Southern Hospitality, Fact or Fiction?

OK so I was rocking out semi embarrassingly to 'Wagon Wheel' and a car full of girls pulled up next to me... It was too late so I embraced the awkwardness and turned the music up and waved to the car. They motioned for me to lower the volume and asked where I was headed. I told them I had just eaten dinner and was headed to get a drink. The girl riding shot gun shouted for me to follow them. I showed up to a local watering home a few minutes later and everyone piled out of the car. I sat in the car for a moment debating whether or not to make up an excuse for why I had to go but decided I'm never going to make new friends unless I step out of my comfort zone. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

They waved for me to come over, so I walked over and introduced myself. Olivia, Anna, Clara and one person whose name I can no longer remember... my apologies person 'X'. Regardless as we went into the bar Anna turned and asked me so what do you do? Pretty standard question but it took me an unreasonable amount of time to answer, I ended up stumbling over myself until finally I just said, "I work for a tech company that creates video wall solutions." I then proceeded to ask her what she did. She replied, "Oh, I'm a student. We are actually all Juniors at Emory." As I looked around I realized that I had stumbled into a fairly popular college bar. That had a live show going on in the back.

After a couple rounds of drinks and an exchange of pleasantries I decided it was time to go home so I bid the group adieu. The conversation was pleasant and sincere and they extended an offer to come back the following week to see one of their friends playing as an opening act for the band. I told them that I would be heading back to the West coast for the weekend but it would be nice to see them when I got back into town. I realized I said this almost out of habit but it was taken as a sincere gesture. I exchanged phone numbers with one of the girls and she told me to let them know when I get back into town. I realized that that friendly behavior that is exchanged in Seattle but never followed through on really doesn't exist in Atlanta. When people say they want to hang out sometime they mean it. It's kind of cool.

auf Wiedersehen