I went to a ferocious cocktail party last week! There aren't many night bars where the drinks are actually perfect and not watered down the booze. But Marilyn Budapest is one of those spots where you can trust the bartender. You get exactly what you pay for, and the striptease? Well, that's just the cherry on top of your cocktail. That’s why I love this Night Club so much—everything is top-notch. The bar is a perfect 10, the girls are a perfect 10, and the variety of shows is insane: lap dance, pole dance, table dance, private rooms, killer music, and good vibes all around. Plus, every two weeks there's a themed event like this Cocktail Night.

I've got this crew of friends, and we've been hitting up parties together for like 30 years now. Of course, over time, things have shifted—there have been weddings and divorces, relationships and breakups, too much work or no work at all, new friends, hanging out with colleagues, and a whole lot of other life stuff. We still love to hang out tho, when we can, but it’s rare we get the whole gang together anymore.

In our twenties, we didn’t need an excuse to meet up. If one of us had plans, the whole crew would tag along. That’s how we once ended up in Vienna for a cocktail competition. Both pro bartenders and amateurs could enter, and the event lasted two days with different categories to compete in.

The whole thing was quite random. My buddy’, Sanya's girlfriend at the time was entering the competition, and the rest of us decided to go along with them. We figured if all the bartending chicks were anything like Viki, we were in for a treat.

Back then, we’d go anywhere for a good chance to meet girls, and Vienna wasn’t exactly the end of the earth. The event was high-class too, with tons of famous cocktail legends (whom we’d never heard of) participating. Our first disappointment came when we realized three-quarters of the bartenders were dudes. Sure, there were a few girls, but they weren’t even close to looking as good as Viki. The second letdown hit when the competition started, and we found out the audience didn’t get to taste any of the cocktails. Plus, we were supposed to sit quietly and watch. Neither of those things worked for us, so Sanya politely asked us to get lost.

It was early afternoon, and the competition was going until late at night, so the four of us hit the streets of Vienna. We did the tourist things, grabbed some food, had some beers, but we’d all been craving cocktails since morning. So, we decided to find a Night Club—preferably one with girls. In the 90s, there weren’t a ton of classy strip joints around, and peep shows were still all the rage. We ended up in one of those sad little places, where, unsurprisingly, there were no cocktails and barely any other customers besides us. We choked down a lukewarm, awful beer and moved on.

Eventually, we found a high-end spot. By this point, it was well into the night, and we weren’t exactly thirsty anymore. They had a pole dance show going on, the place was packed, and it looked promising. We grabbed some great cocktails, parked ourselves at the bar, and started rating the dancers. We ordered round after round, stayed for ages, and the crowd started to thin out. Then, we spotted Viki and Sanya with their backs to us. We headed toward them, but when Sanya turned around—it wasn’t him. But Viki? Oh, she was still Viki. We bolted out of there, fast as lightning, and headed back to our hotel, trying to figure out what to do next.

I don’t know how it works with girls, but we had this medieval belief that the bearer of bad news gets beheaded. So, we decided to keep quiet about what we’d seen.

The next morning, Sanya and Viki were cuddled up on the balcony, sipping coffee. The four of us were horribly hungover, which gave us a good excuse to avoid talking. We found out that Viki wasn’t placed in the competition. A few months later, Sanya and Viki broke up because she moved to Vienna to become a strip dancer. Yeah, in that same club. All we said to Sanya was, “Well, that was predictable. She was never that great at mixing drinks anyway.”

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