Full party: – Now comes the Russians

RHODOS CITY (Dagbladet): We had to check if partygata has regained its holiday pressure when we are in the city of Rhodes.

It’s called Orfanidou. Everyone says “bargata”, even those who live here. A short stump of a few hundred meters with pubs and bars on each square meter.

Someone suggested to us that we might meet reality celebrity Bettina Buchanan (25) there, she in “Ex on the Beach” and “Paradise Hotel” both in Norway and Sweden.

Then we first checked what she looks like and what is the latest news. Several headlines pop up on the screen: Bettina in jail.

But around the next corner, where the party street starts, she comes to us where we are cuddling.

– Do you need help, is there anything they want to know?

– Like, are we too young?

Bettina laughs with her whole head:

– Yes, you may be in borderland, there!

Then we have not told our own and much less young colleague’s age. But the experienced Norwegian-Swedish reality celebrity from Halmstad probably quickly sees that we are 100 years old together.

The prison story

– First of all, Bettina, what about you and prison?

She laughs.

– That, yes. It is a long time ago. I have worked here during the holidays since I was 18. One of the first summers I was stopped and taken away by the police because I rode a motorcycle without a helmet. I’m no more dangerous than that!

Now she is the boss of one of the Swedish bars and shows us around the whole party street.

Danish flags and cheers dominate early in the evening. It is England – Denmark in the semifinals of the European Championships.

During the night it becomes increasingly dense with cheers, dance performances and boards with shots on all sides.

Norwegian Russian celebration

It is only now that Norwegians on tour are starting to make their mark, six to seven weeks later than the last normal summer in 2019.

We meet a nice Norwegian bartender.

– Now there will soon be a Norwegian Russian celebration here. The people in at least a couple of Russian buses in Romerike have been in contact. The first Russian bus gang is now coming one of these days, from the Lillestrøm area, he says.

Rhodes: Infection increased with tourists

To meter?

Inside the bars and restaurants on both sides of the street, this is how the local authorities have given strict directives: do not hang in the bar, sit at a good distance and get food there.

But out in the narrow and increasingly crowded street?

The two meter rule does not work here. Or the interpretation is at the other end of the scale: three or five or ten party lions within two meters.

We thank you for visiting like that at 03 o’clock. Then the party is not overnight until this Thursday.

– Quite a quiet evening

– There are slightly different closing times depending on how many people there are here. At 06 it is quiet. Tonight it has been quite calm here towards a normal summer before the pandemic, says a local we meet. He works here occasionally.

Where we sat at a table on the sidewalk for three or four hours, it must have passed “many hundreds / a few thousand” party people. And it was a “pretty quiet” night, according to our local observer.

And bar manager Bettina, then.

– Have you stopped with reality TV and Paradise Hotel and stuff like that?

– No no! Something new has been recorded and will be on TV. I’m not allowed to say anything now. Now I have not been with you in Norway since April, but will come very soon.

She answers quickly and concentrates on serving quickly in the late – or early – hours in Rhodes’ party street.

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