Friday Night

What a hell of a night… wow!

At 10 pm Mario and I went to Chas birthday in a tiny pub in a massive building across the street. It had a small stage where Chas and James performed some songs. The music was great! 

Unfortunately, the pub ran out of Tsing Dao (Chinese cheap but rather good beer) so we had to drink the expensive imported ones. Meanwhile, I ran out of cigarettes myself and as I did not want to ask Mario or one of the others all night long whether I could have one, I decided to find a store where I get one. This might sound like the most common thing in the world, but please keep in mind that I’m in china and I don’t speak a single word of mandarin. In the pub I got the advice to get out of the building to find a small store. On my way I asked several Chinese guys whether they can tell me where to find some cigarettes. The fact that none of them spoke any English made it rather complicated – but finally, after more than half an hour I returned to the pub, utterly proud with a pack of cigarettes in my hand :-) .

At 1 am we swopped location. Our destination was a bar on a rooftop of one of the hundreds of Beijing’s skyscrapers. But on our way, Mario insisted to pass a street which is rather described as a long alley of outdoor kitchens. As a matter of fact, we sat down at one of the “trays” and had the funniest night time snack I ever had. I have absolutely no idea what I was eating and I guess that I wouldn’t have eaten half of it if I did. 

We moved on to the club – which was amazing really! I would have loved to dance a bit, but neither Mario nor Miriam wanted to come with me, so we stood at the bar and enjoyed the view and our drinks. Of course it was much more expensive here than anywhere else, but compared to location like thin in Europe it is still more then affordable. 

After an hour or two we changed location again, same building, but from the rooftop to the cellar. It was packed there! But nice electro music so I couldn’t prevent me from having a dance. Mario indicated that he won’t stay long, but I didn’t care, I found my place to be: the dance floor. My remembrance from then on is not that could, as I had lots of beer by then. But I know that I was dancing for a long time. When it became difficult to stand upright, I decided to go home. Leaving the club, I was surprised that there was bright daylight outside – must have been dancing longer than I thought. 

Unfortunately getting home was more difficult than I thought, because the first 5 or 6 taxi drivers refused to drive me home when I showed them Mario’s business card with our address on it. They all pretended to read the card, but I am pretty sure, that none of them could read. In order to avoid the shame of having a proper lack in education, they examined the card intensively. 

While I was searching an educated taxi driver, a Chinese but English speaking woman approached me. First I thought she wants to help me, but as she asked me whether she could come home with me, I realized that she is a prostitute. So I started to politely ignore her.

I already became familiar with the option to sleep on the street, when I finally found a taxi driver who was able to bring me home.
At home I had a little skype chat with Lara on the balcony, but as it was 6:30 in the morning, the bed was calling.