How to poison friends and put people under the influence

This happened about 6 weeks ago, but I was too busy dying of a terrible hangover to blog about it until now.

I had a few friends over for some drinks at my new apartment. We like nothing better than dressing up and drinking cocktails, thus the evening started out with what I'm going to call Kir Royales, but was actually Vouvray with syrup in it (totally the same thing), followed by Liz's famous Cosmopolitans (the secret seems to be burning some orange peel over the glass), followed by Gin Fizzes. A good time was had by all, and Liz and I decided to head out to a club we'd never tried before.

Ah, the days when I still had a tan! Liz was convinced I'd set the camera up in the wrong position and all that we'd get was her arm.

Liz, Laetitia and me

By this time, I was pretty drunk to be honest, and decided it would be a fabulous idea to do some shots of the vodka I brought back from Ukraine with me. Remember that vodka? It got me into a polite debate with the airport security, then I had to go check it in with the help of a nice German lad who gave me some free newspapers to stuff around it in the plastic bag. I primarily bought this particular vodka because it came in two varieties with three 'free' shot glasses. I'm not sure whether that's what gave me the bright idea of doing shots, since in general I'm not really massive on shots, particularly not shots of vodka.

Laetitia and Liz were also a bit dubious about doing shots (I'm not sure honestly why Laetitia agreed, since she wasn't coming out to the club with us) but I managed to persuade them by telling them it was honey vodka. What could be nicer than a shot of honey vodka? Genuine, Eastern Bloc honey vodka! Nom nom nom! Smooth as silk! Good for what ails ya!

Well... turns out this vodka was just about the burniest, harshest firewater I've ever tasted (and I was recently persuaded to try rakia). I put the shot glass down mightily regretting that I'd poured myself a shot twice the size of the girls'.

But it wasn't until a few minutes later that Liz held up the bottle and we discovered just why this vodka was so evil:

Yep, that's a giant chili pepper right there! I can't believe I managed to purchase, transport, unpack and serve this vodka all without ever noticing the horror lurking within! It's not exactly invisible! In my defence, it does *say* honey on the label, but it says it in the tiny letters right underneath where it says PEPPER (Pertseva, but in Cyrillic obviously) in big letters. I assume I saw this strange word written really big, didn't know what it meant, decided that logically if I didn't know what it meant than it must be unimportant, and then forgot about it. I can tell you, I got much abuse the next day from the girls as the effects made themselves felt, but it didn't make much difference since I was already dying from the evil chili hangover anyway! (Obviously the wine, gin, cointreau and normal vodka had nothing to do with it - it was all that damn chili's fault!)

And when we got to the club everyone there was at least 5-10 years younger than us, at least in the downstairs bit. (The club featured "two ambiances" - downstairs, which was a normal club, and upstairs which was full of couples slowdancing at 3 in the morning for some reason.) These dickish young guys tried chatting us up - in French - and one of them said to the other one right in front of me that you could see the whole of my boobs (which was NOT true, as the photo evidence above attests). And then when I called him out on it, he said he said it because he thought I wouldn't understand the word (nichons, which is slang). Um, saying rude things in front of me because you think I won't understand you makes you even more of a dick? And is pretty stupid, since we've been having an entire conversation in French up to this point. Then one of them asked if Liz would be upset if he undid her bra (she had on a backless dress and you could see the clasp). Sigh, why are the only people who go out in this godforsaken town under the age of 21? Safe to say that was as close as they ever manage to get to nichons!