Crazy German Day

The euphoria from the Karneval evening with the Germans (pictures here) was starting to wear off, and I needed a fix of German craziness. And I needed it REAL bad. It just so happened that Verena (Miss Piggy from the Karneval pics, and girlfriend of Patrick, BMW co-worker of my good friend Tu-Nhu... those were my three partners in crime at Karneval) needed some portraits taken, and a bit of flash photography work at home would have sufficed, I figured when working with Germans, do as the Germans do... GO ALL OUT! So I found a studio to shoot the pics in, and Tu-Nhu brought along some sparkling wine to loosen up the somewhat nervous Verena, and Patrick brought along his hair stylist skills so he could be Verena's personal hair specialist (he had no idea he would be appointed to this position until about halfway through the shoot). Once I had snapped off a handful of nice portraits for Verena, we had a little time left to play. And play we did. German style of course. I have no idea where such a big teddy bear came from, or the wedding outfits, but Patrick decided to scare his parents by posing for wedding pics with Tu-Nhu and sending the pics home to tell him he'd found someone new. He made it up to Verena though by becoming Don Juan (the German version at least) in the park on the walk home and smothering her with hugs and kisses, much to the chagrin of Chinese passerby.

Verena had asked how much to pay me for my services, and of course I wouldn't accept her (dirty German) money, so I told her buying me dinner would be more than fair enough payment. So what does she do but go and book a table for the four of us at Maison Boulod, quite possibly the most expensive restaurant in Beijing and the top-rated fine dining restaurant in the city. It was an exquisite meal (and by far the most expensive I have ever consumed... thanks Patrick and Verena!), but we were definitely feeling a bit tired from the strain of our overexertions in the studio that afternoon.

But the night was still young and we had a going away party to attend for one of Tu-Nhu and Patrick's BMW coworkers. As if three Germans wasn't already enough. And to make things even more ridiculous, it was a costume party with a rock n' roll star theme. As if a party full of Germans wasn't already enough. Being the rebel cowboy that I am, I dressed up as a dirty, skanky Texan country singer (evidently I looked like Keith Urban according to the others, though I've never seen a picture of him and didn't realize that he's married to Nicole Kidman) using the cowboy hat hanging on the wall over my computer and the wig from a film I shot last summer. Patrick and Verena already had a collection of wigs and outfits (go figure!) and lent an extra one to Tu-Nhu, so we went back to their apartment to get dressed up, which turned into our second photo shoot of the day. Once we could barely stand up anymore, we dragged ourselves out the door and made our appearance at the BMW party, where everyone was being much more tame than the last German party I attended because they were surrounded by coworkers and didn't want to make asses of themselves in front of people they would have to face again on Monday morning. Feeling sorry for poor sorry lot of them, I volunteered to make an ass of myself and did a pretty darn good job of it. I also surreptitiously spread a nasty rumor around the party that I am Tu-Nhu's ex-husband, just to make sure her coworkers would have plenty to talk about around the coffee machine the following week.