She Does It Better

The following was written by Xiaochang, my travel companion for a lot of trips (and clubbing). In a recent posting, she wrote her impressions of London and Warsaw. I think she describes it all better than me, and a prime example of what happens when you graduate with a degree in literature as opposed to business. Here are her excerpts from her blog, urban hysteria and the carnivalesque, detailing two of our trips. Enjoy.

LONDON

I spent London with the Pet Shop Boys stuck in my head for 72 hours, which pretty much sums up my experience there. Christine's father had booked us a room at the Mandarin, and it was worth the nightmare of the tube in the morning just to see the look on the bellhop's face when we rolled up with our suitcases dragging behind us, walking through the sidewalk construction, instead of in a cab. Our room was the land of amazingness, a paradise of organic apple juice and bath salts and a minibar stocked complete with a teddy bear and the most pillows ever. Met up with Anny, who's taking the year at LSE, and set off a weekend of being useless, debauched brats, with two small bar/clubs near Knightsbridge sucking down over-priced but undeniably tasty martinis. Somewhere in the course of the night, in the cavernous lower-level of some members-only place, I stumbled into a group of private airline lackeys, who handed over mysterious and delicious grapefruit flavored shots. Some guy whose uncle owned the airline gave me his number, but I deleted it instead of saving it, drunk but obviously sensible. Spent all Saturday walking around due to our map's deceptively small scale, was generally underwhelmed by the "sites" ("I thought it would be more . . . grand. Or, you know, big."), bought tea. Went to Fabrik, which was filled with Eurotrash on ecstasy, unbelievable lasers, vibrating dance floors, and dancing with Belgians, which became vaguely terrifying because I was dancing with so many of them and it was so dark and then I was suddenly making out with someone and I have no idea who. Left some time in the early morning, walking through hallways and stairways strewn with cracked out ravers suckling on water bottles, circa 1992. Woke up the next morning and wandered around a city mostly deserted due to the holiday weekend, then retired to the Mandarin for champagne tea with Moet&Chandon; rosé and the most delicious pot of oolong ever and an impressive array of sandwiches and scones and little pastries that made my teeth rot just by looking at them.

WARSAW

Warsaw was a compromise in potential, a liminal space between the west's conveniently forgetful architecture and the east's deep-rooted dark humors, a place of gorgeously designed shopping malls and chain hotels and overcrowded and unreasonably exclusive nightclubs playing the greatest dance hits of the 90s and, memorably, the soundtrack to "Footloose." Christine, Amber, and I hit four different clubs the first night, the strength of the Euro clearly in our favor as we dropped bills like monopoly money, drifting from one cavernous hellhole to another when the douchebag contingent got to be too overwhelming. Imagine that one douchy guy you always see in a club, and now imagine a club full of them, cave-man brows and mouthbreathing, gelled hair tips and up-turned collars, the blurred, heavy expressions of borderline alcoholism and general suckage. The women, on the other hand, were infuriatingly beautiful and fit. Finding the bathroom was always quite the adventure, and we knew it was time to go home when some Australian guy insisted that Amber didn't speak English, and Christine dropper her beer. Spent Saturday being as disappointed by the shopping as by the clubs, but we tried a different tack Saturday night, starting with an enormous Irish pub with a live polish band that specialized in adult contemporary power ballads (quite the rendition of "Take My Breath Away"), the impressive floorspace filled with couple swaying middle-school-dance style. Wandered for a bit before stumbling into Sheesha, an middle eastern waterpipe bar, that started out typical until Amber and I took 8 million years to get drinks and found Christine someone in the midst of a raucous birthday party, the only table in the place getting table service. From there we spent the rest of the night drinking with a diplomat from Azerbaijan (and you best believe I spelled that right on the first try), a Saudi Arabian banking Heir, a Lebanese liquor heir (whose company makes a killer - both in flavor and strength - cognac) and a Swedish Hotelier with his stunning wife in tow. The bar owner came by to crack somewhat inappropriate jokes: "How much to stay in your hotel a night?" "Oh, three barrels of oil to you, my friend!" There was middle eastern hip-hop, a freestyling contest, and at one point, the diplomat grabbed a middle eastern hat (pardon my ignorance at the precise origin) from the Swede and plopped it on his head, declaring himself the Taliban's representative to Poland. Sunday, we wandered the markets of old town, buying hand-painted wood boxes and drinking ice cream coffees in the open squares surrounded by lovely orange-hued buildings, crammed together like the teeth I saw in London, before getting on a train back to Berlin that night.

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