Bayreuther Kneipenfestival

On Saturday, Bayreuth was experiencing something of a music night. Probably bigger places have that every other day, but here, this is quite out of the ordinary.

To top off this event, I attempted to have a round of swimming before to soothe my bad conscience about my physical education. Actually, not only to soothe my conscience, but also my right shoulder, which starts killing me again, as usual in winter when temperature drops and I start pulling up my shoulders and get cramps and what the heck.

So anyway. I got pretty disappointed when I found that, contrary to expectations, the city swimming pool closes two hours earlier than expected on Saturdays. Thus, I turned to the city earlier to have a dinner. At Subway's, just for the record, and to recall good Canadian times. And by the way, Subway Deutschland is giving out reward collection sheets, with points to be collected for every sub (or "sandwich", as we Europeans would call it). This reward sheet works in all of Europe, allegedly - but not in, say, Canada or Japan, since there an electronic scheme is in effect and thus incompatible and thus Europe lags behind in technological advances again.

But I am digressing.




So I passed by the Bayreuther Neues Schloss (now housing either some Catholic church institution or the Finanzamt) and the Stadtkirche with its beacon octogonal bell tower ("campanile" is the word I've been looking for).

My sole company for the Saturday evening out (a colleague whose identity shall remain cloudy, but for the record, let's say that he brought his telltale shell-and-spikes necklace with him) informed me via modern-day telecommunications technology that he'll be late. So after having had a great 15cm sub (also known to be "six pouces" long in francophone places) I went out to look for free WLAN in the pedestrian zone. However, it seems that the WLAN owners anticipated this and offered no free service.

Having finally met, we had no idea where to turn to start the music night, so we entered the next-best bar at hand, which happened to sport a (comparatively) good Jazz band. Besides, I found 5 bucks on the ground, which hasn't happened in many a year to me, so this heralded well for the rest of the evening.



The second bar, however, turned out to be - in spite of the high-flying announcement of a Metallica-Nirvana-Aerosmith-style band - more of a trucker stop, and the "musicians" seemed to fit into the place well, which oozed a conservative-restitutional-reactionary feeling. I left early, leaving T behind, not without notifying him via mobile phone, which unfortunately he had left at home, as he furiously informed me of this morning in office.



I stopped by at Borracho, a Mexican/Spanish style bodega/bar. I had to take care not to bump my head at the low ceiling, but the music was good, a kind of Mexican-Greek crossover. I ordered one apple soda, received none for a long time, and finally three arrived at once. I could barely turn down the waiters as fast as the sodas were coming in.





Finally, I turned to Oskar's, which is the signature meeting ground of all economics, law, and Spöko students, and their professors as well. Besides, they have good latte macchiato.