Sunday, September 7, 2008

The Cavalry Arrives! And has wicked accents!

My friends are ridiculously cool.

I'm not kidding. I spent all of yesterday trying to figure out how to work the trains. There was much crying and gnashing of teeth, but then we finally decided to abandon Deutsche Bahn and just fly to Cologne. I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be back until the 11th, so don't flip out anyone if I'm not on for a while. This really sucked though, the whole process of trying to figure out what's going on, so I was wiped out when A and I were supposed to go out.

A word: A is not a fan of her name being plastered online, so I'll just use a letter for her. Anywho, she and her boyfriend, R, picked me up at the train station--no joke-- "Spittelmarkt," but nothing was up there, so we went into a really nifty part of town whose name sort of escapes me at the moment, but it's on the east side.

We first went into Pasternack, a kosher place, but it was full of older types, and most of them were tourists. Plus, it's a little up market (who charges 11 Euros for LATKAS?!!?), and we're kind of...not that type, so we went on to a hip little Thai place where it seemed the waiters had has a long day and were just as ready as us to go home. Joy of joys, though, I got to drink a mango lassi! They were both so unimaginably sweet to me, to the point that they'd gotten me the hook up with a cell phone (handy)! Like, who does that?!? Additional WOW moment: R speaks english. He's a German, and I always thought he just spoke German with his English girlfriend (she speaks every language known to man--even SWEDISH!!!), but he spoke well and with a nifty little accent. When he said "caaan't" it sort of reminded me of every time Heidi Klum on Project Runway says "coooool", which I think 2 of my readers might know. It was so nice to see the familiar face of A. We had met in Tuebingen two years ago (is that right? Was it that long? 2006), and she was always thoroughly cool, and R, her beau, lives and works in Berlin.

After dinner we went to a quieter bar in the POURING RAIN, where we watched a guy enthusiastically playing guitar while another equally enthused, properly fuzzy student-type kissed his girlfriend. I couldn't say how long we stayed, just that we got to R's apartment around 1:30ish. He was sick, had something like Ebola of the Throat, so he crashed while we chatted over tea and chocolate till 3AM. It felt like one of those sleepovers you have in junior high where you just stay up talking about boys and stuff, but we talked about women's rights and her world travels...ok, so not like in junior high. Then I crashed on their couch, wearing a night gown which she'd provided, proving the theory that vikings are, in fact, excellent hosts!


This was my 11am wakeup, which was divine. Imagine--Chocolate in the morning! Then she let me have a bath in the tub there...a real bath! I don't always take baths, but this one was so wonderful, really. It's regenerating, and I put bath oil in it, and I just lay there, soaking, listening to arabic music echoing through the high ceilinged apartment, relaxing. It was soooooooooo nice. So I emerged feeling 100% better than the day before, and, breakfast and 2 cups of coffee later, I was perky and ready to tackle anything. This is the greatest part of Germany though:

Nothing is opened on Sunday, so you won't be tackling anything, so you have all this energy and nothing to do with it but have fun or relax or just chill.

I stayed with them till like 2, and then I had to go home to pack and stuff for another flight out. Tonight Dave is coming into town, and I am looking most forward to seeing another friend.

Why I am still lucky: My friends are nice, attractive, and so smart they can fry people with their powers (just try em!)


R's neighborhood

5 semi-random things to know about A that I might have already told you:
She is...
1. super-smart
2. soon-to-be-published children's book author
3. model-pretty
4. a speaker of Arabic, Swedish, English and German
5. English...northern English...I don't remember the town name

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