But as we are supposed to save the best for last, you get to hear about our lovely first full day back in Warsaw first. :)
The apartment Steve and I are staying at in Warszawa this time is right downtown - only a few blocks from the train station, the mall, and most importantly, the fan zone! Whoo. Steve and I went on a long walk from the city center, through Old Town, out to National Stadium (which we saw from a distance when we stayed with dear Anna the first time we came through Warszawa, but never actually went to), and back to Old Town for lunch. As pictures are far more interesting to all of you (especially after having to read that giant "Perspectives" post), I will indulge you:
And yes, that poster is for a soccer-themed cabaret performance, in honor of EURO2012. I wish I could've gotten us tickets. :(
And now- the moment those of you with Facebook have all been waiting for.
(I am referring, of course, to Steve's vague status that went something along the lines of "o man, went "clubbing" last night, where to even begin....." or something like that.)
So.
Clubbing in Warsaw.
We had asked Anna, who we stayed with a few weeks ago, if she wanted to meet up for dinner/drinks since we had a very low-key visit with her last time and were ready to get a taste of Warszawa nightlife. We planned to meet up at the Sigmundus statue in Old Town and go from there.
As we were walking down the street leading to the main square in Old Town, flurries of bicyclists were rushing by! It was what Steve and Anna called a "critical mass", which is where tons of bicyclists get together and ride through a pre-determined route. Some people are in costume, some people have boomboxes, and it is a giant social bike-riding event.
And guess where the ending convergence point for this "critical mass" was?
That's right. Sigmundus statue.
We thought we were never going to find Anna! But thankfully, the riders were meeting on one side of the column and Anna was waiting on the other. Anna led us to a quieter section of Old Town and eventually we sat down at a restaurant to drink, chat, and plan the night.
After we left the restaurant (where we tried Poland's popular bison grass vodka), Anna dropped Steve and me off at a "shot bar" which is a bar with a limited food menu while she went off in search of an ATM. She ordered us shots of Poland's other popular flavored vodka, cherry vodka, and two popular Polish bar snacks: Polish sausage in a mustardy, cheesy kind of sauce, and.... STEAK TARTARE.
What is with our continuing trend of eating raw meat???
Yeah, I don't know either.
I had a mild case of deja vu when the steak tartare was brought out.
The steak tartare I expected, or the way it is typically prepared in the States, should have been raw beef cut into small dice and molded into a small circle, topped with a raw egg and garnished with onion and maybe some other veges.
The tartare we received was ground and looked like a hamburger patty.
I wish we'd had the camera with us, because the layout was really quite beautiful, with a quail egg atop freshly ground beef (so it looked and so I hoped) and three piles set in lines of diced pickled onions, pickled garlic, and pickled cucumber, with toast points. The flavor was very mild and a bit buttery. Once I got over the fact that last week I was eating raw bacon and now I was eating a raw hamburger, it was actually very enjoyable. I was just sooooooooo confused about the presentation, although after looking it up, steak tartare seems to be served in this manner quite often. Just not in the States, I guess. Too much food safety regulation or something.
When Anna made it back to us, she mentioned that she has been talking with two German guys that she met via CouchSurfing, and that they wanted to go clubbing. Steve and I are usually up for anything and we had yet to really go out during our trip so far, so we agreed to join in on the fun. (Plus I was wearing the new dress I bought in an attempt to relieve my depression for leaving a well-loved dress in Kiev :( ) Once we agreed, Anna basically said "Great! I already have a taxi waiting outside." Awesome! And so the night REALLY began.
We headed first to the Praga District, which is where Anna lives and which is across the river from the city center. The three of us went into a club that was NOT bumpin' for a few minutes, then left. I think we did this twice more before we finally met up with the German guys and got to a club that was a bit more lively. As a group, we did a round of the third flavor of Polish vodka that Anna said everyone who visits must try: bitter stomach vodka, which is a kind of herbal vodka that is supposed to settle the stomach.
Then we went upstairs to dance.
Having done my fair share of clubbing in the States, let me enlighten those of you who aren't familiar with the American clubbing experience:
#1) The DJ will play a bunch of different songs, some of which will be repeated later on in the night, and most of which will be turned into some kind of remix that follows no set beat and is really hard to dance to. They will, however, not play LMFAO at all, which is stupid because I'm sure everyone remembers THIS.
#2) All good-looking girls who are not attached to dudes are automatically brought in to the front of the line, and typically do not pay a cover charge. Any guy in line, whether he is with a girl or not (and most especially if he's not), will have to pay anywhere from $20-100 cover charge.
#3) All of the girls in the club will be dressed to the nines, dancing their asses off and trying to make all the boys drool. Most of those boys, however, will be creepers who don't really like dancing and instead use "dancing", aka grinding up on some girl without her permission, as a means to get laid.
#4) People will all dance in groups because everyone is too self-conscious to let go and become one with the music.
#5) You will not find a cocktail for under $15.
#6*) This applies mostly just to bigger clubs in Los Angeles or Las Vegas: You will be packed in like sardines and rather than dancing, you will instead just get crushed by mobs of sweaty people. At least one person will get a little too crazy and spill their drink all over you, at least one girl will stab you in the foot with her stilettos, and unless you get bottle service, there is absolutely nowhere for you to sit. Except the sticky floor.
#7*) This applies to California only, not Las Vegas where there are no rules: the clubs/bars/everywhere are legally prohibited from serving alcohol after 2am. So this means that at 1:45am for last call, the bar is packed full of people trying to get watered down, over-priced drinks, and at about 2:30am, the club starts playing realllllllly crappy music so that everyone goes home because if they aren't serving alcohol, they aren't making any money.
Please keep all these factors in mind as I describe our clubbing experience in Warsaw.
We went into a room where people were dancing to music with no lyrics, which was fine with us. There was plenty of room for everyone, so we were all able to dance however we wanted. That in itself was awesome - I am all about being able to get my groove on without running into a bunch of other people. Looking around, hardly anyone was dancing with another person - most were dancing in a group circle, like we were, or dancing by themselves. And EVERYONE was dancing! No one was standing around awkwardly instead of dancing, no one was trying to creep up on the girls, and no one seemed to notice anyone else. Everyone was absorbed in their own little world of music and dancing - which is awesome after going to clubs in the States where everyone is looking around at what everyone else is doing.
At some point, we all sat down on a group of couches, and at some point Steve and our new German friend Holger each bought the group a round of shots. Being in Poland, we must, after all, do as the Polish do. Nas drovia!
At some point, Steve went back to the dance floor with Anna, where she taught him Polish dancing which, based on Steve's description, sounds a bit similar to swing, while I stayed with the Germans and we all discussed the best places to visit in Germany. And then suddenly it was four o'clock in the morning! What?! It's 4am, they're still serving alcohol, and Anna says it's time to move to another club!
So we go outside to grab some taxis and.… IT'S LIGHT OUTSIDE!!!!!
WHAT?! It's 4am!!! Why is the sun already out??? It had just gone down when we met up with Anna at 10pm!
As we are trying to figure out how the sun could possibly be up already, Anna hails two taxis (since the five of us can't fit into one) and ushers Steve and me into the first one after telling the driver where to go. Our taxi ride instantly becomes hilarious when the taxi driver, in very basic English, excitedly tells us that he has been to the States before! Apparently he has family in north Carolina. Never having been to NC before, Steve and I couldn't really relate, and we spent the rest of the drive trying to compare California to both NC and Poland, which is doubly entertaining because half the time, we are just trying to guess what the taxi driver is telling us.
We make it to the next club, which Anna warns us is a little more expensive for cover charge because it's a more popular club, and which is only a few blocks from our apartment! Sweet, we can just walk home later!
This is where things start to get silly.
We go in, and it is more crowded than the last club, but nowhere near Marquee-Cosmopolitan-Vegas-crowded, which I am so thankful for. And we get our dance on.
The entire time we're there, the DJ is playing music WITH THE SAME BEAT.
This makes it easy to get into a rhythm and keep it, I guess, but every time Steve and I made eye contact, we would start cracking up because we were basically dancing to the same song the whole time. Even when the DJ would pause to add a little "DJ signature" to the music, it still sounded the same! Not to mention that everyone here dances like a fool. I wish I could describe it better than that. Everyone is dancing to a different beat and everyone looks like a goof. Which is awesome, because I'm sure I look like a goof when I dance too. Maybe this is why the clubs here are better than in the States - people really are there just to dance and don't care if they look like Berlin's Techno Viking (type that into Youtube and you'll get what I mean) because they don't care if they impress anyone or not.
So after another two hours of dancing like a fool and laughing because everyone else is too, Steve and I decide to call it quits because it is now six in the morning and we need some sleep! We say our last goodbyes to Anna because we probably won't see each other again before we leve Warszawa in two days, and after lots of hugs and Euro-kisses and well wishes and lots of words that I'm sure none of us could hear over the steady boomsha-boomsha-boomsha of the music, Steve and I make it out the door.
And into BRIGHT SUNSHINE!!!!!
As a result, we stumble back to our apartment partly because I'm still a little tipsy and partly because we are laughing too hard at how strange that whole experience was, and reveling in how much fun the night turned out to be. We debate on whether we want to stay up another hour and go get some breakfast, but eventually we end up just falling into bed and sleeping until three o'clock in the afternoon.
And this whole night of sillyness and debauchery, which included four or five drinks each, food, a round of vodka shots for the group, cover charge to two clubs, two taxi rides, and lots of fond memories, only cost us ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.
That's right. A hundred bucks for eight hours of Varsovian nightlife. Where in the States can you have that much fun and not be broke???
Note to readers: this night was about a thousand times more entertaining and silly than you just read here. We wish you could have joined us. When we come back to Warsaw, and we will, please join us.
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