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Emasculation

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Wow.  I was totally stunned.  It’s funny how one word can do that.  I bumped into Theresa waiting for the bus.  Literally.  I guess I bumped into her walking and didn’t notice.  Too busy listening to my music I guess.  Anyways, ever since my Lubeck post, she has told me that she would kick my ass in pool, but we never made plans to play.  So I asked her about it today and she told me anytime.  That she would “emasculate me”.  Wow.  Sorry, I still get chills thinking about it.  What a word.  Annihilate, obliterate, destroy, kick my ass, all of those I would’ve just laughed off, but that one took my breath away.  One word took a simple game of pool with bragging rights off the table and put my manhood directly in question.  Amazing.  In a situation where I wouldn’t think twice, I’m suddenly questioning whether I should practice a little before we play.  I usually play better after having several drinks.  Now I’m wondering if I should start drinking a little earlier, or could I drink a little too much before hand and cross the plane of playing well into the not so well zone.  The worry is heightened by the fact that I’ve never seen her play, and she says she’s pretty good.  Normally it wouldn’t matter, but now this one word has got me worrying….

I guess I’ll know tomorrow.

Pied Piper of Hameln

Monday, October 13th, 2008

So after a week of food poisoning, I jumped at the chance of getting out of town this weekend.  Keri and I chose on Hameln, the home to the story of the Pied Piper.  We’ve always liked the story, so we assumed it would be interesting.  For any of you that haven’t heard of the story….

In 1284, Hameln was infested with rats.  A man dressed in pied, claiming to be a rat catcher, offered to get rid of the rats for a price.  After the Pied Piper used his musical pipe to lead the rats into the Weser River, the towns people refused to pay him.  The man returned to the town later, on St. John’s Day, while all the adults were in church, lured all the children of the town into a cave, never to be seen from again.

Anyways, we arrived around 1pm, and headed to the old town. After checking out the Rat-Catcher fountain on the outshirts, we followed the rat trail to several of the major Pied Piper sights.  While there was a lot of Pied Piper sights, the city was a lot less Disney-like with the connection than what I expected.  Unfortunately, it was also a much busier and consumer oriented that I thought as well.  Sights were seperated by lines of well known shops likePeek Cloppenburg, H&M, etc.  I imagined it being like Luneburg, but with Pied Piper stuff.  Didn’t exactly turn out that way.  At least we were able to find a Mexican Restaurant.  Didn’t know how much I’d miss Mexican food until I didn’t have access to any.  After dinner, we headed back to Hannover to catch our train to Luneburg.

Since we had some time before our train, we headed to Miles, a bar just a couple blocks away from the Hauptbahnhof.   After Keri’s 3 glasses of wine, and my 4 Beck’s, we headed back to the station.  Unfortuantely for us, we just missed the train.  Our student passes give us unlimited train access in Lower Saxony, but it only applies to certain trains, and of course I forgot my Eurail pass.  The next train wasn’t until 6:40, the next morning.  So, we weighed the choice of spending 30 Euros each on ICE train tickets back, or just spending that money on drinks and drinking until our free train left.  We opted for the drinking.  We walked for 30 minutes til we found a bar that was open til the early morning.  Because of Keri’s smoking, and Germany’s smoking ban, we sat outside for several hours throwing back drinks.  After freezing our ass off for those several hours, thewaitress finally decided to tell us that she could smoke inside.  Thanks for waiting 3 hours to tell us.  Anyways, we threw back several more and headed for the station around 3:30am.  We ended up finding the train station in about 5 minutes, so we had walked for an unnecessary 25 minutes before.  I found it discouraging that we walked for a half an hour to end up 5 minutes away from the starting location.

Anyways, despite our best efforts, we couldn’t stay awake any longer, so we decided to hop on the next ICE train, and hope we didn’t get caught without a ticket.  We just had to stay awake until 4:30.  At 3:50 we were both asleep on the stairs going up to the platform. At 4:27 I woke up in a panic woke up Keri, and ran up to the platform, just to stand there for 30 minutes before we realized that it was Sunday morning, and the trains we looked at weren’t running on Sundays.  So, despite our best efforts to illegally train hop, we had to wait for our original 6:40 train.

We found a nice quiet place near the back of the station to fall asleep.  I had the problem of occasionally waking up thinking we overslept.  One time I awoke to a guy standing over me asking if I wanted change.  He was obviously drunk.  Actually, I don’t know if it was just that.  I’m growing my beard out, and I was wearing a crappy hat and jacket, so maybe I did look homeless.  Anyways, he noticed my reply was in English and asked me where I was from.  If I was awake, I would have realized I should have said Idaho or something boring like that, but I responded with Las Vegas.  The guy was from California, so apparently that gave him the ok to talk me to death for about 15 minutes.  All I kept hearing was “I run Basketball up in dis villiage, dawg!”  “Ya feel me?”, and shit like that.  I guess when he first got to Germany he didn’t have any money, so he gives change away now to people he thinks need it.  Then he told me that if I knew one name in Hannover, it should be Jumping John Asbury.  Yeah, filed that one away for later use.  I’m sure I’ll need that again.

Anyways, that traumatized me to the point that I couldn’t fall asleep after that.  Just watched the minute hand slowly tick away until 6:40.  We got back to Luneburg ok and spent the rest of the day sleeping.  That’s the one good thing about Sundays in Luneburg, you can rest all day without any guilt, cause nothing is open or going on.

Train Collision in Hungary

Monday, October 6th, 2008
Wow, got out of there in time. 

Hungary: 3 dead, 30 hurt in train crash

 BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) -- At least three people have died and 30 injured in a collision between two passengers trains near Budapest, Hungary. Monday's accident in the town ... [Continue reading this entry]

Budapest

Sunday, October 5th, 2008
So Friday was Germany's Reunification Day, and I figured, "What better place to celebrate German reunification than...?" I finally came up with Croatia. I know. I really wanted to go to Berlin with Keri and Julian, but it ... [Continue reading this entry]

Lübeck and the Baltic Sea

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

On Saturday, several of the USAC students chose to go to Lübeck and the Baltic Sea.  The trip was nice.  We got to see an aerial view of Lubeck from St. ... [Continue reading this entry]

Getting to know Lüneburg

Monday, September 29th, 2008

This past weekend was pretty busy, so I’m dividing the posts again. Friday was a mandatory daytrip to the Salt Museum and Luneburg’s town hall for a traditional toast with the mayor. It ... [Continue reading this entry]

Oktoberfest!!! Actually, kind of disappointing…

Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Yes, you read that right. Oktoberfest was a little disappointing. I got off the train at 7am and was immediately surrounded by drunk, lederhosen wearing Germans dragging cases of beer and singing drinking songs. So, to blend ... [Continue reading this entry]

Bremen

Monday, September 22nd, 2008
It’s been a while since my last post. I’m still without internet in my apartment, and I’ve been out on daytrips for the last couple days with limited time on the internet. It’s been a long weekend, so ... [Continue reading this entry]

Scheisse!!!

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

I tried to get online this morning to do a little update, and apparently I’ve already used up my allotted monthly time and it’s only the 18th.  So, unfortunately it is going to be a little more difficult to get ... [Continue reading this entry]

Ziggy Zaggy, Ziggy Zaggy, Oy, Oy, Oy!!

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Yesterday was also a day for Luneburg's Bayerisches Oktoberfest. Theresa and I set out around 8:45 after resting from the Hamburg trip. The first stop was the carnival games. I know that I'll ... [Continue reading this entry]