My Dada Weekend

Disclaimer: I know it's boring to read about other people's nights on the town. This is one of those updates. Feel free to skip over it!

Today I travelled to Stockholm to see the batshit-crazy house duo Dada Life play their homecoming concert at Munchenbryggeriet, a massive ex-brewery on Södermalm. After the original concert sold out at lightning speed, another performance was scheduled for earlier the same day, and I managed to nab a single ticket. Just keeping my stomach in check, I took the train to Stockholm in the early afternoon and joined the inevitably massive queue which curled around the block.

Standing alone in the freezing wind, surrounded by tedious YOLO-tastic fjortisar*, I couldn't help but feel that I had made a terrible mistake in opting to attend the Dada Life concert which was open to under-18s. Upon eventually getting into the venue I headed for the bar, which had been mercifully cordoned off to give some respite to the dozen-or-so adults who had been unlucky enough to miss out on tickets for the later concert. It was in this little sanctuary I met Erik, an already-drunk fellow Dada lover who proceeded to buy me booze (as drunk Swedes are so prone to doing).

By the time Dada Life came on, Erik and I were both in very good spirits. The Dada boys - both Stockholm natives - are known for their frenetic and bizarre performances, which in this case included feather pillows being cut open and thrown into the crowd, dozens of giant inflatable bananas being released from nets above our heads, and - of course - we were all sprayed with champagne at the end. The show ended at 8pm, leaving me with the very odd sensation of having had a great night on the town before I'd even had my dinner.

On a side note, going clubbing with children was a disturbing yet oddly wonderful experience. Erik and I, being one beard and 20cm better off than everyone else in the room, were treated with a kind of fearful reverence. The crowd cleared to let us through and our beer bottles were eyed jealously. For a couple of hours we felt like the grand old men of dance music, and it was bliss.

After briefly taking in the sea air I went to meet Ed, my old friend and now a Stockholm resident, for drinks and food. After a bar crawl which took us to - among other places - a Czech beer hall and a medieval-themed cellar, we took the tunnelbana to Skanstull, the southern tip of Södermalm, where the motorway, train, metro and tram lines throw themselves across the lake in a Spaghetti-Junction-esque mass of concrete.

Underneath the vast, bleakly beautiful span of the road bridge is a single structure; a simple facsimile of a traditional Swedish house made of white cladding and plastic. Jutting out of it at various angles are several shipping containers. It's adorned with pretty festoon lighting, but you hear it before you see it - the industrial-strength bass throbs all the way up to the pavement above. This is Under Bron, "Under the Bridge," which is without question the best nightclub I have ever been to. I can't even begin to describe it, other than to say that when I imagine my dream nightspot it basically looks like that. I could have stayed forever, but we left at five. Even dreams are subject to licencing regulations!

*Swedish word of the day: en fjortis is a derogatory term for a vacuous, shallow teenager. It comes from fjorton, i.e. "fourteen," the average age of such unspeakables.