| How To Stage A Walk Off |
| The Travel Snob Finds The Bar Inside The Ritz-Carlton The Perfect Venue for A Drunken Runway Crawl |
There are many wonderful things to see in Berlin. Museums. Historical
monuments. Nazi landmarks.
And then there’s The Curtain Club, which is not a collection of
burlesque nightclubs run by Chuck Bass but rather the bar inside The Ritz-
Carlton, Berlin, where I suggest your time be spent when visiting Germany.
That was certainly my first stop, mainly because it had just enough liquor
and square footage for a walk-off (see “From Russia, With Mild
Amusement”).
Before you could say Was zum Teufel, my colleagues and I managed
to turn a lounge filled with easy going Berliners perfectly willing to pay 10
Euros for a Diet Coke into a conga line of intoxicated Americans purring
and puckering their best LaTigres to a crowd of Germans growing fearful
by the minute. And if you don’t get that reference I suggest you go out and
rent Zoolander, then give yourself a spanking (and not the good kind) for
waiting so long.
It started innocently enough. I assembled a ragtag group of
“professionals” to join me in Berlin to investigate Sleeping Beauty, who is
not a retarded princess that willingly takes an apple from a drag queen in
a cloak, nor is it me as I doze atop my recently purchased Four Seasons
mattress, but I understand how you can get that impression. Rather, it’s a
new promotion from The Ritz-Carlton, Berlin and the sleep laboratory at
Berlin’s Charité University designed to help guests achieve the perfect
night’s rest. From luxurious bedding and gourmet dining to soothing spa
therapies and a performance of the Staatsballet Berlin, the Sleeping
Beauty package is designed to craft the perfect environment for slumber,
which to me involves only a sleeping bag under the stars with a certain
“Gossip Girl” hottie and round of S’Mores.
Sadly, the Sleeping Beauty promotion offers neither but it does
include consultation from doctors at the Charité laboratory who monitor
your nocturnal habits and offer suggestions on how to catch deeper
Zzzzzzs. I couldn’t help wonder, though, if the same could be achieved
simply by prescribing Ambien. Sure, you may awake to find yourself
flipping flap jackets at some greasy Jersey Turnpike diner in the middle of
the night, but that’s character building – how often do you get to wear a
hair net and console Flo on Verne’s cheating ways?
The Sleeping Beauty program was inspired by the Charité’s work with
the Staatsballet Berlin, whose dancers’ late performances and physical
exertion led to injuries and difficulties sleeping. Doctors at the clinic
studied the dancers’ habits and helped identify key areas that would help
them get a better quality of rest, which would in turn enhance their
performance. The outcome of the study led to the creation of The Ritz-
Carlton’s package, which is completely worthy of flying a group of
colleagues half way across the world to examine.
To justify the trip, and the bar tab that would follow, I designated one
of our members guinea sheep, and watched amusedly as he was outfitted
with special rubber wristbands to monitor his sleep patterns throughout the
weekend. Coaching him during the program was Thomas Penzel, M.D., a
renowned scientist from the German Society for Sleep Medicine and Sleep
Research at The Charité University Hospital, who just might pass for that
creepy brain surgeon from “The Manchurian Candidate” if he weren’t so
nice or carrying a bone saw.
Dr. Penzel outlined his version of the perfect sleep environment,
which The Ritz-Carlton has magically brought to life through custom-made
Sealy beds with sumptuous SculptureFoam layer, luxurious bed linens
even Mariah Carey couldn’t complain about, brain light therapy that
induces relaxation in a mere 10 minutes, gourmet dining at the hotel’s
award-winning Vitrum restaurant and a black-tie performance of the
Staatsballet Berlin’s Swan Lake held at the State Opera House Unter den
Linden, which lives up to the promise of putting you to sleep.
During the fleeting moments I was awake, and that’s as best an
endorsement one can get for a sleeping program, I found myself listening
intently to Dr. Penzel and all his sleep factoids, like how napping for more
than an hour is bad and why the average human should get a minimum of
six hours a night, and maybe not the ten I find customary to maintain my
devastatingly handsome complexion. Oh, and if you drink, and by virtue of
reading this book I know you do, alcohol will put you right to sleep,
although it’ll be Advil you’re searching for in a few hours and not some
witty barb to throw back at Mel over the fry cooker.
It helps that the program is set at a five star hotel and not some
greasy diner or East German fleabag motel popular with neo-Nazis on
pilgrimage to the fatherland. While its sandstone art-deco exterior might
scream Stassi, The Ritz-Carlton, Berlin is as opulent as any in town, with a
dramatic, free-form marble staircase at the foot of the lobby and rich
woods, bronze accents and imported marble spread throughout the
interior. The service at the hotel is by now legendary – within minutes of
one of our crew losing her purse (and passport) at a nearby café, a
dapper, Armani-clad security agent contacted the U.S. Embassy on his cell
phone, drove her to its premises and got her a replacement so she could
make the flight home. It’s no wonder why celebrities only stay here when
visiting Berlin, like Will Smith, Mick Jagger, Leonardo DiCaprio and even
President Obama, who did his work out here during pre-election
coronation tour.
Our work out consisted of sleep-depriving exercises like club hopping,
bar crawling, passport-losing and, yes, a little shame-walking, which
someone should thank us for quite frankly. How else can you measure the
accuracy of those wristbands, which won’t get you passed the door at the
nearby Kit Kat Club but will The Curtain Club, where all havoc broke loose
the minute we entered, triggering an alert from Interpol that I suspect had
less to do with us than the hideous ensemble my friend Mateo had
purchased a day earlier at H&M.
After a weekend of constant pampering (and poor shopping choices),
something had to give, and it gave in the form of a walk off, which my
colleague Angie called somewhere between the fourth and fifth round of
drinks. Ever the taskmaster, she dragged our group behind the bar’s
curtain and then jeuged and ass-slapped everyone until we found our
inner Evangalistas, then sent us onto the faux runway to do our turns on
the catwalk and complain about getting out of bed for less than $10,000.
To say the onlookers were horrified would be an understatement but not
everyone was traumatized -- several patrons joined the Walk Off, including
one of the bartenders who informed us the next morning that the security
staff had watched (and enjoyed) our exercise on closed circuit camera. I’ll
be very upset if that footage is not on YouTube because NO ONE does a
better Tyson Beckford, even though I still can’t master the bro hug or dude
handshake. The bartender also reminded me that I’d signed the tab as
Karl Lagerfeld, which I’ve been known to do from time, mainly out of spite.
When will he accept that I’m his long lost son and rightful heir to the
Chanel fortune? Maybe then they’ll start a line of men’s wear to
complement their exquisite line of ties, which is not nearly enough of a
cover to visit their East 57th Street boutique.
Finally, on our last day in Berlin, Dr. Penzel gathered us at the sleep
laboratory, which looked less like the Star Trek set I had hoped to find and
more like a suburban doctor’s office. I half expected some disheveled, mid-
40 divorcee named Cathy to scream at me for my co-pay; what I didn’t
expect were the results – those silly little wrist bands caught everything,
including the Walk Off and a short nap during the ballet.
Busted!!!!
monuments. Nazi landmarks.
And then there’s The Curtain Club, which is not a collection of
burlesque nightclubs run by Chuck Bass but rather the bar inside The Ritz-
Carlton, Berlin, where I suggest your time be spent when visiting Germany.
That was certainly my first stop, mainly because it had just enough liquor
and square footage for a walk-off (see “From Russia, With Mild
Amusement”).
Before you could say Was zum Teufel, my colleagues and I managed
to turn a lounge filled with easy going Berliners perfectly willing to pay 10
Euros for a Diet Coke into a conga line of intoxicated Americans purring
and puckering their best LaTigres to a crowd of Germans growing fearful
by the minute. And if you don’t get that reference I suggest you go out and
rent Zoolander, then give yourself a spanking (and not the good kind) for
waiting so long.
It started innocently enough. I assembled a ragtag group of
“professionals” to join me in Berlin to investigate Sleeping Beauty, who is
not a retarded princess that willingly takes an apple from a drag queen in
a cloak, nor is it me as I doze atop my recently purchased Four Seasons
mattress, but I understand how you can get that impression. Rather, it’s a
new promotion from The Ritz-Carlton, Berlin and the sleep laboratory at
Berlin’s Charité University designed to help guests achieve the perfect
night’s rest. From luxurious bedding and gourmet dining to soothing spa
therapies and a performance of the Staatsballet Berlin, the Sleeping
Beauty package is designed to craft the perfect environment for slumber,
which to me involves only a sleeping bag under the stars with a certain
“Gossip Girl” hottie and round of S’Mores.
Sadly, the Sleeping Beauty promotion offers neither but it does
include consultation from doctors at the Charité laboratory who monitor
your nocturnal habits and offer suggestions on how to catch deeper
Zzzzzzs. I couldn’t help wonder, though, if the same could be achieved
simply by prescribing Ambien. Sure, you may awake to find yourself
flipping flap jackets at some greasy Jersey Turnpike diner in the middle of
the night, but that’s character building – how often do you get to wear a
hair net and console Flo on Verne’s cheating ways?
The Sleeping Beauty program was inspired by the Charité’s work with
the Staatsballet Berlin, whose dancers’ late performances and physical
exertion led to injuries and difficulties sleeping. Doctors at the clinic
studied the dancers’ habits and helped identify key areas that would help
them get a better quality of rest, which would in turn enhance their
performance. The outcome of the study led to the creation of The Ritz-
Carlton’s package, which is completely worthy of flying a group of
colleagues half way across the world to examine.
To justify the trip, and the bar tab that would follow, I designated one
of our members guinea sheep, and watched amusedly as he was outfitted
with special rubber wristbands to monitor his sleep patterns throughout the
weekend. Coaching him during the program was Thomas Penzel, M.D., a
renowned scientist from the German Society for Sleep Medicine and Sleep
Research at The Charité University Hospital, who just might pass for that
creepy brain surgeon from “The Manchurian Candidate” if he weren’t so
nice or carrying a bone saw.
Dr. Penzel outlined his version of the perfect sleep environment,
which The Ritz-Carlton has magically brought to life through custom-made
Sealy beds with sumptuous SculptureFoam layer, luxurious bed linens
even Mariah Carey couldn’t complain about, brain light therapy that
induces relaxation in a mere 10 minutes, gourmet dining at the hotel’s
award-winning Vitrum restaurant and a black-tie performance of the
Staatsballet Berlin’s Swan Lake held at the State Opera House Unter den
Linden, which lives up to the promise of putting you to sleep.
During the fleeting moments I was awake, and that’s as best an
endorsement one can get for a sleeping program, I found myself listening
intently to Dr. Penzel and all his sleep factoids, like how napping for more
than an hour is bad and why the average human should get a minimum of
six hours a night, and maybe not the ten I find customary to maintain my
devastatingly handsome complexion. Oh, and if you drink, and by virtue of
reading this book I know you do, alcohol will put you right to sleep,
although it’ll be Advil you’re searching for in a few hours and not some
witty barb to throw back at Mel over the fry cooker.
It helps that the program is set at a five star hotel and not some
greasy diner or East German fleabag motel popular with neo-Nazis on
pilgrimage to the fatherland. While its sandstone art-deco exterior might
scream Stassi, The Ritz-Carlton, Berlin is as opulent as any in town, with a
dramatic, free-form marble staircase at the foot of the lobby and rich
woods, bronze accents and imported marble spread throughout the
interior. The service at the hotel is by now legendary – within minutes of
one of our crew losing her purse (and passport) at a nearby café, a
dapper, Armani-clad security agent contacted the U.S. Embassy on his cell
phone, drove her to its premises and got her a replacement so she could
make the flight home. It’s no wonder why celebrities only stay here when
visiting Berlin, like Will Smith, Mick Jagger, Leonardo DiCaprio and even
President Obama, who did his work out here during pre-election
coronation tour.
Our work out consisted of sleep-depriving exercises like club hopping,
bar crawling, passport-losing and, yes, a little shame-walking, which
someone should thank us for quite frankly. How else can you measure the
accuracy of those wristbands, which won’t get you passed the door at the
nearby Kit Kat Club but will The Curtain Club, where all havoc broke loose
the minute we entered, triggering an alert from Interpol that I suspect had
less to do with us than the hideous ensemble my friend Mateo had
purchased a day earlier at H&M.
After a weekend of constant pampering (and poor shopping choices),
something had to give, and it gave in the form of a walk off, which my
colleague Angie called somewhere between the fourth and fifth round of
drinks. Ever the taskmaster, she dragged our group behind the bar’s
curtain and then jeuged and ass-slapped everyone until we found our
inner Evangalistas, then sent us onto the faux runway to do our turns on
the catwalk and complain about getting out of bed for less than $10,000.
To say the onlookers were horrified would be an understatement but not
everyone was traumatized -- several patrons joined the Walk Off, including
one of the bartenders who informed us the next morning that the security
staff had watched (and enjoyed) our exercise on closed circuit camera. I’ll
be very upset if that footage is not on YouTube because NO ONE does a
better Tyson Beckford, even though I still can’t master the bro hug or dude
handshake. The bartender also reminded me that I’d signed the tab as
Karl Lagerfeld, which I’ve been known to do from time, mainly out of spite.
When will he accept that I’m his long lost son and rightful heir to the
Chanel fortune? Maybe then they’ll start a line of men’s wear to
complement their exquisite line of ties, which is not nearly enough of a
cover to visit their East 57th Street boutique.
Finally, on our last day in Berlin, Dr. Penzel gathered us at the sleep
laboratory, which looked less like the Star Trek set I had hoped to find and
more like a suburban doctor’s office. I half expected some disheveled, mid-
40 divorcee named Cathy to scream at me for my co-pay; what I didn’t
expect were the results – those silly little wrist bands caught everything,
including the Walk Off and a short nap during the ballet.
Busted!!!!
