Bingo

Last Sunday our Professor offered to buy us all Bingo boards at the city hall and participate in weekly bingo.  We got there and the room was packed with locals and we got our bingo board, it looked nothing like our Bingo boards in the states.  Bingo is not spelt on the top of board instead there are nine columns and three rows with numbers in some of the spaces.  We were lost on the rules of the game for a while until some of our group went and sat next to some older women who looked like they were Bingo veterans.  They gave us the low down. 

The game itself is pretty much the same as back in the states, first one to get a row, four corners, and a blackout.  In the regular games the row and four corners are worth 10 Euro and the blackout is worth 30 Euro.  However there was a jackpot game board and the jackpot was worth 460 Euro.  That is a life changing amount of money for us students studying abroad over here.  None of us won the jackpot which was probably a good thing, so the locals wouldn't think that we were stealing there money.  None of us won the jackpot but a couple of us won other games.

The packet of game boards that we got held about 8 games worth of Bingo in it.   Out of the 15 of us playing for the first time 2 of us won a game.  One girl won a row and had to split the winnings between another person.  We all got close to winning some of the games, and we never realized how fun Bingo was.  You could tell who was close to Bingo because they would become really tense. 

I was actually the other person to win Bingo.  I won the last game of four corners that was played.  I really hadn't come close to winning at all, but when 3 of the first 4 numbers called were in my corners I started to think I had a chance to win.  By some miracle the next number was in my last corner so I called out "check" (they don't say Bingo when they get a bingo).  When she was checking the numbers I hoped that I didn't screw up one of the numbers but I didn't.  I won 10 Euro!!  Me and friend then went to the pub and celebrated a little with the winnings.  Safe to say the winnings didn't last long.