As promised, Part 2 of the weekend

Be prepared for another insanely long entry. It’s worse than the last one. Also, there will be one more shorter part about the weekend, then be prepared for sweet blogs about Rome and Amsterdam.

I had to get to Nikos' apartment to go play poker with him and Larissa and Taylor and Andrew, so after dinner I got in a cab and told the driver the address, attempting to make 111 understood by "ena ena ena" (the English spelling of the Greek 1) but I'm pretty sure that confused the driver, so Elyse told him in the Greek, and therefore I figured I wouldn't get too lost. One thing that I do notice when I'm here, around people who do not speak English is how peaceful it is to not feel obligated to make small talk. Not to sound like a huge bitch, but I'm not really a big fan of having to talk to people in customer service sorts of jobs- cashiers, taxi drivers, receptionists- about things like the weather or how their night has been. I liked being able to sit in the back of a taxi on a rainy Greek night and observe the life that was passing by at 1 o clock on a Friday. I enjoy having time to focus on those thoughts and not have to put half of my brain on the semi-auto pilot that "Oh, I'm good, how are you?" takes. We reached the place I remembered and with a quiet "edtho" (here) he stopped and I handed him a ten euro and got out back into the rain with an 'efharisto, kalinicta" (thank you, good night. Also, trying to get the Greek words into English letters is a hoot for things like kalinicta with the eta and the chi in there and edtho with the fun pronunciation of a delta) and got on the phone with Larissa. I saw her pop out to the balcony as I heard Taylor's voice answer Larissa's phone and I headed up.

Nikos' apartment is right above a bar. A karaoke bar to be more specific, so you have to go up onto the deck of the bar and walk to the entrance of the apartment building to get to the winding stairs that lead to Nikos’ place. I got up there and see Taylor and Larissa, but no Nikos or Andrew; I also see a bottle of Jameson and a couple five euro bills on the coffee table and I recognize that this poker game is going to be serious business to Larissa, if not to other people as well. They tell me that Nikos and Andrew are down at the bar for a while and as soon as Larissa rolls a cigarette, we head down there to join them. This bar isn’t a crowded place at all, but there were a few other people in there at that point in the night. Also by that point in the night, I cannot feel what time it is at all. All day I had been in a state of being so confused about what day or time it was, because I hadn’t been to class and this feeling was made worse by the fact that I was going out to do things at 1 o clock. So we get down there and Nikos sees that I have arrived, and he and I have gotten into this little habit of half shouting at each other in greeting so I hear a “JACKIE!” in an Albanian accent and respond with “NICKO!” because in the vocative (when I’m talking to him) the s drops off his name and when my answer to the question of “are you drunk?” is a definite no, a quick conversation happened with the bartender and five shot glasses were produced. Moral of that story is that I approve of cinnamon flavored liqueur, but I obviously still wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t plied with more alcohol however, and Nickos was pretty drunk already and Larissa was getting there. Nickos decided that he would try to get us to dance to the Greek music playing at the bar, or at least to get us clap and dance as much as you could while still sitting at the bar and before we left, he kicked it up a notch. He started to dance when we got up to leave, showing us traditional Greek moves which involve lots of stepping. It was very cool to see actually, these traditional Greek dance steps being done in a bar, and there was a woman in a slinky black dress and sky-high heels doing the same moves on the other side of the bar and people leaning down to clap for them (Larissa doing the clapping for Nickos).

We moved back up to Nickos apartment and moved out to the balcony to play. We were playing Texas Hold ‘Em and somehow Nickos wound up with a straight flush, almost a royal, in the first hand beating out Andrew’s straight and taking quite a bit of Andrew’s chips for the first round. Larissa was steadily getting drunker and that isn’t a big deal for her, because she’s pretty much a pro, but she lost all her chips at some point and bought back in. At some point she knocked her chips over and it was beyond obvious that she was not really okay to keep playing so we decided to take a food break, because Larissa had brought food for us. Spicy chicken burgers and some Greek style salad and both were absolutely delicious. But during our food break we started playing American music, because we had been listening to Albanian hip-hop, an artist that is according to Nickos “The Timbaland of Albania” and of course that lead to me singing. Most things lead to me singing, so this was nothing special, except for Larissa was convinced that I had to keep singing because my voice is amazing in her opinion. She sat on the couch next to me, half leaning on me on occasion, looking up at me from my shoulder as I karaoke’d “Me and Bobby McGee” into my cell phone on Nickos’ camera because of course that seemed like a good idea at 3:30 in the morning. And I was unworried about making too much noise, because Nickos made it a point to let us know how unimportant us being quiet was because no one was in his building at the time. He went so far as to make a joke about our RAs dog being in his hallway and it was truthfully very amusing. But after our sweet jam session, at one point Nickos went into the bathroom and suddenly we were hearing a beeping sound. It was the intercom and we figured that out but we still couldn’t actually answer it. When Nicko got on the intercom, the conversation was all done in Greek of course and we all sort of could tell that it wasn’t a pleasant conversation. Somehow we were in trouble.

Nikos turned and looked at us and told us we had to be more quiet. The police apparently had been called on us because we were being too loud, but Nickos’ landlord is a phenomenal human being and told them that Nickos is a good tenant and the group of us was leaving very soon. For a minute we debated just being quieter, and not playing Guns’n’Roses at top volume and staying in the apartment, but it was obvious that Nickos did not love that idea. So we brainstormed and came to the conclusion that we should try to go to a club. Larissa was not into that idea but the rest of us were and there can only be four people in a taxi so Nickos agreed that she could just stay at his apartment. The club we decided to go to was Club Vogue, which apparently is a new club and people have really liked it. We were headed over there in a taxi and we were discussing the money situation; we sort of assumed that at 4 am the club would not be trying to take 15 euro cover from us all, since they were going to close in about three hours, so it was okay that we all got in a cab with very little money. Nickos got in the cab with straight up no money because he got distracted by the whole “get out of here now” mentality that he had going on. The taxi drops us off and we make our way to the club entrance and I see a common theme emerging.

Leg. Lots of leg. Dresses. Skyscraper heels. Skintight clothing. Suits. Men are wearing suits to this dance club. And everyone exiting is beautiful. I noticed this, but thought nothing of it really, because how crowded can the club be at 4 am? Plus, these beautiful, dressed up women are leaving, so we get to the door and Nickos starts talking to the bouncers. I can feel how out of place we look. Taylor and I are both wearing jeans, and although both of us look cute, it isn’t the cute for this club. Taylor’s got a scarf on over a higher necked top and I’m wearing a three quarters sleeve hooded sweater over a top I did actually buy as a going out top, but it isn’t anything that I actually feel okay in at this place. As I’m contemplating this with Taylor, Nickos is still talking to the bouncer, and it’s looking grim, so Andrew starts acting like he’s going to look for the back door. Eventually he gets on the phone with our friend Alexandra, who was supposed to be at Vogue that night. Finally she picks up and they somehow communicate to each other that we’re outside despite the fact that she cannot hear him at all. But in a few moments, she appears, glittering short black dress and heels, and talks to the bouncer, telling him that we are with her party, with Kostjan’s party. The bouncer doesn’t really seem to be buying it, and sort of gives us the once over, and tells Alex that he’ll let us in a few and when she asks how long he replies “I decide how long. Not you.” Like, listen buddy, you’re a bouncer at a club. You do not have an important authoritative job- you just feel important because you have a suit. Just let us in, we’re giving you money, our clothes be damned. But he did let us in after a few minutes and we then got held up at the table where we had to buy tickets to get in. Our idea of no cover at 4 am was nowhere near correct. I handed over my last paper money for the 15 euro cover charge that included a free drink- so really it’s a 5 euro cover and a drink because drinks are insanely expensive here and Alex had to end up paying for Taylor and half for Andrew or so with promises of us to pay her back. But finally we got into the club.

It was pretty much exactly how I pictured a club to be: dark, with strobe lights and spot lights in green and white and blue and a fully stocked bar and techno and good looking people dancing everywhere. The dance floor level was crowded and we knew we’d have to go down there eventually. By this time I had taken my sweater off to try to look more like I belonged at the place, but as long as my jeans were on that wasn’t going to happen. Taylor and I got drinks after a quick search through the labyrinthine placement of doors and stairs and curtains and an escalator that in all reality just seems a little superfluous to the club for a bathroom. After a few minutes of just sort of taking the atmosphere in and seeing that this really was a club, almost stereotypically so, and waiting for Alexandra and losing the boys to somewhere, Taylor and I figure we might as well dance and find room on the stairs. While dancing on the stairs, the extreme awesomeness of the musical choices made by these DJs was highlighted. American hip-hop from when I was a major rap fan was spliced together. They played that terrible Khia song “My Neck, My Back” and I wondered why any 14 year old knew any of the lyrics to that song, edited or not. Terror Squad’s “Lean Back” was played after 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” and a few other songs that at this point I don’t really remember; the only thing missing was DMX’s “Party Up.” Alex returned to us and we headed down the stairs, passing a hundred beautiful people and having to snake through them and finally found a spot to claim as our own to dance. It had the added bonus of there being a table close to it that Alex could dance on. The next about 2 ½ hours seemed to pass by rather quickly, in a haze of dancing and shouting lyrics to rap songs that no one else in the building knew and wondering how in the world so many good looking people existed in one place.

We had found the boys and we were all wondering what time we were going to leave, as it was about 6:30 or so, perhaps a little later. Taylor and I were losing ground on the staying awake front, but Andrew and Nikos wanted to try to stay until the place closed and Alexandra decided to stay with them. So after bumming 5 euro off of Alex with a promise to pay her back later in the day (which I did of course) Taylor and I headed out back into the night, which was rapidly becoming day. It was still pouring rain and Taylor thought the food trailers outside smelled delicious and she wanted a gyro because of that delicious smell. We were in luck because there was an ATM right across the street from this club so we got over there and both pulled some money out. When we got back to the other side of the street, we checked these trailers for gyros; alas, neither of the places had gyros- they had pizza I think. I think that’s strange because I’m rather positive that gyros are made for drunk/hungover people because of the extreme greasy excellence that they are. I mean, they put fries on the sandwich for you! They add grease with those potatoes when they had greasy pork on a pita anyway! But since we couldn’t get our gyros, we got in a cab and decided that we’d have the driver drop us off at the Arch and hope that we could find an open place to get food. As we’re riding in the back of this cab, the sky outside is getting a little lighter and I also learned that even when it’s 7 am and I haven’t slept, I know how to say “sorry, I don’t understand Greek. Do you speak English?” We get to the Arch and I see that Everest, a fast-food restaurant of sorts, is open and I can get a crepe there so I figured I’d get a crepe and we’d find Taylor a gyro. As we’re waiting in Everest, Taylor is falling asleep. When my crepe was done I had to physically shake her to get her awake. We asked the man where there would be an open gyro place and he pointed us in the direction we would have went anyway probably. We head out and go to cross the street toward the arch. As we are discussing the bus schedule, the light changes. This time it wasn’t the sky, but the street lights. Taylor and I were standing across from the Galerian Arch on a rainy Saturday, soaking wet and tired and carrying a crepe that I really just wanted to tear into right there, and we saw the street lights turn off because it was now morning.

We walked the blocks that would lead us home and we didn’t find any open gyro places. We even walked a little further, hoping to find a place, because I figured that if we were going to do it, we might as well do it all the way and find Taylor a damn gyro. It turned out that neither one of us could take it and Taylor decided it wasn’t even worth it. She did not end the night with a gyro unfortunately. She did get something to eat though, and we sat and ate our breakfast or whatever that meal could have been considered. We somehow dragged ourselves back to our apartment and made it in there. It took me a good number of tries with the keys to get in the room because I was just so exhausted. By the time I laid down in my bed and got ready to sleep for the night, my clock read 7:54. I was so tired I barely had time to be amazed at myself, although I almost tried to stay awake to get online and see if anyone was on skype, but I couldn’t. I’m quite certain I was asleep before the clock changed to 8:00.