Friday was a MESS.

It started innocently enough. Tanya and I got up earlyish and went Second Hand Store crazy. First, we went to the five story monster Humana near Frankfurter Tor (spiritual home of the brightly coloured 80s leather jacket) and then the smaller, somewhat cheaper and less hilarious store near Alexander Platz. After we tore through Humana at lightning speed (purchases: Tanya: amazing tiny, fitted denim jacket with stretch cuffs and a double zip, black scarf, rock rock forever t-shirt, child sized zebra costume for Halloween. Eloise: double strand of buttery cream coloured pearls, ornate jewelled clasp. ridiculously underpriced.) we needed to stop by the bank so that Tanya might exchange some cash. As we walked into the bank, we spied an odd sight. The front counter, which would usually serve as an information point, was decked out for a party. There were bowls of sweets, leaflets, goodie bags of some sort etc etc. I looked closer. There were glasses. There were ROWS AND ROWS OF GLASSES. THERE ARE BOTTLES. The smiling woman behind the counter was handing out red canvas bags with the bank’s name on them. As I took a bag, I studied the scene more closely and it dawned on me that we have stumbled into what I can only describe as the Holy Grail of the finance calendar: Free Champagne Day at the Bank. It is about 2pm. Between queuing up to exchange money (wechseln, bitte!), loitering a tiny bit and pocketing the leaflets, sweets and balloons that had yet to be blown up, we managed to polish off three glasses of champagne. Each. We were in there for 20 minutes at the most. The glasses were not tiny. We had not eaten. Do you see where I am going with this?

We proceed to The Ramones Museum in Mitte where we were due to meet Nat and Sarah. The museum has a cute little cafe at the front of it and since neither Tanya or I are desperate to see the actual inside of the museum we decide it best to continue what we started. We order Irish coffees (It was COLD out) and sit back and wait for the girls to arrive. We are starving. But the whiskey lashed coffee is hitting the spot. The girls are nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half passes before they arrive. By this point, Tanya and I have settled happily into our drinking boots and the warmth of the interior of the cafe coupled with the comfort of the couches has resulted in afternoon inebriation. Everything is hilarious. We are starving.

After Nat gets her Ramones fill (the only of the four of us with sufficient love and dedication to the iconic punk band to willingly part with her money to enter the little museum) we head home, stopping at a supermarket on the way home to pick up some bits and pieces for dinner and some wine. Becuase this is what we need. Wine. We hang out and talk shit and drink and finally get some food into ourselves. As the night draws on, Tanya, Sarah and I decide to go to a bar. Because that is what we need. To drink more. (Nat is a clever girl and stays home to have a little sleep. This was to be the beginning of a vicious 48hr bug that flattened her for two days, but more about that another time.) We go to Habarmeyer on Garntnerstrasse (home of the DJ BEAST who had been playing there the Friday before.) Alas. DJ Beast is not there and neither is the incredible selection of music he plays. Still, we stay. A less beastly DJ arrives and plays and the music is good and beer is cheap and the people are nice to look at and you can smoke inside, so we stay. We stay a while. Eventually Sarah, having just landed that morning, calls it a day and heads home to bed. Tanya and I do no such thing. We continue. We tell hilarious stories until we cry. We tell sad stories until we almost cry. We drink some more. We realise that I do a pitch perfect Bronx accent and I spend the rest of the evening talking as though as I care/know anything about the Yankees and live somewhere above East 132nd Street. Eventually, we leave. On the way home, we stop for drunken falafel. This naturally comes with a side order of beer. As we are finishing said falafel, Tanya says, “I could really do with a whiskey.”
When you are drunk and really don’t need anything more to drink, a night cap before going back to your apartment seems like the best idea on god's green earth. So we stumble up the road. We are plastered. We are doing that thing that girls do when they are hammered, holding hands and walking in something of a zigzag, all the way keeping our forward motion. Something is hilarious. I have no idea what. But something certainly is. I am still talking like I come from the Bronx. “I don’ wyatch it, but if yoo wanna wyatch the gyame, I’ll fuckeng wyatch it!” My stomach hurts from laughing.

There is a bar literally opposite my apartment block that I have been wondering about for a while. It looks like an unassuming old man’s pub and some boys I met from Sweden a few weeks ago told me that they had ended up in there almost every night before returning to where they were staying, a block away. It stays open until 5 or 6 or some ungodly hour and those boys were Mark Twain Cool, so I assumed it would be safe enough. It was quite easily decided that this bar would be the spot for our last drink of the evening.

We open the door. We walk in. Somewhere in the distance, a fruit machine plays a tinny tune. The air is musty, the faint smell of stale beer. A tumble weed blows past. We’ve opened the door. The bartender has seen us. There is no turning back. Our steps are impossibly loud on the floor. This is no cool after hours drinking dive. No. This is Not. Where. We. Are. Supposed. To. Be. There is no music. The room is tiny, a small wooden bar along the one side its main feature. Propping themselves up on the bar are an old homeless man with a plastic bag full of possibly shoplifted items he tries to sell us and the bartender at random intervals (contents include 54% Rum and a tray of Belgian chocolates) and on the other end of the bar is a very boring and simultaneously massively creepy looking 50ish man. The bartender looks at us with indignation. We should not be here. We know it. He knows it. We just don’t know how to leave without making the situation even worse. Let me state that I was at first convinced the bartender was a masculine woman. Tanya was convinced it was a feminine man. I eventually conceded that he was in fact male. He was rocking some fierce guyliner. Not drag queen make up, rather, getting up and fixing your face for the day makeup. You know, basic foundation, liquid eyeliner lids and a lick of mascara. His shirt was red satin with a black fringe, pearl snap buttons and patterned, silver collar tips. We were very possibly in the scariest gay bar in the world. The bartender was hating us. The other guy was hating us. We were by then hating ourselves. Only the homeless man found our presence entertaining and would every so often, point at us and say something in German and laugh hysterically. We were all thinking it. He was only one crazed enough to vocalise it. It was the single most awkward drink I’ve ever had in my life.

When we were done with our drinks we paid and walked as casually as possible toward the door. As soon as we were out of it, we sprinted across the street and into the safety of my apartment building. In hysterics, we climbed the stairs, trundled into the apartment and collapsed. As it stands, ‘Funfundreissig’ or ‘The Gay Vampire Bar’ (as it is now known) is not on my list of bars to frequent.

Needless to say, we slept in on Saturday.