This is an American bar in the sense that if you came to America as a tourist, this is the kind of…read moreterrible place a jerky local would send a foreign tourist as a joke to get them out of their hair.
In America, or Chicago at least, no one who's of legal drinking age and has any sort of respect for themselves goes to places like this. Bars like this are reserved for people who are freshly 21 and don't know any better, freshly divorced and looking to slum it, or for tourists who got got tricked into coming here. In this case, we were the Americans-in-Germany version of the latter.
Our guide took us here thinking we'd be impressed with this 'American' bar. Obviously, that didn't happen. For any Chicagoans reading this, this bar is located in the Viagra Triangle of Düsseldorf and this place (along with all it's neighbors) would be the 'Mothers'... but at least we know where to send our guide when he visits Chicago next. Payback, for sure.
The clientele seemed mostly older, divorcee-aged, though there were a few younger tables. The main level is sticky and standing room only and the crowd goes wild for songs that are perpetually lame to everyone in America besides mid-life crisis suffering suburbanites and people who enjoy piano bars. Songs like 'Who let the dogs out?', anything from Papa Roach and/or Nickelback, new-ish Bon Jovi releases, Lou Bega's 'Mambo #5', and more... but not ironically.
A music video mash-up that did not match the songs that were actually being spun played on the overhead flat-screens. I was a particularly big fan of the Aretha Franklin video in black and white, Usher live in concert, and a raunchy Rihanna video. I'm not sure what the 3 had to do with each other, but it was fun to try and guess what the person who did mix them together was thinking.
Our guide noted that they mix a mean Redbull vodka, but since the rest of us value our lives and do our best to not mix our uppers and downers, we all just opted for a straight beer. No surprise here with an altbier, but we sucked it up since were heading to Belgium the next day and knew we wouldn't have to drink any more light beers the rest of the trip.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, but keep in mind we also came here sober. It's probably a lot better to come here after you've already spent a sizable amount of time imbibing.
