It’s MY generation!
Whether young or old – Bregenz leaves nobody cold.
“You won’t manage that alone, dad. We’d best go with you,” said my son and his girlfriend when they found out that I was going to write once more about Bregenz’s nightlife. And they are not wrong: the selection of clubs, cafés and meeting points for young and older in Bregenz is now so comprehensive that is suffices for at least two generations.
“You can check out a couple of places and we will do the same. Let’s see what places we meet up in,” said my son slightly cheekily as we started our very own “Long Night” in the Neptun. The popular Bregenz café-bar in Leutbühel is one of those meeting points in which both students and people in the mid-fifties feel at ease – be it for a daily city chit-chat upstairs or for a dance-off to international DJs downstairs. However, soon I left the young people to it and visited s’Duo, which shines with several large-screen televisions and gastronomic innovations, especially when sports events are taking place; the wonderfully cosy lounge in Ikaros, in which owner “Pani” always indulges with Greek starters and retsina; and the prosecco bar, in order to enjoy the drink of the same name as a delayed aperitif. Then it was time to leave Leutbühelplatz, as both the wine tavern Kinz and Uwe’s Bierbar are located in the historic Kirchstraße, where one can enjoy both grape juice specialities and various drinks based on hops and malt.
Contemplative and exotic
“Let’s see what the young people are doing,” I thought and walked to Sparkassenplatz, where we had arranged to meet at our first meeting point, Lust. Like Gösser and Grano, Lust opened only last year, with the nightlife boom in Bregenz continuing undiminished. After exotic cocktails – after all, owner Stefan Köb can call himself a “world champion” cocktail mixer – the two told me all the places they had already ended up: “The Wunderbar is really nice – antiquities as furnishings and a top DJ in between. Even in Vienna you would be impressed with that,” said the students studying in the capital, “and also Cuba with its exotic atmosphere, the comprehensive rum menu and the Latino sound would be a credit to any city.”
Culinary enjoyment and fun
Since it does not always have to be city for me, I left for the more contemplative Bongostaio with its comprehensive selection of Italian dishes and wines, treated myself to one of the numerous whisky specialities for which Christoph Sögner at Café Montfort is known, and finally waited for my “little ones” in the no-smoking Cuenstler between new paintings that are continuously added and a comprehensive selection of magazines. With more than academic lateness, they finally arrived: “All hell was loose at Viva; maybe because there are delicious Tex-Mex dishes until 1am,” they enthused. “And then, of course, we went to Paschanga – there is always a party there and so the location is a must for everyone under 30!” Ignoring this small verbal barb, the three of us then visited the Anette-Bar, the classic bar for the night hours – thanks, among other things, to numerous live concerts and small talk that is continued into the morning hours. “Well, are the young people tired?”, I could not stop myself from asking. “There are still some things we could do!”
Dawn
However, while a final nightcap in the Kreuz-Bar, probably the visually nicest bar in the city, was barely accepted, I could convince the tired heroes neither of a trip to the Nachtigall (“We are too young for disco fox.”) nor of a table dance visit at the Kronenbar (“Are we even old enough to go in there?”). So I bid farewell and went alone into the Calypso to end the evening with a little dance in the city’s only disco, smiling silently to myself: As if I cannot manage it alone…
Raimund Jäger