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. 😉
A Visit from Anke
OK first of all, what you’ve all been waiting for… me licking my elbow. That just sounds wrong….
Anyway… Thursday night after a quick trip to the grocery store I picked up my middle sister Anke from the airport. Driving there was fun, I kept humming “In The Ghetto” and sure enough the gas station on West Blvd had 5 police cars there with lights on and a lot of uhm ghetto inhabitants there. Fun! So I took Anke home on the less ghetto road and we went uptown to look around. Not much was going on there but we grabbed a few slices of pizza at Fuel and then took some photos of uptown and later the skyline. Anke was quite impressed by the Queencity compared to her town in CT. Well, yeah sorry but Charlotte rocks ;-).
Friday after a skype session with the other 3/5 of our family we headed to Charleston. Love love love love love that city! After checking into our hotel and being escorted to our room by two huge black dudes (scaary) to fix our security latch we headed back across the bridge, parked the car in the middle of no where for free and strolled around the streets. We did some souvenir shopping and I got a milk foamer (yay) and then we had dinner at the Charleston Crab House. This place used to be FANTASTIC. I’d say now it’s good. Not amazing but still quite alright. Might look for some other place to eat next time I’m in town. Anke had forgotten her IDs in CT so we hung out at Starbucks for a bit before she made me buy some beer at the grocery store which we then enjoyed while watching ice dancing and Bridget Jones. Awesome!
Saturday we headed to Patriot’s Point, which was on our side of the island anyway and chilled out there for a while (as in gift shop and food). A little boat took us to Ft. Sumter, the little island and fortress where the American Civil War started. We weren’t really in awe but did enjoy the sandbank there and I dare say we got a tan! A speedy drive back up north to Charlotte (well as speedy as you can be on a two lane highway in the US….) and Charleston was gone. So sad! Driving was kind of funny. Imagine two little girls in a tiny car zooming by and then imagine this tiny car at a truck stop trying to find diesel gas (because that’s mostly used for trucks here and not every gas station has diesel and they have separate pumps). Must have been hilarious looking. I did record time, less than three hours of driving. Wow!
I treated Anke to RuSans for sushi and then we drove uptown to meet with Manuel, Massimo, Giorgio, Ash and Luca for some desert and then a chillout beer at the Irish pub. A nice, relaxing night. The night was over too soon though as my upstairs neighbor was walking marching around her apartment way too early. So we got up and went grocery shopping and Starbucksing and then started cooking. We made deviled eggs and then potatoes, ham and broccoli with sauce hollandaise and a little salad. Birgit, Ash and Luca came over to eat and just as we finished eating it was already time to take Anke back to the airport. Very sad :(. But she sounded pretty convinced that she’d be back soon to hang out in the queen city and with my nice friends. Oh-kay. That’d be nice! 🙂
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.
Yeehaw…
Only in Redneck Nation… unbelievable
In other news, I finally have some good visa news! Well, it’s more like we’re going from the negative scale to 0, as the lawyer finally finally finally said that we can apply for my H1B workvisa in the American graduate degree (MBA)category. I cannot believe all the bullcrap that led up to this but finally we are at point zero and can move forward. So fingercrossing is still VERY important now obviously and nothing is sure but it’s looking a whole lot better than last week or the week before or the week before or well you get my point. 😉
I also got a great review from my boss last week, aparently he is super happy with my work. He rarely gives me any feedback so I am usually wondering what he thinks about my work so that was reassuring.
My date is doing very well, too. We spent a lovely Sunday together walking around the neighborhood for a few hours and then watching some TV. He is a very smart and sweet and hot guy. Can’t wait to get to know him even more. Right now I still feel like I don’t know him that well even though we’ve been dating for pretty much a month now (wow, where does time go these days?!). But that’s the fun of dating, right?! It’s just all about getting to know people and start digging underneath the surface of all these superficial American boys and find out about their dark sides (just kidding!).
So other then that, I did the usual things like hanging out with friends, working, shopping (Target stockholders are gonna be so rich…), eating well. Had cajun food this Saturday – can’t say that my stomach was too happy.
This week is going to be super busy! Last night I had coffee with Chadi. Tonight Vanessa is having a skin care party (think Tupperware). Tomorrow I’m gonna hang out with David. Thursday I’m having sushi with Markus who studied with me back in the day. Friday – oh a day off! And then Saturday is Markus’s birthday party and Max is in town and Axel’s birthday is on Thursday so I’m sure they’ll have a party, too. Ahhhh!
And then next week, my sister is coming to town. Yay! 9 more days! Can’t wait to show her Charlotte AND Charleston. Two of my favorite cities. 🙂