On my recent trip to Austria, we accidentally ended up in a bar where prostitutes are hanging out and waiting for customers. The reason why we did not figure out what is going on is that these bars are not called clubs or brothels or anything that would lead a tourist to believe what the bar is about. In Vienna, these bars are called bars to meet singles and prostitution is generally legal except on streets in residential areas.
Naturally, signage of the bar we ended up in was in German, which made it even more difficult to realize what is going on if your German is basic like ours, and if you really did not expect something like that. At first, we entered the bar for one drink after two long conference days. When we entered, a lady was sitting at the bar talking to the bartender who served us after a few seconds of hesitation , and they looked as if they are a couple having an argument so we made a joke asking if he is in trouble.
He just laughed, and she did not say anything but kept complaining about something. She used the music box to put some music on, and then we used it too. At first, we enjoyed the atmosphere in the bar because it was very relaxing and the music was great.
As tired people, also foreigners, we did not really pay attention to whoever is in the bar, except for the already mentioned lady who sat right opposite from us at the bar, and our table was fairly close to her. She also had a small conversation about music with us hence, she took our attention. We saw there are other people in the bar, but it was too dark to see who else is there, and we were not really interested to observe other people.
At one point, the lady from the bar jumped to dance, as well as all other woman in the bar. That was the moment we realised all guests of the bar were women. I remember now, from the retrospective, that there were some young guys sitting with women when we first came, which is why we did not suspect anything.
