Company, Weekend 1
I’d imagined Krissi’s first weekend here being a bit more eventful, though what took place was fun anyway. On Saturday we went to the flea market they have across the street to look for wine glasses and maybe a piece of jewelry she could take back as a souvenir. We found wine glasses, but although we looked at nearly every necklace on display she never quite found that perfect piece. Following that we went back to the supermarket for some shopping, then spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening in the apartment.
When night rolled around it was time to go out, this time towards Linden rather than the city center to show her a couple of other bars. We stopped at the Irish Harp for a quick one, listening to the live acoustic-guitar playing entertainers do various songs from the early 90s that we’d long since forgotten, and had another discussion about music. After that we walked further into Linden and into the Böse Wolf, the same place Alan, Amanda and I went after last year’s Planeo Christmas party and where the three of us went with Oliver, Lena, Jamie, and Jamie’s Czeck girlfriend a couple months ago. As I expected, it was Krissi’s kind of place, what with the dive-bar-ish atmosphere and pool table and whatnot, but it being Saturday it was quite crowded and we ended up leaving after just two beers.
We stopped back at my apartment on the way back and took a shot of Jäger, her taking a couple more to catch up with me, as my tolerance is much lower and I was already crossing the line between buzzed and drunk. We looked up some places online to check out and walked into the city, finding the area near the main part of town with a bunch of bars and clubs and crowds of drunken young people all roaming the streets and drinking. At first we just bought some beers from a Kiosk and walked around drinking those, at one point standing outside someone’s car where a little dog who was locked inside started barking furiously at us. As we looked at the poor dog some big burly German guy came up to us and said something in German to which I pretended that neither of us spoke a word. So he explained in English that his dog was very sensitive and we’d better stop looking at her. We just nodded and moved along, not challenging the asshole on why it was our problem that he locks his dog in his car while going out drinking.
When we finished our Kiosk beer we were able to get into a little bar/club called the Rocker, where they were blasting a decent mix of music and everyone was dancing. While Krissi and I danced some old German guy came up and started hitting on her, but she didn’t understand a word of German and kept trying to tell him this but he kept going on in German, apparently too drunk to realize. I almost felt bad for the poor dude, but only because I knew he had no chance with her. Krissi and I left after what might have been an hour or so, leaving our German dude friend to presumably go after the next hot chick he might find.
We stopped into a Kebab shop on the way home for some food, then tossed on an episode of South Park which we drunkenly enjoyed while eating our Kebabs. She passed out immediately afterwards and I went to sleep soon after.
We both woke up around noon the next day with a hangover, as we’d pretty much expected. We spent the next few hours waking up, and I did some quick lesson planning for the week. We headed out and walked over to the Planeo office where I needed to print some stuff out but the internet there wasn’t working so I ended up having to just make copies from the materials I already had. We walked back around the Maschpark behind the Rathaus where Krissi took some cool pictures.
We went back to the apartment, had a quick snack, and headed back out again. I took her down to the river and we walked up along it, then took a little path over to the Georgengarten, a.k.a. Mary Poppins Park. Krissi loved the multiple-kilometer-long line of trees and took a few good pictures in that area, just before her camera ran out of battery power. We walked up the length of the tree-line and then back into the more park-like section of the park, with the lakes and little bridges and whatnot. We sat down at the edge of the lake and talked for a little, then headed back to my apartment the way we came.
Krissi prepared some food as usual, then after dinner we watched “The Ground Truth” and the first two episodes of “Rome”, both of which she really liked. After that I went to sleep while she remained up for a few more hours and played around online. I’d invited her to my first two classes this morning but I didn’t make much of an effort to wake her up because it’s only around 8 a.m. and she hasn’t been getting up before noon except for last Thursday. I’ll be gone most of the day today and this evening we should be meeting Amanda, who has officially returned from her central-Asian adventures, for a drink.
In a dream last night, Krissi got a call from home and found out something bad had happened—I don’t remember what—and decided to cut short her Europe trip and go home right away. I was quite relieved when I woke up.
