Groningen’s nightlife
‘A stranger leaned in for a kiss’
It’s Saturday night and Groningen’s streets are bustling with students cycling between pubs, clubs, and late-night kebab spots. At The Crown, a pub on the corner of Zuiderdiep, you can hear from outside a loud crowd drunkenly singing along to god-knows-what. Inside, you can smell the scent of sweat and heat mixing with the beer spilled on the floor.
And in the midst of all that there’s me, Ingrid, with my best friend, cheerfully enjoying our tipsy selves. Until two guys approach us. They’re our age, though definitely drunker, with sweat glistening on their foreheads and an absent, yet fixated look, openly measuring us. They start dancing with us, subtly getting closer and closer. We move away. And they come after us.
It feels uncomfortable, them stalking us like we’re prey. They’re ignoring our signals that we’re not interested – backing up, avoiding eye contact. Then they have us cornered. One of the guys grabs my friend by the hand, trying to pull her close. She shakes herself free and we flee through the heaving crowd, in search of the male friend we came to the pub with.
Later, we see the same guy again, making out in front of the pub with a girl who’s just as drunk. She keeps giggling and pushing him away in what looks like a game, though he pulls her back in. He finally made a kill.
Groped and followed
While our experience that night thankfully didn’t go beyond annoying, six out of ten partygoers in Groningen experience sexually transgressive behaviour while going out, reports a Sikkom survey conducted earlier this year. It’s mainly young women who fall victim to it.
Whether it’s a classmate or a friend of a friend, everyone knows at least one girl who’s been groped when dancing, another who was followed on the street. So how safe do female students feel in Groningen’s nightlife? Together with fellow student editors Veronika, Javier, and Thijs, I went to familiar student haunts like De Zolder, Warhol and nightclub Sunny Beach on a regular Thursday night to talk to pubgoers, clubbers and bartenders.
There’s an underlying fear that something could happen
At ten o’clock at night, people at De Zolder are packed against each other like sardines. It’s jam session night, which is obvious from the sound of cheering to the tune of guitars. In the corner, next to our table, a group of girls is sitting.
One of them is Arina, a Lithuanian student who doesn’t go out often, but still feels far safer here than in her home country when she does. ‘I think it’s because I’m always biking’, she tells us. ‘It’s easier to leave a bad situation when you have a quick escape.’
She’s never experienced harassment, she says, but she still follows her friend’s advice: ‘Do not make eye contact with the guys sitting at the bar’. She also has her own strategy against harassment ‘just in case’. ‘If anyone were to approach me, I’d just say I have herpes and they should come over and catch it’, she says, smiling.
Always cautious
It’s a paradox we keep hearing throughout the night: despite feeling safe in Groningen, girls are always cautious. ‘There’s an underlying fear that something could happen’, explains an Italian student who’s outside in the courtyard with a group of friends. That’s why she never drinks too much. ‘I make sure I’m clear-headed. I’m drinking Coke now, for example’, she says, holding up her bottle.
De Zolder gets more and more busy and the floor becomes stickier with every step. As we’re making our way through the crowd, we split up for a second, and passing by a group of five guys, I, Ingrid, hear one of them shouting something at me in Dutch. I turn politely to ask what he’s saying and a flow of questions erupts.
‘Are you alone? Do you have a boyfriend? What’s your type?’ One of them turns to me, points to his friend and says straight-faced: ‘You know, he’s looking to be a sugar daddy if you’re interested.’ To which the said friend adds: ‘You’re super beautiful’, while looking me up and down and smiling.
Though a harmless encounter, it makes me wonder: how fine is the line between discomfort and harassment?
Crossed lines
To a Spanish student we meet on the doorstep, the answer is clear cut. But it’s only because she’s seen that line being crossed. She recounts how she was on her way home with a friend one night at 4 a.m. when two guys started shouting dirty things at them.
‘We walked away in silence, but we soon realised they were following us. We panicked and started picking up our pace, and they did the same.’ They were almost running when they saw a couple making out and went up to them as if they were old friends. ‘We started talking and the men eventually left’, she says, still shuddering at what could have happened.
I had to push him away three times in a row
As we trade the chill, homely vibes of De Zolder for the more ‘cool kid’ mood of Warhol, we learn that the line is not so clearly defined for some students. Just outside the pub, smoking some freshly rolled cigarettes, a group of German girls tells us confidently they’ve never experienced sexual harassment in Groningen.
But as they’re chatting away about the precautions they do take, like sharing their GPS location at all times, one of them remembers how a stranger grabbed her from behind while they were dancing at Het Feest. ‘He wrapped his arm around my waist and I tried to push him away. Then he tried to do it again, and I had to push him away three times in a row.’
‘Oh, once there was this guy’, another of the girls now recalls about the time she was looking for her friend in the crowd at Wolter Wolthers. ‘A random stranger just leaned in for a kiss’, she tells us. But she quickly brushes it off, saying: ‘It wasn’t that bad. I just dodged him and left.’
Code word
Most of the girls we talk to feel the situation here is better than in their home country, be it Germany, Lithuania, or Italy. But that doesn’t mean nothing happens here, as the bartender at Warhol confirms.
I never realised this was a thing until I got a girlfriend
She’s juggling her cocktail shaker and pouring what is probably the tenth cosmopolitan of the night when she confesses that as a woman in bartending, she experiences harassment a lot more than the patrons do.
‘Guys try to sleep with us all the time. One guy even asked me once how tight my pussy is’, she says, rolling her eyes in disgust. ‘Of course, we kick them the fuck out instantly.’ For guests who are being harassed, they have a code word that is used at many other pubs and clubs in Groningen as well: ask for ‘Angela’, and the staff will intervene.
Male friends
Oftentimes, however, it’s not the staff who will look out for women, but a male friend. Though it’s still quite empty in Sunny Beach at 1 a.m., two girls, accompanied by a guy, are doing shots at the bar, early 2000’s pop music in the background. The guy used to work as a bartender, he tells us, so he knows what to look out for when clubbing with female friends.
‘When they go to the toilet, I watch their drinks and sometimes even put my hand over them to make sure no one can spike it’, he says. ‘I will always make sure they are okay.’ For women, going out is much riskier, he knows. ‘When I go out with male friends, I’m not as aware of my surroundings.’
Nearby, another guy echoes the sentiment. ‘I never realised this was a thing until I got a girlfriend’, he says. After hearing her stories, he became more aware of other men’s behaviour. And when she’s out at night without him, he can’t stop thinking of the dangers. ‘Now I understand why girls go to the bathroom together’, he says. He’s only half joking.