also the drinks did not come from the bar but out of bottles from a bag - so it looked a bit of shady in the beginning. But drinks are drinks so it really didn't matter - and the beer was from behind the bar. After about two hours we started to move and went to Pravda, had our free cocktail and the others danced to Beyoncee and more. Not my kind of music but some seriuously cool people.


The next place we went to was called Barinn and it was completely the opposite - a very stylish and local place with people dressed more strangely - there were some girls wearing elf-like shirts and interesting face paintings. This was the place we started spending our own money and realized how expensive going out in Iceland is. I bought a beer and a shot for one of the americans for 1200 ISK. Not very cheap I must say. Also here we realised the real advantage of joining the crawl instead of going on your own. Zeno got us into the places without having to wait the long queues. Which is a very good thing at Reykjavik temperatures...

We moved on later to get our hotdogs and went back to Bar 11 - which was not the same as before. A huge queue in front of the place and inside the craziest crowd I have ever seen. Iceland is rumoured to have the best local punk rock scene in the world and this was the place to experience it. Packed with people of all ages and alcohol levels, some even with KISS-like make up in their faces. The scene reminded me of the big dance seen in Matrix as the masses moved with the music. Some drunken people were pushed around in chairs, with towers of empty bottles being put on them. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera so I could not take pictures but probably it is better this way. We stayed there until around 4 and went home after about an hour of waiting in line for the taxis in pouring rain - and I was finally glad to have taken my snowboard jacket with me.


Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention the joke of the day:

This guy comes walking into a crowded bar with a crocodile on a leash, everyone backs off scared. He says, "not to worry folks! this is a very friendly crocodile, very sweet natured, won't hurt a fly!"
He sits down at the bar and orders a beer, everyone still very scared and staying away as far as possible from the crocodile. Then he says, "really people, there's no reason to be scared, look, I'll show you."
He unzippes his fly, gets his dick out, opens the mouth of the crocodile, puts his dick in, closes the mouth again and hits the crocodile a few times hard on the top of his head with his fist.
"See?" he says, "nothing happened. Is there perhaps anyone else that would like to try it?"
A blonde lady at the end of the bar stands up and says:
"Yes sir, I would like to try it but you have to promise me not to hit me on the head as you did with that poor crocodile!"

(ps: it is actually pretty funny if you have to wait for a taxi at 5 in the morning in pouring rain with a half-drunken icelandic crowd around you ...)