Last night I got to experience another piece of American culture: The Strip Club.
In honor of my friend Luca’s birthday, we partied the night away starting with tapas at Arpa, drinks at Tilt, then some more drinks and some dancing at HoM (I love that place for playing something else than just hiphop/rap) before heading to The Men’s Club. We were a nice group of 3 drunk guys and 2 drunk girls so we had fun. Apparently you go there to have breakfast not to see the girls. Sure….
I have to say I was curious about the place. Rumors had it the breakfast buffet is the best in town. So we’re here in the south and the lady at the cash register perfectly fit the category Southern Belle. Blonde, maybe in her 40s, long hair and she called me Sweetie. Haha! Very nice. So we get seated and get some drinks (water for me at that point….). It was a very classy setting. Totally reminded me of the hotels in Las Vegas. Comfy chairs, nice lightning, nice bar. Around us, the employees were jiggling their behinds and breasts in middle aged gentlemen’s faces and did some artistic stretching exercises. Interesting outfits, too, ranging from strings to weird body coverings and then of course the obligatory stripper shoes. Ha! The plateau soles made their high heeled shoes not that high heeled anymore, like max. 4cm! That’s nothing! Explains why they can still dance on them… haha! Not to mention that I bet they make great self defense weapons.
So we grabbed our plates and headed to the buffet after deciding that strippers don’t have any other bodies than we do – like they’re not all with gigantic breasts and some of their abs are not that great either. So we figured we might as well stuff ourselves with a high calorie breakfast seeing that we were drunk anyway. Nice selection of eggs, bacon, eggs benedict (the best I’ve ever had!!), pancakes fruits etc etc and even custom made omelettes! Soooooo good! I think I’ll totally go back there just to eat that breakfast again. It’s a shame they close at 5am, they should totally stay open until 10am so you could eat a real breakfast and not just some filling for the drunk stomach. Oh well. I guess I couldn’t stomach all the almost naked women around me when not impaired so maybe it’s good that they’re not open during the day…. Although it felt so professional, that you really didn’t mind the nakedness around you. Kind of like at the gynecologist, it’s just professionalism, not anything sexual. I think the middle aged balding men were more disgusting than the ladies…
And what a nice ending, we left and the valet parking guy called a town car for us. Ah yeah so classy. 😉
Golfie in da Ghetto
So my nice day on Tuesday turned kind of nasty later on. I was at my friend Vanessa’s house for a dinner party / skin care party (think tupperware), which was fun and she had so much yummy food!
I walk back out to the parking lot and uhm well, it was empty! No car in sight! =-o. Ahhhhhh! So I lost my car. Well, worse, so I lost my company’s car! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! And what do you do at 10pm to find your car?! OK so granted I hadn’t parked in a real parking spot (cause that neighborhood doesn’t have any) but it wasn’t a completely illegal spot either. I would call it gray parking area but it sure was the most legal spot anywhere around there and I wasn’t blocking anybody or fire trucks throughway or whatnots). After a bit of frantic worrying and visuals of me sitting on the street and getting the rage of an Italian boss cursing at me, thankfully Vanessa’s roommate told us where to find the towing company’s phone number and that they tow like crazy in that neighborhood because some miserable punk calls the towing company all the time. Awww shucks!
I called the towing company and yes, they had in fact towed a silver Golf that night and no I could not get it back that night (whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!) but would have to come in the morning and no he wouldn’t give me directions either but I should bring a ransom of 120$ to get the car back sound and alive. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!
Vanessa drove me home and then David came over (and it was after 11 already then) so I was very lucky. Through some investigation (thank you google) I found the towing yard’s address and it wasn’t that far away at all.
At the crack of dawn (ok so more like at 8) David and I set out to rescue Golfie. We drove through some sketchy streets and thanks to my impeccable sense of direction (or was it a car mommy’s instincts?!) we found the place, knocked on their dingy door, handed over the ransom, and rescued Golfie from the sketchy impound yard. That poor thing was so cold, its windshield was covered with dew. I was overjoyed to have it back and got to work only 20 minutes late. Not too bad and the boss wasn’t there yet so it’ll remain our little secret (not that I think he cares, he would probably laugh since I got the car back but it saved me from some embarrassment. Well, plus I let him eat my chocolate so he can’t say anything anyway. I knew a little food bribery here and there can’t hurt. ;-)).
So yeah, all is well in the end but I was a little freaked out to say the least ;-). Thank God for guys that drive 30 minutes to comfort you and protect you when you bail out your car from the ghetto.
What A Lovely Weekend
People, I’m telling y’alls, spring is here! The trees are getting buds and some are blossoming and I’ve seen plenty of daffodils. Yay, I love it!
Had a really nice weekend that started off with fantastic food at David’s place. He made the perfect baked potatoe with yummy steak and an awesome salad oh and shrimps. Geee I got spoiled! We spent a nice evening in and I got to meet his cat, which was quite cute. Made me miss our farm cat Miet-Zieh (ok fine so you could also spell it Miezi ;-)). More spoiling the next morning when I was presented with bacon, eggs, and toast and the best normal coffee I’ve had since I left Good Ole Germany.
For Saturday I had promised Chadi to keep his brother from Canada company so we went to Ru Sans for sushi buffet (that was smart, stuffing myself even more after having stuffed myself with awesome breakfast). Afterwards we hung around Freedom Park and enjoyed the sun and then had coffee when Chadi got off from work. I went home then and we later met up for dinner at Big Daddy’s Burger Bar, a new burger joing in my neck of the woods. I had a small salad and that was about all I could handle but it was pretty good and how fun to choose from all their ingredient options!
Since Charlotte’s uptown was full of scetchy rappers (think Lil Kim, Bow Wow etc), we decided to stay clear of the area and instead went to the local Irish pub. Lots of fun and I ran into my neighbor, too, which was great as I didn’t have to walk home alone. Not far of a walk anyway but I feel much saver when I walk with a 2m tall giant.
I slept in on Sunday – finally – and then after talking to Ines and Dave in Germany via skype I actually went out and jogged for 1.8km (and so what if I walked about half of it…). We hung out at Dean & Deluca in the afternoon and let the sun shine on us, then went home and got ready for the opening party of the Mezzanotte restaurant here in town. Loads of amazing free food like pizza and tons of desert. This has got to be my new favorite Italian restaurant in town.
And since that wasn’t enough excitement for the weekend already, later that night we went to the movies and watched SemiPro. I think I slept through a quarter of the movie and my eyes were burning pretty badly from my allergic reaction to either David’s cat or Rossmann’s make-up remover pads. They are still all puffy and red today but a bit better so hopefully the multi-sympton allergy relieve medicine is doing its job….
Alas, today is Monday, 5 more days until the weekend and I have tons of work to do. Chop chop, back to work. Cheers! Hope y’all have a great week!
Sanna Sleepy
Hello Peeps!
Boy, am I tired! Have been going to bed way too late this week and of course getting up early to go to work is just a big annoyance. 😉 Last night I think it was 1:30am, Tuesday 1am, Monday 2am, Sunday 1am… you get my point. And I slept alone all these nights so it’s not like anybody kept me awake. Last night I actually went out to dinner and then to the Irish pub uptown for a beer so that at least was a good excuse to go to bed late. But hmpf… not good… need to go to bed early tonight! (Have been saying that for at least the past 5 nights… oh the busy life…)
Last week was nice with sushi with a girl I know from when I studied here and then I introduced her to my guy friends and we had a fun time uptown. She totally stole my position as favorite German 😉 and is hanging out with my friends alone now, which totally wasn’t the plan. The plan was to reconnect with someone so when the guys do their things we girls could hang out. Uhm yeah. That didn’t work out so well I guess but maybe we’ll get a cute couple out of that one and I have a female ally, so, fine.
I hung out with David a couple of times, nice pizza from Brixx one night and then we spent Sat and Sunday together, miniature golfing and chilling at my place. Kind of strange for me to spend that much time with a person you don’t really know much about. OK so I spent that much time with my guys when I got here even though I didn’t really know them much but that was different. I think we’re still trying to figure out the other person so we’ll see where that goes.
An old friend from my high school year in New Jersey 1998/1999 was in town this week and thanks to facebook we got together for coffee and a little breakfast snack at Caribou Coffee. Sooo cool to catch up with eachother’s lives and to meet Janet’s friend Bill from Roanoke, too.
Sunday after being inside with nothing to do all day I was very glad to go out to dinner with my friends at night. Mezzanotte (the brick-oven pizzeria at Providence Plaza by Cotswold in Charlotte, NC (just for the heck of people that google it)) was ohhhh so yummy and reasonably priced. Fantastic gnocchi and then we went to the movies and watched Vantage Point. Fun!
Tuesday I ventured out to Southpark Mall to find a 1 or 2 cups stove-top espresso maker after not being able to find one at the mall here near I work (all they ever have are the big 6 cups capacity) (but however I did find Anthropology and boy that was a fun place to look around at – though *cough* too expensive for my taste). So, the smallest coffee maker at Southpark makes 3 cups so I’m hoping that Massimo can bring me a small one at half price from Italy and if not then heck I’ll pay the 20$ for a 3cup maker (ok it’s not the money that I mind that much, it’s the fact that the more water it holds, the longer it takes to get coffee (geee, all this writing about coffee just shows how tired I am ;-))).
Aaaanyway, I did not get a coffee maker from surlatable but I continued my hunt for something retail therapy worthy because for some reason I was kinda blue and entered the sacred haven of Steve Madden. Found a nice pair of shoes (so cute). For some reason I still didn’t feel ueber happy though and that evil apple store magically drew me in. 2 minutes later I walked out of there with a pink iPod nano and thankfully then I did feel good enough to leave the mall with a happy face. Yay retail therapy! 😀
Stopped by at Vanessa’s for a cup of echinazea tea (yum!) on my way home.
Last night the gang plus Chadi’s brother who’s in town and I minus the date (as he felt anti-social last night) went to a somewhat traditional Japanese restaurant, Musashi, that was frequented by real Japanese. The food was great and afterwards we went to that Irish pub like I said. Fun times but man, I need to get to bed early tonight!
So yeah that’s what’s been going on with me. Hope you’re all well! :-*