A night on the town

I spent my Friday night celebrating a friend’s birthday at a club that looks like a cave and plays indie pop (the first time I have heard The Postal Service in a public place here – it appears unlikely that it will approach the ubiquity they achieved in Portland, where they were even played in the Fred Meyer), drinking and chatting with an interesting mix of folks – Serbians, French, Finnish, Americans. I learned that the minimum wage in Finland is about $10 US.

Some of the Americans were college study abroaders based in Zagreb, here for the weekend. It had been a very long time since I had spent time with American college students. I was asked about my own college years, major, etc. more times in that night than I had been in at least the last year, possibly longer. I just don’t spend that much time thinking about my college life. It was AGES ago. A few months ago, I got a letter about my 5 year college reunion that started with the phrase, ‘we’ve been apart for longer than we were together….’

And the college kids are all so young. Drinking in a bar is still a novelty for them. Consequently, they have that unhealthy relationship with alcohol typical of 20 year old Americans – one threw up, another stumbled along as we helped him back to his hotel. There was not a chance that he would have been able to find it on his own.

Further proof, as if any more is needed, that having the American drinking age be 21 is not a good policy.