The Radvocate Issue #7

Part of the crew wanted to head to a hotel back over the border, and part of the group wanted to sleep underneath covered bleachers/pavilion back in the park. A small car (with no room for me) left for the hotel, and the rest of us embraced the dharma-bum night ahead. Thankfully, the bleacher area was covered, so we dragged our sleeping bags through the downpour and got to drinking. Things started out innocently enough, just pastimes to wait out the rain: drinking songs, national anthems and loud jokes. But soon, we were out of beer, and were forced to take the long walk into town.

The walk was filled with mischief. We were tearing down street posters, smashing traffic lights, pulling down whatever we could get their hands on, and just being obnoxious shitheads in general. The weird thing was, even though there were apartments and buildings everywhere, not a single light came on. It was like the whole city had been abandoned. Apparently it’s quite normal for drunk French tourists to invade Swiss towns and raise hell – a boorish behavior I thought was exclusively reserved for Americans. It’s kind of nice to know that there are other nationalities that get an international rap for being assholes while abroad. We’re not so different, you and I… We saw one car the entire night – a cop car that whizzed past us, uninterested. The passing of the cops caused the group to cheer, and more things were smashed. Eventually we got far enough into town to realize that there was nothing open this late (duh). I thought we would start to turn back, but some of the guys were now drawn by other pursuits that the town had. It turns out that there were local people out this late other than us – the working girls.

No, I didn’t do it. But two of the group did – and honestly, they didn’t seem that much happier when they came back the next morning. After stumbling back through gardens and graffiti-covered underpasses, we got back to our dry spot near the bleachers and fell asleep.

The next morning was cold and gray. A policeman, called by the groundskeeper, had told us to leave from a polite distance. We complied, and walked back toward our van in the wet parking lot. Everyone was hung over, but accounted for. Vlad, who we thought we had lost the night before, had actually been laid out in front of the van all night, with only his jacket covering his head. People arriving at the park (for rowing practice, apparently) had shuffled by him all morning without a word or concern.

From what I heard, he had drunk two bottles of vodka.