ESN: Anti-Valentine's Day in Nachbar

14th of February, the Sunday night, was reserved for the ESN event of Anti-Valentine's Day. The place of the meeting was at the Nachbar bar. The event started at 7 p. m. and we were able to stay there until 11 p. m. as it was Sunday (otherwise you can stay as long as you want) and the other waitress was sick.

What have I done on Sunday?

Source

I did the big tour on the bikes and with U6 that day around Vienna and was really tired. Before going to the Nachbar I enjoyed the comfort of being home a lone and use the kitchen for myself. My Swiss flatmate left around the noon so it felt a bit empty and my other flatmate was about to return the other day late in the evening before midnight. I took myself some time and explored what to do with all the ingredients in the kitchen since I wanted to use as much as possible until Zagreb not wasting money on them.

After preparing a meal with potatoes, meat, different types of vegetables for salad, all with a bit of different spice, I rested a bit on the couch after a delicious dinner-lunch and took my time to enjoy the bath a little bit and wash some clothes. Soon the time to go to the Nachbar came and I went out right before 7 p. m. Then I saw it was raining outside, closed the entrance doors of the building, ran up the stairs to unlock the flat, took my umbrella and then went out.

Again in Nachbar

Nachbar from the outside. Source

What it looks like right after entering the bar. You can order something to drink here or in the basement. Source.

It took me about 3 minutes to get right in front of the cafe. Living close to the corner of the Florianigasse-Langegasse and the Schonborn park I managed to get there quickly. Nachbar is located in Laudongasse 8 and is very close to Alser Straße and about 5-10 minutes walking from the Universität Wien and Schottentor. You have the bus stations Laudongasse (13A bus) and the tram stations of the same name and Lange Gasse where you can get the lines 43 and 44.

The interior, one of the 2 closed rooms in the basement where we had our meetings organized. Source

I have already been to Nachbar the Wednesday earlier when there was the second ESN Speedfriending meeting and I saw some familiar faces today again. I saw some people entering it and there I came in.

At the entrance I meet one friend I saw last at ESN Christmas Party in December. She had the pirate flag which signallzed the visitors who wanted to attend the event where we were. I went downstairs into the meeting room, the same one where the Speedfriending took place. It was already a bit full of people, almost the whole table was taken. I left my jacket on the chair and went up to buy some beer. I paid 2 € something for the big cup.

Now back downstairs I sat at the table surrounded by some new faces and the "hey, I am ____ from ____, what about you? ".

Oh, I forgot to say a few things! Since this was the Anti-Valentine's Day it was meant to be all about no-romantics, no dating, no flowers and other cheesy stuff. The flowers there were actually dead (if they paid attention to the details they did it then well). No costumes or something, just the casual outfit and this meeting was meant to be kind of another speedfriending.

Another speedfriending and talking contra mainstream

After going through the first room you see this. To get to the Erasmus meeting go downstairs and the first doors you see is where you go. Source.

So our task was in the first part of the meeting to meet every person, have about 3 minutes and talk about bad date experiences, worst romance movies and so on... everything against the Valentine's Day usual conversation. Anti-atmosphere. In the beginning it worked for the first few person then of course we started talking about everything else. One side of the table was sitting and the other one (like me) had to move to the next seat every 3 minutes until the whole circle was done. Throughout the evening few more people came and left. I guess in total there were about 20 people.

Now in the last 5 days I had the luck to find and discover other Croats in Vienna too! Apart from 5 people I knew and met in 4 months (okay, plus my former flatmate, that is 6 then) I have not met other Croatians. But now two seats next to me there were 3 of them sitting. So it was fun. And we chatted and avoided English until talking to the others. One of them spent the whole semester here but had his time organized and spent totally different from mine. The other two were fresh, came few days ago and were going to do the internship just like me. And they were not going to be paid just like me.

We split then into several groups and talked until we had to abandon the bar. There were again lots of Finnish people (I would say they were the biggest group of foreigners there... but there was also 4 of us from Croatia not far behind them when talking about numbers). And time flies pretty fast when it is interesting. I met some familiar and new faces from Turkey, Scotland, UK, Finland, Austria, German, Czech Republic, Switzerland (also a group of them, mostly from French speaking parts) and Poland.

Before 11 p. m. we were asked to leave soon as it was going to get closed. I took my stuff and left home. Ate again something, went to write for the blog and planned to visit my studio tomorrow to sign some papers for Erasmus and transfer the files from my computer to Dropbox. I did not want to come more than twice to the studio. But you will see what happened in the end.

So, the last weekend was pretty interesting and with lots of people, I can say I really enjoyed it, it was not boring. Now 4 more days left.

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