The rollercoaster (2)...

Saturday night was an interesting one. After dinner and a stroll, Lili and I started looking for a club to go dancing in. Both of us being in the mood for some electronic music, I had heard that Peter Pam was the spot in the altstadt. I had really wanted to go back to Nacht Residenz, but I didn't remember how to get there and it was really cold outside so I didn't want to walk too far. I vaguely remembered the direction of the club and that it took a long time to get there. Coming up on Peter Pam and seeing that entry was free and the tunes seemed all right, floating out from the basement of this building we decided to stop in.
I must say that the bartenders were very well endowed with much silicone and tiny shirts. Stephanie, pictured here, was our bartender from Brazil. She kept complaining about how bored she was with the club and how nothing ever happened there. I ordered my usual red bull and an alt bier for Lili. We went dancing and noted that the DJ had a passion for Latin music which was fine by us. After a while we found our way back to the seats at the bar that we had occupied at the beginning of the night. By this time we were on our 3rd round when Stephanie brought me a red bull and vodka. That really pissed me off since I took a nice big gulp then realized my drink was spiked. She tried to tell me that I had ordered it that way...
After some more dancing and chatting Stephanie complained some more about being bored. Lili and her danced to a good Latin song, I didn't get very good pictures, but it was hot... really hot... We sat back down and shortly thereafter there was a commotion on the dance floor. They flicked the lights on to signal the bouncers to come on back for the second time that night. 2 little guys ran from the dance floor and out of the club. Shortly thereafter 4 real big dudes started making their way to the dance floor when the screams started. There was a stampede of Germans from the dance floor on the opposite side of the bar. The setup was that the club was a rectangle with a large square at one end, bar cutting through the middle, and seating on the outside. We were at the center of the bar on the opposite side of the stampede.

At this point I grabbed Lili and tucked her underneath the bar and tried to assess the situation. There was still a decent sized crowd on the dance floor which confused me. I thought about the indian temples where people die as a result of stampedes due to false bomb rumors and overcrowding. While surveying the panic I heard 3 reports in relatively short succession. I couldn't make out what kind of gun it was from the sound. Either the loud music or acoustics of the building could have muffled the report, but I really think the biggest it could have been was a .22, but possibly some kind of gas powered gun since handguns are difficult to acquire here (for the general public that is). It was at this point I dropped down too, still watching as more Germans fled from the dance floor and ensuring neither of us was injured as a result. We waited under the bar until a sufficient number of police in riot gear showed up for my taste, at which point I grabbed Lili and took her out.

We made it as far as the coat check and found Lili had lost her ticket. There were some girls hiding in the coat check area and the old man running it was quite flustered. At this point there was the discussion of the crowd about the gun. I knew schleissen (shooting) and Lili picked up the old dudes Italian about a shooting etc. It would make sense with the stampede, but the sound of the report, and the unhurried fashion of the cops just didn't add up. A long argument with the old dude and his helper ensued about them not giving us her jacket without a ticket. I really wanted to just punch the helper and if anyone said anything just point at him and say, 'no ticket.' That and the helper guy said he didn't speak English, in English. When I called him out on it, knowing full well he'd had more than 5 years of English in school here, he of course had an explanation, also in English. We finally got Lili her jacket from the old dude and got out. There was some more police activity with sirens blaring and autos speeding into and coming out of the altstadt as we made the walk back to the car. When we finally got into the car I drove about 300m on the way back to Köln and found Nacht Residenz... So much for Düsseldorf and red bull...

I've been unable to confirm the shooting as I can't find a local paper online or any reports about it. My colleague was unsuccessful in finding anything about it either, but put a call into his cousin who is a cop. Either way that was a shockingly terrible evening...