One "coooool" place

Being a bartender is great. For one, you get all the girls but secondly, you are the hub for all gossip regarding cool places to go, good food to eat and crazy things to see.

On one particular night an American group of students came in for a couple of drinks. So, amongst talk of American sports and Obama, someone dropped the phrase "Ice bar". This caught my attention. One of the guys was saying that there was this bar located 5 minutes walk away from the hostel which was made entirely of ice. Needless to say, I was quick to close the bar and mop the floors before the big-hand struck one.

Once I'd closed the bar, we all headed out through Ommonia square and prime drug-selling districts to get to this bar called "Fresh Bar". I soon found out that it was part of a hotel but this must've been one rockin hotel because when we passed through the big black entrance we were struck by multi-coloured rave lights and euro-house music. We were told by the manager to take a seat in the lounge area whilst they prepared the ice bar. So we did. During this time, I noticed that the music was being relayed by the best looking Greek girl I've seen anywhere. She was the DJ!

About 10 minutes later and now keeping the beat with my feet, we were asked to chuck on these big polar jackets with eskimo hoods and gloves. We all knew it was going to be cold, but these things were huge. After everyone was kitted-up, we followed this woman into a prepatory room in which the temperature had dropped significantly. Here, we were told to keep dancing to keep the blood flow going and that in 25 minutes we would have to come out and defrost. Everyone was happy with the rules so before we knew it, the doors were opened to reveal this Greek guy wearing a bandanna and blowing a whistle to the beat. True to the stories, the room was completely made of ice. Everything from the bar to the walls to the lounges to the glasses was frozen! During the next 10 minutes of awe, we noticed that the ice walls acted as reflectors to these rave lights which didn't stop upon entrance. It was amazing..

Soon enough, everyone had gathered around the bar for their first drink of vodka and pulpy fruit juice (so it wouldn't freeze). But not me.. I was standing back from the bar trying frantically to bore a hole in the wall to see the DJ with my hostel key... Too bad these walls of ice were about 30cm thick.

The drinks that were included with the package went down nicely as I started to regret wearing my beloved havaianna thongs... Oh well... Whoever got frost bite in an ice bar? Or so I kept telling myself...

After about twenty minutes, we had finished our drinks and were still dancing to keep from freezing when the guy with the bandanna started stripping down! The girls were going wild but the guys were all checking their lonely planet guides for signs that we had come to the wrong ice-bar... Luckily, the 25 minute bell went off before things got too out of hand and we decided to dismiss it as a European thing..

What followed was 3 hours of defrost-dancing along to this whistle that the half naked European fella had brought along..

Don't worry fellas... I didn't pass up the opportunity to bring the 'sprinkler' and the 'hedge trimmer' back to turn some heads...