You party like there's no tomorrow
It will not be precisely me who says anything bad about the Spanish party, precisely me and precisely today that I just spent it after the dj kissed me from the booth. But, friends, the differentiating ingredient is not that we do things with more effort, professionalism or good vibes: it's just the sun.
The sun doesn't rise at night , of course, but it heats up during the day and is responsible for the flexible schedules and the people fooling around in the streets. A small terrace in Roman Trastevere, any room in any ruin bar in Budapest, a flash of energy in a nightclub in Amsterdam. Any of these things will kill you with envy the first time you try them.
It relativizes a lot on trips trading a couple of national museums for a couple of hungover mornings . And it is relativized with pan-European love from the third cup. Since this is as personal as it is fleeting and changeable, we offer a night tour of the European cities in which the editor has had one drink too many. There will be gaps in the list, of course, particularly memory gaps.
BUDAPEST
Your best night in Budapest can end up being the best night of your life. Start in the ruin bars, originally buildings in the process of falling down, but reclaimed for music and the drinks and the fortuitous encounters and with little light . In each courtyard and on each floor and in each room there is a surprise in the form of oversized decorations, soviet parlors , accumulated junk and independent rooms with their own DJ and their own party ecosystem. The same thing you have to climb one by one post apocalyptic elevator with a red escay sofa inside that you go out to a terrace that looks like that of a squat house. There are, for example, the Szimpla Kert for a first dive separating tourists and the Instant for something more pro and more Hungarian and to entertain the night from room to room without anything being or similar to one another.
Owl-style Budapest
**But I left my little partying heart in the Cinetrip **, the night parties in spas with audiovisual shows of lasers and DJs. In practice, it is a lot of people doing the donkey in the water. Large groups that raise tsunamis clapping on the surface to the rhythm of music, piggyback fights, continuous underwater friction (the opposite is difficult) , human-powered tides when everyone runs at once through the circular corridors and love against the edges of the pool. Any cup you take with you is going to turn into 50 percent hot spring water in the first minute. , but they say it is very healthy. They are usually in Lukacs , but there are also Szechenyi , the municipal spa and the largest. Here the party is less concentrated but becomes even more spectacular and full of possibilities.
All this is lived with more desire if you are looking for a central and comfortable hotel where hangovers pamper you. I was at the Iberostar Grand Hotel Budapest, owned by the Grand Collection firm, where in addition to speaking to you in Spanish, they serve tapas in the restaurant and offer customers access to a spa with a regenerating pool.
Oh the water...
PRAGUE
In Prague it is difficult to feel alone. Also at night. The fundamental rule is not to confuse music clubs (discotheques) with night clubs (striptease venues), although in nightclubs it is not uncommon to also find a show that includes nudity. A good part of its festive offer is designed for tourists, especially everything that moves around the Charles Bridge. There the most magnetic is Karlovy Lazne , a five-story venue with five different musical environments on one side of the beginning of the bridge. Among so much offer, you have to be very special not to find something or someone you like there.
In the area and also full of tourists daily is Zlaty Strom (in Karlova 187). Next to Wenceslas Square, the ** Duplex **, with two floors and a terrace where things are always happening, gives a more refined touch to tourists, who dress here with more attention to accessories. near there and for quiet nights and with a certain Czech accent, the ** Nebe ** (Vaclavske namesti, 56) proposes a more manageable size of bar.
The place to have a quiet drink in crazy Prague
NANTES
a city in which at night the weird one is the one who isn't a bit of a hipster. It is full of students who give it a lively and rather creative accent to go out. sites like the old biscuit factory LU (now the Le lieu unique joint) and the Alter Café sum up the party spirit here: music and art in an unbeatable alliance. More information here.
hipster city
BRISTOL BOARD
The first time I went to Bristol I went out for a night walk without knowing what I was going to find. I had only read about the daytime city, that of the Cary Grant, that of the remote port that communicated England and America and that of the current financial headquarters going from strength to strength. In the first minute about Harborside I watched as a guy on a bicycle crashed directly into a wall for no apparent reason; some policemen were detaining a couple of kids who were messing around; the groups came and went talking louder than in a Chiclana flea market; some girls were fighting, others were singing and all were wearing miniskirts without stockings in the frigid English February. There was a large square extended in which the animation did not stop.
The Bristol thing was a continuous darlotodismo , with the bars packed with extra-motivated students, an endless DJ scene and many hidden surprises. Among them, the Thekla , a boat disco and concert hall and the handful of bars with live jazz or folk by the harbour. The town that Massive Attack, Roni Size and Portishead came from takes music very seriously. Just get close to Harborside, Park Street or Whiteladies Road and let yourself be guided by the noise.
The British Dock Party
ROME
From Rome I remember above all a night in Trastevere. The neighborhood guarantees a quiet and happy dinner of pasta and light wine, which is barely affected by the crowded tourist, as happens a little throughout the city. Here almost no further recommendation is needed than the Give Enzo to 29 where Enzo's children continue to prepare their traditional recipes as they did 50 years ago.
Trastevere
OSLO
Oslo is the city of nocturnal prosperity . Happy people, well dressed -but surprisingly little warm- is distributed to the sides and ends of the upper part of the karl johan street . The city guarantees a lot of smiles, a lot of good vibes and hospitality towards visitors based on genuine curiosity. There is a slightly more formal evening visit before or after Karl Johan's bars: the Summit, the cocktail bar of the Radisson Blu Scandinavia , located more than 100 meters high.
Summit Terrace
GRONINGEN
From my arrival in the city, just a stone's throw from the German border, I remember the waves of students that appeared around a corner on a summer night. All blondes, all blondes, healthy and drunk within an order, a rather dreamlike scene . Groningen is the second university city in the Netherlands and, of its 200,000 inhabitants, 40,000 are students. You immediately discover that it has the merit, being so far north, to have more bars than your town. The key here, in addition to blending in with the students, is to approach the students after dinner. Surroundings of the Martini Tower , where you stay to go out and where it is not difficult to hear Spanish spoken, especially by the many Erasmus students that swarm around the city. Then you will meet them again Hitting up karaoke with your own band at Great Piano's , dancing rather alternative pop at Vera or clubbing at Shadrak or Pand48 .
AMSTERDAM
the of amsterdam easily leads to a strange night of psychotropic shades, like Alice in Wonderland. The legal sale of marijuana, cultivated with care and with all of the law, favors a weekend tourism who comes to have fun and fill in the partying gaps of a rather industrious and formal population. Among the many things that you will find at night in the red light district there are people offering you something illegal, with whispers, but insistently, on the corners; lots of German and English youth stumbling around; girls who call you from glass cages; sex shops and porn cinemas and channels to fall for. To find techno or electronic clubs You have to leave this entertaining neighborhood and go to Paradiso , Trouw, Studio 80 or Melkweg , which is also a concert and exhibition hall.
Concerts, exhibitions... And a lot of partying
Praying... in Amsterdam
BRUSSELS
It's been too long since I've been to Brussels, so I asked my informant there, @cucurbitap . He tells me that there is always going . Not a Spanish-style march, “but there it is. Throughout the week, and **in increasing order of age (not neural)**, pubescents, Erasmus, stagiaires, trainees and all those who have gone to a meeting and have not found a flight to return home that day mix in this Tower of Babel where beer is never lacking. It could be stated that If it didn't rain, Brussels would be the city of the bottle . But, as this is not the case, you will find these people in bars in the Grand Place and surroundings (Delirium, the King of Spain, or Madame Mustache).
If it is Thursday, a new stratum is added: the expats working in Institutions, and the meeting has a name: 'After Work Drink' at **Place Lux (of Luxembourg) **. If you don't belong to any of those groups and you're not Belgian, you have to get to know the city little by little because everything is scattered. The neighborhoods of Ixelles (including Flagey) and Saint Gilles they have their own life and character, and in them one can shelter in some bars without expecting to go crazy. If with a bit of luck you know someone living in Brussels they will take you to the market that's on that afternoon - recommended Chatelain on Wednesdays for some wines- , or to the hipster bar in the neighborhood on duty (the Athenee, for example). If not, you have the Place de Saint Gery, the Place du London , or get hold of the free 'Agenda' leisure guides in Brussels and let yourself be tempted by its concerts: "all the rooms are worth seeing, and some are magical, like those in the botanical garden (Botanique)".
Madame Mustache