Infiltrating the Swedish nightlife - How do they do it?

Last week I was supposed to go out on Saturday and meet up my friend Dimitris. Sadly, Saturday was the day of the Greek Football Cup Final versus AEK and PAOK. When you pit the fans of these two teams together that almost share the same banner but with a different color, it is like putting a group of hooligans against each other. Better say, you are.

Needless to say, everything went well as expected. A guy was knifed, people went in the hospital, police looked there waving and then the Final started. PAOK won 2-1 with a controversial decision, my friend was gutted and told me that he will stay home and grief instead of going out with me to grief with a pint or two.

So here I am, 21:00 o'clock pondering what should I do. I wear my nice black pants, shoes and shirt and I start making my way to Hornstull in my classic place - Hornhuset (pretty hilarious name to be honest). I decided to go out and write about the nightlife in Stockholm in a rather popular place where things happen all the time. The previous day was equally eventful as I saw 2 guys sniffing cocaine from their mobile phone right in the metro train at 7 pm. I am literally speechless. Good job Sweden!

I make it to the bar, say hi to the guard. He asks me if I am alone and I say yes and that I go there every week. He smiles, says "welcome sir", because apparently I am one and I get inside to be welcomed by 80's pop music.

I go to the top floor to observe, get a beer but there is nothing interesting going on at that point so I grab my coat and beer and go downstairs again. There is a girl sitting on a guy's lap next to some of their friends. She stands up, probably to go to the bathroom and the guy does whatever a guy would/should do in 2017 (hint, I am being sarcastic): slaps her ass so hard that I heard it from 3 meters away. She turns back, gives him a whydidyoudothatbutitsok look and goes on with her business while the guy revels in the spoils of victory like a baboon.

I manage to keep my composure and I move in to the tables where I can sit. There was a company of rather young Swedes with a lot of drunk girls and more joined them later. I had some space next to me and there was this blonde guy called Fabian who had no place to sit so I actually told him that there is space if he wants to. He asked me if I am alone and I said yes.

"That is very nice of you", he said to me. It felt nice to hear that.

Then two black guys that were wearing their hats sideways (because it is always gangsta) started praying on women around the tables and dancing terribly in some sort of liquid dancing robot. That led me to the thought that in Sweden everyone dances weirdly, or terribly, or whatever they want and they don't seem to care about it. Frankly, I can't do that, I feel like a fool and the fact that I rarely drink doesn't help either. But man those guys were just the tip of the iceberg. There were man-vultures all over the place, going like a machine-gun from woman to woman trying to score.

At one point I saw what I thought was a couple kissing really passionately and I became pretty happy because it looked so genuine. I ended up seeing the girl in tears leaving the metro 5 hours later.

I was alone so I had to pretend to play with my phone to not look like a creep too much. I ended up reading some amazing psychedelic posts on my Facebook news-feed and then to go have a second and last beer. I had to wait 33,6 hours in the queue because hot girls were a priority instead of a well dressed, polite and sober young man (I am still young at 28 right?).

Then Doctor Zhivago entered the fray when I started to feel way too hot in the bar. The zhivago reference is probably unknown to anyone outside Greece and we use it when someone wears a turtleneck sweater. I felt like a volcano ready to explode just by looking at him. It was like 30 degrees in there.

Then came the moment that I dread the most when I am out. I needed to pee. I take a deep breath and go in the toilets. Snus everywhere. Snus on the walls, snus on the ground, snus in the sink, snus in the toilet, snus in the snus. Next to me a guy is relieving himself with peacock sounds and another one is betting on Bet365. Which reminds me of another sad soul in the bar that was playing Candy Crush. For the love of baby Jesus i am not joking.

When I started to be a bit bored, Fabian came to the toilet and remembered me and he stood there and chatted with me a little. He was embarrassed that his female friends were so drunk that they were on the table dancing. It was interesting to hear that as most of the time, who cares?

Then the popcorn moment of the night happened when guys started punching each other and the guards reacted like the recovery of the Greek economy (hint, very slow). So I did what I had to do, went to a guard, told him punches in the bar, he looked very surprised and ran to calm the spirits. Laugh? Cry? Both? Hilarious nonetheless.

Just when I was about to leave I saw a guy drinking beer and between his legs he had a motorized unicycle. In the bar. I am speechless again.

Awkward to say the least. But at least they are on a unicycle, and you are not right??

Bar closed and I began to make my way home after I had some mandatory crappy food in McDonald's with random Greek guys I met in the tube. It was not a bad night and it is proof that you can have a good time even by yourself!

In the meantime, I will go back to my trance and try to figure what is wrong with this place. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe weird is the new black. Or maybe I am weird and it is normal. Or maybe I should just go sleep now. Too much Eurovision drinking yesterday.

Laters Sweden.