8/6/02
Tom (Paul) and I really enjoyed our return to dancing in the Cathedral at The Joker last Friday night since we'd missed the previous 2 Fridays and had no club dancing while we were gone on our trip to Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Lichtenstein. This last was a disappointment since we'd expected to find our type of dance club in at least Zurich and Milan as we had in Blackburn, north of Manchester England. (Kitty Reflects on MoreLife_04/28/02) What we found instead was a lot of sitting or standing around drinking beer (or wine) either inside or out, sometimes with good music in the background but with no place to dance and no one showing any interest in doing so.
Yes, the dance scene in Zurich, Bregenz, Innsbruck, Asiago, Milan, and Vaduz was disappointing. We periodically heard pounding house dance music emanating from a passing car, but couldn't find a *dance* club playing the same venue.
In Zurich, we saw old and upcoming advertisements for live performances by all types of groups. We located an area by Zurichsee (Zurich Lake) that had the right "flavor" - plenty of "street art" - adjacent to the well used parks. There were lots of people sitting outside at tables drinking beer (and whatever else is popular in Zurich) but with either no music or a non-danceable variety playing inside. We walked by twice, about 45 minutes apart, hoping that some activity would start up - nada! At an unmarked building at the edge of a park area, older disco-type music was being softly played while several small groups stood, talked, and drank. We sat down on the building steps and waited thinking something was in the "growing" stage. However, after a half an hour (it was heading on 10:30pm) we decided that this was a very slow moving group and possibly a private party in a rented facility since there was no obvious commercial aspect to the building. We picked ourselves up and headed back to the hostel since we needed to be up early to head out to the airport to pick up the rental car. Maybe Zurich just doesn't "come alive" till closer to midnight.
We spent the longest time in Bregenz Austria and thought we had stumbled across a small place in the old section of town - the right kind of sound was pulsing from the open door, a number of young people were gathered around tables out front drinking and talking (it was still fairly early on a Tuesday night), but when we entered, the few tables were empty as well as the postage-stamp dance floor. The song playing at the time was irresistible, and though Tom (Paul) and I danced the remainder of it and 2 young men "rhythm'd" their way past and around me to the men's room, neither they nor anyone else showed any interest in dancing. The bartender didn't seem to think it unusual and offered the information when asked where there was dancing, "at Nachtegal"; adding that a taxi driver could take us there. While we searched unsuccessfully for a club by this name that night and the remainder of our stay, I suspected that the term is a general one in addition to the term "tanz club" meaning "dance club".
On Thursday, the last night of the conference, we took another long walk into the tourist center and beyond, looking and listening for signs of dance life. Again we struck out. Though a few places "sounded" promising, they turned out to be listening and drinking spots only. The spot we'd stopped into 2 nights before was crowded (it was raining outside), and smoke-filled - absolutely no place to dance even if the music had been decent (heavy metal was the favorite that night). So instead we "danced" our way back to the "pension" (boarding house} in which we were staying, ignoring the sprinkles (it rained at some time on most of the days there) and the few cars that passed us. The next morning at breakfast we did learn that a few of the conference attendees drove out of town to some dance spot but the individual relating this had not gone and couldn't tell us what kind of dancing or where exactly the place was located. Maybe that was better than hearing that it had been a great spot, comparable to the Joker; then we'd *really* have been deflated.
Friday night dancing in Innsbruck might have been successful had we had enough energy to stay up. As it was, Tom (Paul) and I had walked earlier in the evening toward the business center to locate an optician to repair my prescription sunglasses. It was a hurried walk on the way in order to find one before the closing times of 6:00pm but on the return we looked for ads and located several that were promising. Unfortunately by the time we made our way back to the Innsbruck Hostel (8 miles later, round trip), I was in little shape to enjoy dancing. We'd also endured the sometimes tension-filled drive from Bregenz that afternoon and were both tired. This was only a one night stop, so ... no dancing in Innsbruck.
We never planned to look for any dancing in Asiago Italy since it's really a small town away from any major city. There may have been some dance club area since we did hear at least 2 of those "music pounding" cars go by while we had car trouble (that's another story), but we really didn't seriously look here. Supper the first night was rather local to the hostel which was outside of the town. The second night we did eat in town - to which we drove after a very long walk earlier in the day - and strolled a bit afterwards but heard nothing promising.
Our first evening in Milan, after another tension-filled drive on narrow Alps roads with Italian drivers less than a car length behind (yet another story), Tom (Paul) and I strolled the area surrounding the B&B hotel. While we were successful in finding a very nice restaurant (much better than the following night), we did not see any signs of dance clubs. We learned the next morning from a native Milan resident that the area is one usually populated with students attending several educational institutions also located there but all was relatively quiet due to summer break. In fact "all" of Milan was due to "shut down" on August 1 for the ritual 1 or more weeks off - some for the entire month. So we were actually lucky that we made our stay at the last of July, since a few days later and we'd found even fewer restaurants and shops open.
Vaduz, our last night "on the continent", was not one in which we had hoped to do any dancing. We knew that our departure by 8am in order to return the rental car by 11am at the Zurich Flughaufen (Airport), would require that we get to sleep by midnight.
As I write this and verbally relive some of the experiences, Tom (Paul) reminds me that he would have spent longer looking for places had I been interested in doing so. He didn't tire as early as I did and I believe that had I not complained of weariness when I did, that he'd have had me scouring more places. I also admittedly was less inclined to go into strange establishments where no English was spoken and didn't readily appear to be a dance club. In some ways I'm just not as adventuresome as Tom (Paul); I like to go to the dance clubs we frequent in Toronto because I know what to expect. Trying out new ones creates a certain amount of unpleasant tension for me until inside, and until the music and atmosphere is found to be danceable. And remember, Tom (Paul) has the additional criteria of paying no cover charge; so we either arrange to be placed on the guest list of a new (for us) club or take the chance that the bouncers will know him (which they sometimes do). So it's possible had we stayed out later, closer to midnight, we may have found some dance life in Zurich, Bregenz, and Innsbruck. We dislike the possibility that European young people - at least in the areas we visited - don't dance like we do here in Toronto or as we found in Blackburn England. It's enough that they smoked heavily wherever we looked, but to also not dance... that would be truly terrible.
To be fair, if I'd had time during the months prior to our trip to search the Internet for dance clubs in each of these European cities and run websites through translation tools, I may have located possible sites. I will definitely make this part of our next trip planning since we do really enjoy dancing and the Blackburn England experience was such fun.
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