The Queenstown Pub Crawl

None of us have ever been to a pub crawl. We were always more than suspicious of pub crawls. What was there to experience? People who think that life can’t possibly consist of anything more than calling for the next beer. But the truth is even worse…

I’m happy, because it’s always best to make fun of your own mistakes. After two months of travelling pretty much solo in pairs and often through the loneliest parts of New Zealand without much socialising, I seriously thought it was a good idea to take up this offer: Big Night Out Queenstown: The Pub Crawl.

Queenstown is unlike any other New Zealand city. Here, people drink in public in the parks – the liquor stores are the most common business species in the city centre. There are countless pubs. Obviously the city elders consider it appropriate to dispose of the adrenaline released by bungy, jetboat and freefall with a clean alcoholic flush.

The English “pub crawl” doesn’t really capture the essence of the event. The German Kneipen-Kriech, on the other hand, comes much closer phonetically to the true content of our social study today. We start alone in pairs in the minus 5 bar. In a winter wonderland of ice, we sip our first subtle Absolut Vodka cocktails from ice glasses. Then we head off across a glowing sunset to the start of the most miserable thing we’ve ever been a part of.

25 for five drinks in New Zealand sounds good at first. But the drinks are adulterated 2 cl Jägermeister from the same glasses. To “enjoy” them, you have to stand in a bar for 45 minutes at a time to be milked financially. The widely advertised “special discounts” are still expensive special offers that are available to any complete idiot even without a neon orange Depperlband. The master crawler also collects the tenth of the grain.

The advertised “big giveaways” such as rafting or paragliding have to be earned by completing “quests”: Lie down on the bar, unpack your boobs and let a complete stranger sip tequila from your navel, lick salt from your cleavage and bite a lemon out of your mouth. Now everyone is roaring. Sounds daft, but it’s great fun. Probably, I can’t judge, I don’t have any boobs.

The free meal follows at midnight, a 16th slice of fat pizza. When I try to bring Uli a slice, I’m almost drawn and quartered in public by the horny funmanger. Then some bloody K1 on TV to ShitHop in a disco that was once quite good without the pub crawl. I’ve never talked less, not even to myself alone.

The entertainers dancing on the tables swing their fists rhythmically to the high fives offered by drunken teenagers. Man, are we in the wrong place! What am I longing for? A clean buzz, with good friends, on important topics, big words and weird music. We won’t name the right people, but we know who we mean…

We spend our next day developing a fear of heights in the car. The warning signs at the entrance to the 15 km long high alpine Shotover Canyon track are impressive. The old gold mining route, which winds its way through steep walls with unsecured freefalls of up to 200 metres, is even more so. If our landlord saw the pictures, we would probably get a free upgrade to a big jeep next time. Our little Nissan Tutukaka has flattened more nasty tracks in the last two months than most four-wheel-drive vehicles.

The Remarkables are Queenstown’s local ski resort. A dusty track winds its way up 13 kilometres of washboard up to 1800 metres – as far as I know the highest point in New Zealand that can be reached by two-wheel drive vehicle. We hike another 200 metres up to Lake Alta, then it’s time to call it a day. Too much hiking lately. A short detour to the old gold mining town of Arrowtown and back to the hostel.

To reduce the side effects of the fulfilling pub crawl, we devote the last morning to a quick hour of jet boating on the Kawarau and Shotover River. That’s enough adrenaline in the capital. No downhill biking, no paragliding, and the only good wind for weeks remains unkited due to the numerous dangers of the only possible launch site.