A nicht oot on the toon

It has already been over a week since I returned from my trip to Norway, where I really put the “abroad” in “study abroad”. I can assure you that I also lived up to the “study” part all of last week… I submitted an essay, gave a presentation, completed a take-home exam, and started working on my next two assessments. By Friday night, I was ready to have some fun.

It was a wild night.

As usual, my friends and I began the night at Slain’s with a pitcher of “pride”. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but Slain’s is by far the best pub in Aberdeen. It’s a medieval-themed pub with fun drinks, great music, and an awesome bartender who hosts fun events such as pub quizzes every week. Friday night’s special event included a DJ (the bartender) who would take any and all song requests, which meant that the music was even better than usual.

After chatting upstairs for a while, Alyssa and I decided to go down to the bar and take a shot of tequila. We were just about ready to turn around and head back upstairs when a guy behind us said, “How do you drink that?!”. Looking back, that was a pretty smooth way to start a conversation. Nice job, Robert.

We started talking with Robert for a while, and he kindly bought us a couple more drinks. As he was doing so, Alyssa and I gave each other a wee fist bump (free drinks!). His friend, who was standing right next to us said with a smirk, “I saw that”. I just held my finger up to my mouth and whispered, “shhhh”. We laughed about it, talked a bit more, and then went our separate ways for the night.

Upstairs, the party was getting better by the minute. We left our table for the dance floor and danced our hearts out. At one point, I convinced the bartender to leave his DJ setup to come dance with me!

We eventually made our way to Prohibition, where we continued dancing until 3 am. At that point, I physically could not dance any longer. We left and started walking toward the taxi line with the intention of going back to Hillhead. However, we did not make it home until 5 am. Here’s why…

As Alyssa and I were walking down the street, we were stopped by a random guy who looked about our age. He just stood in the middle of the sidewalk with his arms out as wide as he could get them and said, “WOW. WOW. WOW.”. I laughed and replied, “wow?”. Then, he goes, “can I have a hug?”. You all know I’m a hugger… so of course I gave him a hug! He then asked for a kiss, so I ran away 😂.

Alyssa and I were laughing hysterically about what had just happened when two more random guys stopped us in the street. They started rambling on about the most random things such as half-human-half-horses with bows and arrows and William Wallace riding around Scotland on his bicycle. Alyssa reminded them that William Wallace definitely did not own a bicycle. After all their blabber about William Wallace, they said “thank God you’re not Scottish or we’d be dead right now”. They were English.

The entertainment continued for at least a half hour. The one guy started mumbling us a song. Then, they both tried to buy us bouquets of flowers from the ladies selling them on the street. At one point, a random man walked up to the two guys, looked them dead in the eyes and said in the most dramatic voice ever, “dO yOUse BeLieVE iN TreAsuRE?”. He then handed them a set of keys and walked away.

After a while, the one guy tried to shut the other up by going “blah blah blah blah”. A group of guys walking by echoed, “blah blah blah blah”, and it became a contest. What chaos!

We finally left, laughing hysterically about how strange that encounter had just been. It wasn’t two minutes before yet another random guy in the street said, “HEY! Can I have a high-five?!”. Apparently everyone was in a great mood that night.

Then, we got Chinese food. And THEN, we ran into….

ROBERT!

The night had come full circle. It was funny how excited we were to see Robert, even though he too was really just another stranger. Anyone in the street probably would have thought that we were best friends or something.

We invited him to walk back with us since he had to walk home in the same direction. Along the way, another random guy chimed in on our conversation for a minute and then walked away. At this point, I was not the least bit surprised.

Throughout our conversations, I noticed that Robert was speaking a bit of Doric. For example, he would say “Ah myne” instead of “I remember”. I was so excited to be able to pick up on his use of Doric words! At one point, he also asked if I knew what a “munro” was. He was shocked that I knew (in case you’re wondering, it’s a hill that’s too big to be considered a hill but too small to be considered a mountain). The only reason I knew what a “munro” was is because I remembered the lady at the whisky shop in Inverurie telling me about a ten-year-old girl who had climbed all 200-something munros in Scotland!

After Robert had left, Alyssa and I spent the remaining walk replaying the entire night. We could not believe how entertaining the nightlife in Aberdeen is… and then we realized that we had never really stayed out that late before, especially because we usually end up going out on week nights. We also laughed at the fact that the morning birds were chirping.

I finally made it into bed at 5 am… and didn’t see much sunlight the next day. However, I did manage to go out and make something of my day on Sunday! Stay tuned for another post on that adventure.

Until next time,

Clara