Train Wreck – In Montevideo

By Lawrence Selby – Guest blogger traveling in Montevideo.
The plan for Friday night was another late night excursion into the Ciudad Vieja with Adrian, the school tour guide and ambassador. This time the group was much smaller; it was just Adrian, his girlfriend Daniela, Enrique (a former student at the school) and myself. The evening had bad karma from the start. Daniela was in a foul mood and was insanely jealous every time that Adrian would look in the direction of another girl. There were girls and guys handing out pamphlets for clubs nearby. On several occasions, I saw Daniela snatch the pamphlets from Adrian's hand on throw them on the ground. We walked back and forth across the streets of the Ciudad Vieja while the two of them argued about which club to go to. Needless to say, no one was having a good time and I was feeling stupid for traveling half way around the world to be in such a ridiculous situation. "This is a train wreck," I told Enrique, and we both agreed to "lose" ourselves if we didn't settle on a place to go in the next 5 minutes.
Adrian and Daniela finally agreed on a club called Ciudad V and we were sitting down at a table drinking beer. Enrique was goading me into talking to a couple of girls sitting behind us. "You've got the accent," he said. "I don't have an accent," I told him, "its more like I have no Spanish." As I was thinking about the first few sentences of a possible conversation in Spanish, I was stunned by a loud noise like a bomb going off and glass shattering. Beer and glass fragments went flying everywhere. When I recovered from the shock a few moments later, I realized that a glass disco ball hanging from the ceiling had fallen. After striking Adrian in the head, the ball landing in the middle of the table in between us and shattered, along with the beer bottles and glasses. It turned out that no one was badly injured. Adrian had a nasty bump on his head and a few scratches. Enrique had some glass in his face and was worried about some glass near his eye. I had a few scratches on my face. And, of course Adrian, Enrique and I were drenched in beer and glass. As luck would have it, all the beer and glass somehow miraculously missed Daniela. When we talked to the owner he flatly denied any responsibility for the accident and even refused to refund the club entrance fees that we paid. Adrian was furious and told the owner that we were going to the police. We hailed a taxi outside the club and went to the police station. It was around 2 am at this time.