Click here to view Day 2 (Part 1)

After a wonderful morning visiting the Mandala winery, we met Jens at home and headed into the city for the Faulty Towers Dinner Experience, the first show we were to see during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We hopped on the train and arrived into the city where we then had to swap onto another line. Knowing how fast Jens walked I was determined to keep up with him as best as I could, so ran alongside him with Kim and Julie not far behind.

That distance was to make all the difference.

At the top of the stairs Jens and I asked the station worker if it was the train going to our particular location, which he advised it was. We immediately jumped on it and beckoned to Kim and Julie. Unfortunately, the doors snapped shut in the next second, and we were whisked away, leaving Julie & Kim behind. A few minute and a few phone calls later Julie was on another train headed in the same direction (Kim had actually remained behind as she was seeing a different show that night). Jens and I arrived at our destination, hopped off then attempted to find the platform Julie would be arriving on. We eventually found it, and when Julie’s train disembarked I saw her at the far end of the platform. I kept waving madly, but unfortunately she didn’t see me and the next second disappeared from sight as she followed the  crowd upstairs.

Jens and I immediately ran to the street, but it was too late. We’d completely lost Julie.

With only 15mins until the show was due to begin, we played phone tag with Julie as she tried to figure out where she was and how to get to us. Eventually we were reunited, and we rushed to the Aegean Restaurant, where the show was being held. It turned out that we had timed it rather well as Mark, the last member of our dinner group, arrived shortly after. A few minutes later the show began.

As each table was getting seated they would call out the names using “Master (surname)”, which immediately posed an issue for our table. The two last names for our tables were Weiner and Bates….see the issue?

Master Weiner and Master Bates

We were the table of penises.

To be fair, in german Weiner is pronounced vine-er, so it’s not quite penis like. But using the english language where w means w and not v (germans are weird) it was weiner. Thankfully the actors missed the joke, and we were led to our table without incident.

Jens & Julie at the Faulty Towers Dining Experience

Basil & Manual try to open a wine bottle

Overall, the show was fantastic. Jens wasn’t quite familiar with the original Fawlty Towers (british sitcom), but the style of humour matched his completely, and he later declared the show to be the favourite of all the ones we would see. The actors were fantastic, and the lady playing Mrs Fawlty superbly put a member of the audience in their place with a quick one liner. They were all brilliant at improvisation, and it showed throughout the performance.

After the show had concluded and we finished our drinks (I’d had some wine and vodka, necessary details for later) we noticed one of the actors at the bar getting a drink. I ran up and had a joke with him about buying him a drink for putting on a great show (he actually gets his drinks for free) so I offered him the free drink he’d just received. In the end he came to our table and had a good chat with all of us for about 20mins or so, giving us all the nitty gritty about working for the show and travelling the world. It was fascinating insight.

Finally, we decided it was time to leave for a night on the town. Along the way we noticed some novelty mosaic chairs on the side of the street. As a tourist, it’s compulsory that you take photos with random things on the street, and I was happy to oblige.

Jens nearly became infertile during this photography session

Jens tries to show the camera his best angle

The club of choice for the evening was a bar on Brunswick St, called Cape Live. This is where things began to get messy. I’ve tried several times to figure out how much I had to drink there, but this is all I can remember:

• 3.5 Jägerbombs (I’d bought one for Julie but she only managed to drink half, so I finished the rest)
• A helluva lot of vodka & lemonade

This was in addition to the wine and vodka at dinner, and if you know me in real life you’d know I’m a very cheap drunk. To put it in perspective, for me this was like an ultimate bender.

The patrons of the club proved to be very interesting, and the following day when we did a tally of who we noticed, we came up with:

• 3 boys in togas
• 1 homeless-looking man with one eyeball and a Hawthorn scarf
• 1 dominatrix looking girl
• 1 single hot girl who looked like she would mount anything that moved
• 2 people (boy and girl) involved in near-sex session on a couch
• 1 man dancing like he was on acid and was enjoying a trip in a fairy garden
• A woman who looked like she should be in a rocking chair knitting her grandkids a blanket
• Me

Of the above list, in my drunken state I danced with the boys in togas, the single girl and the man in fairyland. I also posed for photos with the DJs and some random guy on the floor, later termed Monkey Boy due to his facials when the pic was taken.

Group shot minus Mark, absent due to photographer duties

There's a camera in front of us! Be afraid and yell at it!

Monkeyboy, a giggling Kim, and a very drunk Kelly

It became evident how drunk I was from the sheer amount of dancing I did, and the number of people I approached. I am usually a “sit on the sidelines and kinda bop along to the music” kind of girl. Or if I’m at a concert, I will happily jump along to the music. I am NOT a club dancer. To the DJ’s credit they were playing a lot of good songs, although I did sit out the couple of Lady Gaga songs on the set list.

During the times that we went outside to get fresh air we participated in a game called “make the people stopped at the traffic lights dance with us”. Amazingly, it worked. They didn’t have to get out of the car or anything, just dance inside the car, but we would point at them and yell “YOU! DANCE WITH US” and they would! Even more incredibly, no one yelled insults at us. People walking past in the street weren’t so lucky, they did actually have to physically dance with us, but again we got no rejections. Those Melbourne people sure are friendly!

At some point it was called that that was the end of the night. We grabbed our things and walked outside, where Mark graciously offered to drive us all home (he had limited his drinking during the night to ensure he wasn’t over the limit, very responsible boy). I sat in the front seat, wobbling ever so slightly, while the others discussed the details of how to get home. Given I had no idea, I wasn’t going to be of any assistance. We dropped Kim at her hotel first before heading to back to Jens’ and Julie’s place. I was shocked to discover it was 2am since I hadn’t been awake at that time of the night in a very, very long time.

I bid goodnight to Jens and Julie, and headed to my room where I found that I wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep. Instead, I occupied myself by messaging my two friends overseas, Jo (in Vancouver) and Mike (in Boston). I even drunk dialled Mike, which due to the differences in timezones worked out well for him since it was the middle of the day, and not some ungodly time of the morning. Finally, I fell asleep on the bed waking up a few hours later to say goodnight to them and shut the computer down, before falling fast asleep again.

Day 2 was over, but it was not without it’s memories that will remain for a long, long time. Cheers for the fun times guys, I had a blast.

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