Although the whole trip didn’t start in a smooth way (just as none of them lately) now I find everything fine here. I’ve worked in Belgium before, both Antwerp and Brussels so I’m a bit familiar with the country, I don’t feel a total stranger here.
Why did I say it was not a smooth start then? I work the first time with this agency. He’s Hungarian. I don’t like to work with Hungarians as they seem to overcomplicate everything. This one drove me crazy asking my Hungarian tax number and he just stuck to his point, he didn’t want to understand I have no longer tax number or official address in Hungary. But finally, after a short battle, he accepted my English tax number pff…! But it was not all. One day before my flight I still didn’t know where I’m going. He didn’t send me the address. I like to organise everything before the trip, so these last-minute actions really can make me insecure. I almost had to beg him to give me the address just to know where to go from the airport. He’s not an easy peasy case. In his last message, he wrote to me to call him when I’ve arrived at the address. Phone number or something??! Nopp. I asked him to send me his number in a text message (he knows my number) because I’m not sure if I have access to the Internet. You’re right, he sent it to me on Facebook and of course, as I told him, I didn’t have Internet. I was sitting outside a pub, I didn’t know his phone number, not a number of any girls in the apartment to call “Please open the door for me!” I didn’t know the correct address (there are a few apartments under the same address) not even what’s on the doorbell. I can not ask any women on the street that “Don’t you dance in the City Club by any chance?” They would be easily offended. Some agency just really don’t deserve the money they got after the girls because they don’t care. More than 2 hours waiting outside (at least it was not raining and Belgium has good beers) he called one of the girls to check if I’m there and let me in. Seriously??
The apartment is OK, not the cleanest but it’s quite new, and the other girls are nice. And it’s only 4 of us in the apartment. That’s heaven on earth after the experience in Oslo!
The club is also good. Although on my second night there were only 5 customers (and 2 of them were women) and the friend of the DJ and we had to dance all night from 11 pm to 6 am. Don’t ask me what for when nobody paid anything, not even attention to us. After that night I didn’t feel my legs, I had pain everywhere in my body. Please don’t ask me if I go to the gym.. that was enough training for one day! But the system is fair. I have €35 fix salary per day, but every night the club offers €70 guarantee if I make less. It means I have the minimum the €70 per day. But in a week it happened only once (luckily) I always make more than that. I get €8 from a glass of champagne, €44 from a bottle and €25 from a private dance. (I really don’t like to talk about how much I made the previous night and I especially hate it when other dancers asking me. It’s only my business. Here I just want to let you know to have some idea.) Oh and about the tips: how nice, the agency said it’s all for us, at work I find out I only can keep the 60%. Whatever…
The funny thing here that the whole place is a discotheque indeed. Big, empty, dark room with a small stage in the middle. No atmosphere, no decoration, no intimacy – only a few candles around. On the weekend when the discotheque is open, we work on the 2nd floor in the club’s VIP area, which is much nicer. From there you can see all those drunk, hardcore party people on the dancefloor. We look at them, they look at us. It felt we are in some kind of ZOO! But after customers started to come up and we worked all night. Saturday was a perfect night, not much customers, mainly the friends of the boss. We, 5 girls, were sitting at our table and the bottles of champagne are started to arrive at us. That was more of a big party than literally work. We were sitting, chatting, drinking (I mean pouring the champagne back to the ice bucket very eagerly) and laughing all night. That’s really the easy part of my job! No bulls**** from customers, no hard deals, no pushing. Just fun and the money still comes to us. No hangover, no headache next day, Sunday is off. Perfect!