French Hippies, Portuguese Flags and German Soccer

FRANKREICH!!

What else is cooler than picking up and going to France? 3 hours on a train takes you to the land of croissants and model-dating presidents, and it was awesome.

The weekend started ridiculously early Saturday morning, when, as is customary for every single time we travel, it was raining. We also missed our train at the Bahnhof, had to wait over an hour for the next one, and I put my bookbag down in vomit. But I did buy a really funny book called "Auslaendisch fuer Notfaelle" (Foreign Languages for Emergencies), which teaches Germans useful emergency phrases. Some example from the english-speaking countries:

AUSTRALIA
"What is the sun protection factor of kangaroo blood?"
"Quick, get the jaw-lock for alligators!"
"Watch out, your digeridoo playing is an assault on my peace of mind."

ENGLAND
"If necessary, could your porridge also be used as insecticide?"
"Are there any other ways of contracting foot-and-mouth disease apart from contact or smear infection?"
"Will the hooligans let go of me earlier if I inflict a heavily bleeding laceration on myself?"

USA
"Would you please exercise a bit more care when voting for the next president?"
"You have my word of honor that I do not have any Arabian relatives."
(Underneath a picture of a jar of honey, a knife, and a stick of dynamite) "How can I persuade this grizzly to leave my tent?"
(Under the sub-heading 'Shopping in the Bronx') "One mace, brass knuckles, and a taser please."

SCOTLAND
"Ah doot it'll tak mair nor three harpoons tae fell this sea beastie."
"Ah dinna think the bus driver should be jinin in the whisky saumplin."
"Wull ye gie me ma chynge at lang last?"
"Hoo mony fowk a year are killt bi hielan kye?"

The book also teaches you how to say "Gandolf is an asshole" and "Excuse me sir, but is this your ring?" in Elvish, and expressly teaches you not to say "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet," "I'm on the pill," and "I prefer pink condoms," in the Vatican.

Okay, so anyway, France. I, like the brilliant one I am, forgot my passport, which meant some anxiety crossing the border until we realized there was no security whatsoever. Sweet. We immediately hopped on the tram (and everything was in French!) and headed over to our couch surfing find.

For those of you who don't know what couch surfing is, it's the free alternative to hostels where you find people online to host you for the night. Safe? Who knows. But I officially take back anything bad I've ever said about French people, because the girl we stayed with was the epitome of Awesome. Her name was Florence, and she was a 22 year old hippie-artist-French chick who gave us lots of sweet advice on things to see, and then invited us to this market thing with her friends later in the day. And we were off! Running around, exploring churches, going on merry-go-rounds, and basically being tourists. I also bought a Portuguese flag, because with the huge soccer Europameisterschaft thing going on, I felt obliged to show a little love for the motherland.

And then we met Florence at the market! Her English isn't all that good, so we didn't really understand what was going on, but it turns out the "market" was actually a group of hippie friends who lay alot of old stuff on blankets and if you want it, it's yours free. This means that we all took free souveniers (I got a weird owl statue thing), and got to talk to French hippies for a few hours. And they were very cool! One lady asked me where I was from, and when I told her the US, she immediately launched into a rant "Oh, you need a new president, I will not go to America until you change presidents because I am afraid," and didn't stop for like a half an hour. I learned all about why she thinks the US is messed up (but she made very sure to tell me that she knew we weren't all bad, just our government), and at the end of the conversation the group of us that had been talking exchanged emails, and we promised the next time we came back to Strassburg, we would get in touch. It was pretty sweet:

Then, as a thank you to Florence for hosting us, we took her out to dinner, and later went to a hip/hop electro concert. Then we had to walk an hour home at 2 AM which wasn't all that much fun, but I did get some sweet night pictures of the church:

The next morning we said goodbye to Florence and went on a boat tour. Then we missed our train again, waited an hour and a half for the next one, and finally got back to Konstanz. The last hour or so we went a little stir crazy, and amused ourselves by taking pictures with the Portuguese flag, i.e, looking like badasses:

Naturally when I got back I was so exhausted I thought I was going to die, but is this the end of the weekend? Of course not, because Germany was playing Poland in the Europameisterschaft, which translates to Vegemite dragging her TV into the kitchen and Tina being forced into watch soccer and drink alcohol for ninety minutes with a bunch of Germans. Germany won (woot!) 2-0, and even Portugal won yesterday against Turkey, even though, according to Fabio, "Cristiano Ronaldo plays soccer like a little girl."

So that was basically my weekend. I realized today that I've traveled somewhere new every weekend for the last month and a half, which means I'm definitely looking forward to a relaxing weekend staying home. But that won't be next weekend, because my choices are a) fly to spain for five days, or b) drive to the heart of Swaebisch country to stay with my roommate for two days at her house. I'll probably wind up choosing the latter. I know it's awful, but I love being in Germany so much, my wanderlust to explore other countries has been effectively destroyed. No worries.

Anyway, that's the story of my weekend. Go check out more pictures (soon) on facebook, and for anybody who'se been following my new favorite songs, here's the next one for you:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TvTQ8KELUC0

EDIT: I forgot to mention! I finally (finally!) found a beer that I like. It's called a Radler, but unfortunately my beer victory was somewhat stolen when it was pointed out to me that the "beer" is actually only half beer; the other half is lemonade, and therefore, it's "little girl's beer." I personally am unbothered by this classification. My logic is, if I can buy it off the beer menu and buy it in the beer aisle, it's beer. I don't care what German men trying to be macho say about it.

EDIT EDIT: Sorry this post is so long.