Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance.

Listening me to some: Agnus Dei (Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings arranged for boys choir). Ethereally beautiful, if somewhat of a priest’s wet dream. Highly, highly recommended; listen sparingly, however, and never while operating heavy machinery.

As of last night, I am no longer a euro-club virgin. I fulfilled a life’s ambition of dancing [insert preposition here… try fun ones like under, through, without…I’ll go with “at”] at a crowded, loud, incredibly wild and thinly-veiled-as-dancing European sex fest. I’m not sure where on the long-term goals list this one stood, but it was probably somewhere in between “Get a Doberman” and “Try Kobe Beef.”

These people don’t fool around when it comes to clubbing. The club opens at 11:30 (I’m sorry, 23:30, or dreißig nach dreiundzwanzig… “11:30” is just far too vague, it seems), so my friends and I thought we’d begin our journey around 23:45. Poorly planned. We arrived at U4 (so named because of it’s proximity to a stop on one of the local subway lines) at 00:05 to find the line backed up two blocks. Sally, an Austrian student at the University of Vienna and an all-around cool person, said this was standard issue. A few of us decided to detour to a bar while 2 non-drinking compadres held our place in line.

All one need know about most European bars is this: buy whatever you want, the strongest drink on the menu even; you won’t taste it. The haze of cigarette smoke is far too thick and oppresive to allow for anything as uncool as the sense of taste. Here’s the best way for me to explain it: picture yourself skiing down the Alps, the cool, clear wind whipping your cheeks a brilliant red. To inhale air of this quality as you head down the slope is a marvelous feeling. Faster and faster you rush through the cold, but then!… you reach the bottom of the mountain, and you’re in Mexico City or Pasadena. It’s that abrupt. I didn’t have to worry about secondhand smoke, though, seeing as how I was coughing way too much to inhale.

Sufficiently liquored, we returned to the club and rejoined our line holders. After 15 minutes, we had reached the front of the queue of sexily dressed Volk. We paid the cover, and the velvet rope was pulled away.

It’s been a few years, but I honestly think the only time I’d felt this excited was when I walked into Chuck E. Cheese for the first time. That’s not a bad analogy, actually… with the strobe lights, loud music, and expensive drinks, all we needed was some of that tar-like pizza and some animatronic entertainment in bad need of repair, and the line between club and 5-year-old's birthday party would have been irrevocably blurred.

But I digress. The club was laid out thusly: a long stairway led to a small chamber that lay between two large dance rooms. The smaller of the two rooms was pulsing with some hardcore hip hop, and the larger one (and it was huge) boasted German techno and 80s pop (also German). Now, I did visit both rooms in the course of the night, but naturally I went first for the techno room. Old habits die hard, I suppose, and I wanted to feel again the heady rush of my glow-stick days.

So into the pop room I went, and there must have been half the under-25 population of Vienna. It was like a stationary stampede, except these wildebeests smelled of Acqua di Giò and were sweating like a hockey team.

My friend Lauren and I began to dance, and that girl had some sexy moves (she’s from a rough Philadelphia neighborhood… tough as nails and just a downright sex kitten). We got some interesting looks—don’t get me wrong, the Austrians were all over one another, but they weren’t quite practicing their tango penetrado as Lauren and I were. Jinkies, we were sexy.

The music ranged from Tina Turner (which was great, because Lauren and I got on the stage and with our dancing and our total knowledge of the lyrics, we were bigger than Strudel), to hardcore-lose-yourself-in-a-trance German techno, and we had a blast—our blatant and far too over-the-top sexuality proved fruitful, indeed. We had our picture taken and a number of people offered to buy us drinks. Word to the wise: absinthe is not conducive to any form of exercise, dancing certainly included. Man, that drink… it’s as if the contents of Pandora’s box were introduced to a wine press, and then you drank the liquid thus produced. Death, be not proud. I have tasted thee, and thou hast made my breath taste like bile, but I have survived.

The most difficult part about clubbing in another country is the language barrier. No, there’s not much talking that goes on, seeing as how the music is worse for one’s hearing than a marathon of The Nanny, but there is (unsurprisingly) a good amount of music in German. When they said 80s night, they were thinking Berlin Wall, not the Gipper. So there’s quite a bit of this:

[Dancing, woo, lost in the music and the crowd and the noise, kinda sounds like Prince’s Austrian cousin but who cares woo]

[DJ cuts the music, apparently at a spot in the song whose lyrics everyone knows, and they all scream:

“Wir gehen zur Party wie im Jahre Neunzehnneunundneunzig!”

Yes. Turns out it is indeed Prince’s famous “We’re Gonna Party Like It’s 1999,” but in German. With the crazy techno beat, I couldn’t begin to recognize it. I was later told what the hell I was dancing to].

Many were German songs never heard by anyone stateside. These were always more fun and I got to practice my German while being jiggy on the dance floor.

Really an all around incredible night. Another friend, also named Lauren, found out this fun European clubbing rule: after dancing with a new partner for 5.46 minutes, it is de rigueur that said partner makes out with you hardcore. Lauren actually had quite an international cartel of boys going, and we have since banned her from Brazilians and Serbians.

As a fun prize for slogging thru the blogging, please visit this website:

http://www.arctur.si/mkajfez/helmut.html

That sexy Austrian is our Student Services Coordinator, Helmut Summesberger. It’s hysterical for us, seeing as how he’s basically our camp counselor, and he has a personality straight out of Salute Your Shorts, but if you want to enjoy it on another level you’re more than welcome.

Currently enjoying: Der Rosenkavalier, in preparation for the performance I’ll be attending tomorrow at the VIENNA STATE OPERA?!!?! This can’t be reality I’m living, but the dream sure is nice. Now all I need is… wait, here comes Helmut. Ciao.