accommodation Archives - HeartBrokenStilettos

Greetings from Germany!

Just a quick update because I didn’t write here lately:

The club where I work now, it reminds me of the first club I worked. A bit quiet but nice and relaxing. I like everything about it. The accommodation is just super, I have my own room with my own bathroom and kitchenette. I don’t need to share it with other dancers.

And I was a little shocked upon arrival when I saw the boss cleaning up the room for me, usually, they just leave it as the previous girl left it, and I have to clean before I move in. Those girls who travel for work know it’s very rare in this business. Dancers apartments are usually dirty and overcrowded.

Here if I want to run around naked all day, I can do it. I’m by myself. (No, it’s not boring! That’s my well-desired peacefulness!)

I like working with German guys. They are polite and easygoing, they know if they come to the club, it costs them some money. Not all buy drinks or dances, but at least they buy dollars tipping the dancers. Just a very few think they are in a cinema and they can just watch without paying. Here is no stage show all night, if they don’t pay, we don’t dance. Perfect! I like this house rule, it’s just a waste of energy dancing for guys if they don’t pay. It makes you tired for nothing. Here I don’t feel tired since I’m here (end of September) I only took one day off. The town is small but great, lots of parks around if I feel unmotivated or just need a good walk.

And I also have a good relationship with the people in the club. Funny, those who can speak English here, I don’t want to talk to them, and those I like to speak only German or very little English. It’s just putting me to learn more German, which is great! I already regretted the time I spent in other countries without learning the language, here I have a bit more chance to do so. I also think about going back to school, so I dusted my old psychology books and brought them with me. It keeps me occupied these days. When the club is not busy, I’m sitting in the corner wearing lingerie and heavy make-up and reading the Introduction to social psychology book or German grammar. Funny though, but you know by now I’m not your average stripper.

So for all these reasons above, I feel I’m in the perfect place right now. I think my travels stop here, I will come back to this club only. No more reason for me searching for other clubs.

I’m happy where I am now.

Inside of the stripper’s house

Many of you are wondering how and where we live. I hope this little photo selection will satisfy your imagination. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t take photos of the most extreme places, but at that time I had no idea about this blog…

So here we are:

Sometimes I was accommodated in a hotel like this one. Perfect! We enjoyed the pool day and night!

In a few places, the view from the room is breathtaking…

Some club has the accommodation for the dancers in the middle of nowhere.

We feel lucky when there is a garden or at least a terrasse attached to the house…

..other places there is not even a proper window for the room.

It’s a hard battle to deal with these stairs carrying 20+kg luggage with no help.

Some accommodations come with rules (and you can make fun of the boss’s English)

And this is when there are no rules. But cockroaches and mice yes.

And now let’s see where we actually live!

Not in luxury apartments but not on matrasses on the ground as some might think.

The Antwerp Boot Camp

I couldn’t say a better description of the clubs here. It’s like a hard physical and mental military training where they push you beyond your own limits. I’ve worked here in a different club maybe 5 years ago, I knew what to expect, but things in time didn’t get any better. I remember 5 years ago when they offered an extra day off because they had enough girls, my friend and I stood up first. Those were very well appreciated and well spent days off with sleeping and resting after the exhausting work!

That’s my 2nd week working here and I feel I have no more power. Either physically and mentally. I should be a social butterfly with a huge smile on my face but some clubs just know how to kill it. All night long they leave the aircon on, it doesn’t matter if there are customers or not. Sometimes you feel you’re sitting in the fridge for hours – wearing nothing else but lingerie. And they don’t care much if the girls are cold or getting sick. We are sitting in a bar chair all night with a straight back (just like in school) and we have to dance minimum 7-8 times a night on stage, again if there are customers or not. I’m really crying back those times and clubs where nobody came in and we were sleeping or reading books on comfy sofas. Here we can’t even sit in the VIP area when no customers. Until 7 am. We can’t leave even 10 minutes earlier. Then we sign the papers etc., often it’s 8.30-9am when I go to bed. All for €35 fix salary per day (I make most of my money from tips, but this is not the kind of money you can rely on.) And if I fancy a drink from the bar (anything except water, even juice), I have to pay for it myself.

But what is really disturbing me that’s the music. 8 hours of house music, no variety. And it’s way too loud. If I don’t be deaf by the end of the contract here, that’s a miracle. No chance to talk to someone without screaming, sometimes I don’t hear my own voice. This music is perfect when you’re on drugs but if not? I don’t take any.. (but here I’m seriously thinking about it just to survive!) Ah, and drugs: it’s a Canaan for those who take drugs because you can get ANYTHING from customers for free! But if you don’t, it sucks. And sometimes the other boss (I didn’t know he’s also a boss, I thought he’s just a drunk, drugged attention-seeking customer because he doesn’t behave like a boss) comes in and makes noise hitting a metal tray on the bar. It’s a proper mental terror! (and God knows how much I’d like to hit his head with that tray at 6.30am!)

In the apartment the kitchen is empty, we didn’t have even a kettle. I voluntarily bought one because I didn’t want to go outside to Starbucks every time I fancy a coffee. (I drink a lot!) In the other apartment, the girls put some money together to buy a micro so at least they can heat up their food. We don’t even have a fridge! And when you work in places like this, you need to eat properly and healthy as food is a source of energy. I’m eating fast food since I’m here, no wonder I have not too much energy these days. Not even for posting here.

So yes, this club really pushing my limits, both mental and physical. But as they say, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. I hope it’s true.

(In the last few posts it sounds I complained a lot about the clubs I worked at. It’s kind of true because lately, I didn’t work in a club where I felt good and appreciated. And these are the pure facts about the stripping industry, no makeup. If you think it’s a sugary, sweet world where everybody is happy and makes amazingly good money, then this blog is for you to read.)

No way, Norway!

As it always happens to me, if I’m desperate to go to a place, it turns out something unpleasant. Same happened here. I was keen on coming here but now I can’t wait for my contract to finish. I heard lots of good things about working in Norway, especially about the clubs in Bergen and Trondheim. But when I sent my application there, the manager replied that he’s very selective with a girls, and that moment he wanted younger and very acrobatic pole dancers because he had enough “older and talker” (actually I like the idea because he makes sure each customer can find the type of girl he likes) But after I found agencies working with clubs in Oslo, and I applied even I heard some bad stories about it. But if you never try, you never know.

Now I know. And I’m pretty sure I won’t come back here. The No way, Norway! an expression I heard from other dancers who worked here previously, now I understand why. I don’t know if it’s just this club, but my customer told me yesterday they passed another club on the same street and he didn’t even want to enter that one because the doormen were too rough looking. Our club is pretty OK though, but for me, it has a strange and arrogant atmosphere that I don’t like. Let’s put it in this way, not the friendliest place I have worked.

I have problems with the apartment. 12 women together in a not so big flat. 12 women for 1 bathroom. It means you have no privacy even on the toilet. 12 women for 1 kitchen. I can not have my coffee there in relax. 12 women and 1 house key. That really sucks. I’m staying in a room with a balcony, and every smoker walks through the room if they need a fag. Almost every time they wake me up, because they try to be as quiet as possible but outside they are talking or listening to their music loudly. I have very disturbed sleeping since I’m here, no wonder why I’m getting more and more irritated at work. And some girls have no respect for others. One girl was on the top of my bed because she needed something from the top of the wardrobe and she was upset when I asked her not to step on my pillow when she’s walking around barefoot in the flat. The other one was searching for something for half an hour in plastic bags while I tried to sleep. Seriously I started to feel I’m the antisocial and deviant here because I don’t talk loudly and I can close the door without making noise.

My only luck is that I’m sharing the room with a very nice Polish girl. Basically, she’s the only person I like here. We haven’t met before but we worked in the same places. I remember on my last day in Macau I popped into my Polish manager and she told me there are 2 girls arrived from Poland and we just figured out she was one of them. I didn’t work that night because I had an early flight the next day and they didn’t work because they just arrived from the airport. Same in Iceland, she just arrived a few days later after I left. And how lucky I am that we met here! I really feel if she’s not with me, I would just give up and go home. Even the club has potentials to make money, my own mental health is worth more and I don’t want to struggle with a place I don’t feel good. I gave a few more days to myself to decide if I leave earlier, but for sure I don’t come back here to work again. No way!

Club overview – Remich, Luxembourg

I must say that was my shortest contract with a club ever. I booked my place through an agency and the conditions sounded good. They offered 70€ fix salary per day plus 20% drink commission plus the dances and free accommodation. Not bad at all. I arrived from France on the train quite late at night. A guy was waiting for me outside the train station. He looked OK for first sight (if I smell danger, I just don’t sit in his car), he told me the club is outside Luxembourg city so we need to take a short drive. It was nothing unusual or made me suspicious. They helped me with the luggage in the apartment (it was heavy and stupid me put the locker keys inside so I needed someone strong to cut the metal locker) and then they introduced me to the boss. He took me into the kitchen of the club and explained all the basic rules that I knew from the agency anyway, but it’s always good when they repeat everything in person. He told me he’s expecting 2 more girls from my country so I won’t be alone. I went back to the apartment to relax. The place was nice with a big and clean kitchen, bathroom. The room for the girls was quite big too but a bit crowded. If I remember well there were beds for 7-8 girls in the same room, and even the room was big it’s not as healthy as everyone has a different daily routine. But for the short term, I can deal with it.

Later the other 2 girls arrived and they were super nice! I was happy to meet them. So we got ready for work together (the others were already working) and it was lots of talk about our previous experiences in different clubs. The problems started later. For them, the boss didn’t say anything, just when we started our shift and we were together he came to us asking our passports. He said he will give them back the next day. But one of the girls insisted, she said to him she would only give the copy of her passport. (In my experience it’s not unusual when they take the passport for one day, in Europe, I never been worried about it so much as I always have my ID

with me and in any case of trouble I can travel with it within the EU.) But I didn’t like the reaction of the boss, that was the first warning sign. Bosses don’t like the girl who knows her rights and not afraid to open her mouth. He told her if she doesn’t want to give him her passport, she can leave the club in that very moment (it was about 11 pm and we were outside of the city, no public transport in these hours.) So what other chances we had? We gave him our passports but with not a good feeling and we started to work. I explained all the rules to the girls that the boss told me earlier. Especially the “no sex in the champagne room!” It was a quiet night, we were sitting on the sofa talking and watching the other girls – who had regulars or so – work. They were pretty and very young from Estonia and a few Romanians. And our bad feelings are increased when we saw a girl kissing her customer and 15 minutes later kissing with another. We saw two guys kissing before they took two girls into the private. But the most horrific was the girl at the bar who got wasted on drinks (when I say drinks I mean cocktails or glass of champagne, not bottles. It means she made maybe 2€ on each drink) She was sitting on the guy’s lap on a high bar chair, basically giving him a lap dance for free. And they were really into it. We felt like we are in a kind of cinema or peep show. Again I have to say but this is not my work style as it was not the girls’ either. We were actually shocked. The whole place looked so cheap and “dirty”, against all the rules that the boss explained to me earlier. And the show just continued when our favourite couple at the bar was more and more into the moves and the guy stood up to press his crotch harder against the girl’s butt, the chair felt on the floor and it was clearly visible that the girl’s bikini bottom under the skirt was pulled to the side. Probably there was a good reason for this, everyone can imagine by his/her own fantasy.

We already decided to leave and not finish our contract. I can’t compeer with girls who work in this way. And not long after we agreed to move on, the police has appeared to check the place out. The police officer asked for our passport and I think that was our luck. We had to tell him that the boss took our passports, they called to question him. I didn’t understand their conversation but it seemed the boss was in trouble because of that. Soon he appeared with our passports and gave them back to us. He didn’t look happy at all. And after the police left, he told us he doesn’t want us to stay because we only cause problems for him! (We were quite happy because we didn’t need to gather all our courage to tell him we want to leave.) I can’t say bad because he also gave us our one day salary with our passports. At least in that way, he was correct. But we definitely didn’t want to stay because we had the feeling that much goes on there than dancing. Maybe he just needed some professional dancer to cover his real business. Later I told the story to a friend of mine and he said: “Yes, you were lucky because there are some rumours about that club that some girls were locked in a room there to force for prostitution”. Seeing the place and the boss, I can imagine…

I’m telling this story because lately, I got emails that I have a funny and glamorous job. No. It’s not always fun. Apparently, it can be dangerous sometimes.