Friday Night Out in Aberdeen

Just back from a great night out in Aberdeen. Armed with two new friends who just arrived at the hostel we hit the town, following the recommendation of the receptionist. At her advice, the Globe was the place to be and we were greeted by the Summer of '69 as soon as we entered.

Like so many other venues here, the pub featured a live act. This one had a drummer, a guitarist, and finally a bass player who doubled as frontman. (I haven't seen that too often.) He also spoke a fair amount between songs but nobody minded because he was damn funny—at least when I could understand him.

At one point the band was having a hard time choosing what to play. They decided to ask some one named Billy what was the one song in the entire world he wanted to hear. Once Billy had whispered the song in our bassist/frontman's ear, gotten rid of his sweater, and was standing proud and ready to dance or sing along to his song of choice, the band broke out into Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby, One More Time." To Billy's dismay, they replaced all instances of the word, "Baby," with "Billy."

"Oh Billy, Billy, how was I supposed to know..."

Around midnight we discovered that they'd stopped serving alcohol because of some clash so we wandered South to another pub. With no cover and not even any ID-check I was really happy with the freedom of being able to pub-jump so easily. Hearing live music, we slowed down at the door and the bouncer simply said, "give it a try..."

Turned out to be great. After watching the guitarist/singer for a bit we nabbed a table and tried out some whisky. Heike our German representative had been working in a Hostel just north of Inverness. There are three whisky distilleries within an hour of their so she served as the resident expert, suggesting first Glen Morae and then McKellan's.

It was interesting hanging out with people from different backgrounds. Jean was raised in France and after teaching French in Nova Scotia, was now settling in to teach in Aberdeen. We talked about drivers' license point systems and differences in language. For instance, most French has a unique-sounding "r" that comes from the throat but apparently in the south-western parts there is a dialect that uses the same "r" you hear in Spanish.

Anyway, it was a great last night in Aberdeen and if I hope to wake up early enough to check out and catch the bus I better get some rest!!