Chapter 44: The night habits of Canadians

On Thursday night, we went to a real Canadian sports bar called Hudsons. Thursday is the MBA night, for the Master of Business and Administration students, and since quite a few of Frida’s friends are MBAs, they go to Hudsons together almost every Thursday.

I have no experience of sports bars at all, so for me the night felt new and exotic. But I guess that Hudsons is more or less like a typical sports bar anywhere in North America or Europe. The lighting was sparse, the walls had wooden panelling and frames with sport motives and old Albertan tourism posters, and the customers sat on high wooden chairs by high wooden tables drinking large amounts of beer. And on the walls, every three meters or so, there were widescreen TVs showing ice hockey or wrestling. Genuinely macho sports fit for a real Canadian sports bar.

But as for my very personal experience, it mostly consisted of two things. Firstly, Canadians apparently don’t dress up. I had put on some lipstick, a red skirt and made my hair, an outfit that I’ve actually worn to school in Stockholm several times and still I wasn’t the most dressed up person on campus. But here, among the guys with ice hockey shirts and girls in jeans, some people actually stared at me and more than once I was asked why I was so dressed up.

Secondly, Canadians don’t dance. They played music that made my feet start twiching, but when I started to move a little to the music by the bar, one of Frida’s friends looked at me and asked “What, are you dancing?” as if that was more or less the strangest thing that he had seen that night. So I mastered myself and found a table with a group of people to talk to.

But, it was a really nice night, actually, despite my overdressedness and the dance-unfriendly environment. I was told I look Russian (probably by a person who doesn’t know the difference between Russians and Finns), I got to discuss the Euro crisis with an MBA and was later told by another MBA that my very unromantic view of marriage and love was due to my divorced parents. I think that, with a little more practice, I could have learned to fit in perfectly among the real Canadians and their exchange student friends. I might even have been able to restrain from my bright red lipstick, the only make-up I ever care to wear.