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As the foreigner hostel mates took cabs to some random part of town I wandered to a near by restaurant/bar that was calling itself a café. I was attracted by the bottle of absinthe in the window I noticed earlier in the day as I strolled by, back and forth, wandering this new city, but upon entering (as I attempted my best to disappear quietly into the dark of the night) I became captivated by the faux art nouveau decor.

There were only three choices of absinthe in the selection of the menu beautifully covered loosely bound cover of soft leather. Two of the options I had already tried in the past, but the third was local and worth a shot. St. Something-or-another of a masculine name. Robust. Served Moulin Rouge style and over filled.

The clock didn’t run on time, nor bar time, but a time of its own. It still proclaimed it was coming upon 21.30 as the hour of 23.00 loomed ahead.

A lady with pink hair to my right was flirting up a man that could easily be her grandfather. Tales of attempting to hallucinate with absinthe in Prague, but failing. Or perhaps all her life since that point was the hallucination, she jokingly ended the tale.
The man to my left spoke in Spanish to the bartenders, a regular with a driver’s license from Utah. He was showing off the car that his sugar daddy had bought him, but only in pictures because he didn’t even want to attempt to park it in the city.

Mispronouncing Hawaiian words.

The washroom showed that the decor was nothing but a façade. Sterile.

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