Yesterday I took a 3 PM train to Hamburg, to meet up with Marina for the Johannes Strate concert. But first, it was Christmas market time! When Marina puts her pictures up, I am stealing them, but suffice to say, it was awesome. I love love love the German Christmas season, because it has all of the Christmas minus the mass produced Hallmark gadgets imported from Vietnamese sweatshops. Really, it's something to experience. If you guys ever get the chance to check out a Christmas market in Germany, DO IT. I drank hot chocolate, ate a fish sandwich, and argued with drunk guys who kept trying to tell me my Swedish hat isn't totally badass. Good times!
Then, as we got off the U-Bahn on our way to the venue, we were met with something neither of us had ever encountered before: an entire police force standing at the top of the stairs, checking tickets as you walked out, and fining people for being black Tolkien riders left and right. As you may remember from this post, Marina, Chris and I got caught without train tickets in Köln, but due to our foreign-ness, we walked (skipped) ashamedly (gaily) away, after we were collectively fined 40 Euros, and not each bitch-slapped individually with the fine. Since then we have more or less learned our lessons, and I had purchased a ticket for this trip. Unfortunately, I hadn't purchased enough ticket, and my ticket cost too little for the trip we had taken. I almost had a heart attack out of principle. When the guy said "I need your ID and forty euros," I pulled the foreign card like nobody's business, and was all "Oh, man, I tried to buy a ticket, but I misunderstood the machine! Why am I so stupid! Why is Fate such a fickle German mistress? EVERYTHING IS SO HARD BECAUSE I AM FOREIGN AND SAD." And that's how, instead of charging me forty euros, the police officer took me to the ticket machine and we bought the correct ticket together.
Being a foreigner. Works every time.
And then it was time for the concert! Johannes Strate has made a couple of appearances on this blog, mostly as the lead singer of Revolverheld, but now he's got a solo album out. On top of being a super awesome musician, he also gives out wine to audience members, yells "What the FUCK" in English whenever he has tuning problems, and rocks Swedish hair. Here, have a picture!
So other than the fact that I am buying his album, the concert was noteworthy because Marina and I were standing behind a mother/daughter tag team who looked like they were raping each other. Not awkward or anything.
Afterwards, we hit up an Irish pub to get out of the cold and kill time before my 5 AM train back to Celle. There, we made friends a French airline worker, who was superbly cool and assured me that the French do not hate you if you speak French at them. In fact, they are highly appreciative. He makes me want to go back to France, as long as I don't have to leave my french-mocking at the border.
And then along came Drunk Old Guy (DOG?). To be completely honest, it was my fault he sat next to us, because I offered him an empty chair at our table while he was standing there looking lost. And I regretted it instantly, as he went on a slurred tirade about our inestimable beauty and his accounting job. He looked to be about forty (and I had my fingers crossed he'd ask about our ages, just so I could say seventeen), but he acted like a sad drunk intern watching Apollo 13 blast off without him, and consoling himself later with the leftover fermented rocket fuel. But I talked to him. Because I wanted an apple juice.
Most whores work for such trivial things like money, drugs, or the temporary fantasy that they are not actually whores. They get beaten by their pimps, a full Rolodex of STDs, and occasionally stabbed and thrown in the Delaware River. I work for apple juice. I was a twenty-minute verbal whore, pretending to be interested in DOG's accounting anecdotes, and acting like Marina had just said something very interesting requiring my attention in order to fend off the ask-out requests, all because I didn't feel like a) getting up to buy the apple juice, or b) buying the apple juice. I'm sure it was a very interesting conversation we had, but I can't actually say, because while drinking apple juice, I can tune out everything.
At 3 AM we finally made our way over to the train station, where I attempted to get two hours of sleep next to a guy with a broken nose. By the time I finally got home at 7.30 in the morning, I was operating under a warped sense of reality, brought on by a complete lack of sleep. In my blurry, confused, and exhausted state, stupid things like trash cans and roadkill turned into meaningful Post-It notes about my life from another world, which required intense, silent stares if I wanted the full moon to reveal to me the super-secret gravestone runes, written in Odin's own hand. Suffice to say, I more or less collapsed into bed as soon as I got home, to sleep for three wretched hours, and promptly forgot all the secrets of life I'd gotten from the roadkill.
But then County Cork came over! We baked pumpkin cookies, which came out delicious, and watched O Brother Where Art Thou. Friday he heads back to Ireland for a month, and I get my DSH results, which I am superbly unexcited about.
New favorite song of the day! Courtesy of Shane. BRITISH THINGS.
4 comments:
I've been to a German Christmas market in a little town in PA Dutch country. Does that count for anything? It's a pretty awesome little market, I must say.
nope! Amish markets are also badass, but not the same thing.
--Tina
you're the GERATEST. =P
and yeah...i meant to spell that wrong
apple juice? you could at least whore yourself for free drinks.
<3amy
It wasn't Amish. It was German, just out in the middle of nowhere. It's called Kriskindl Market or some such, and even had one of those pyramid things with the propeller. Though mostly I remember that all the stands were set up in little red sheds that somehow made them seem more Christmasy, and that it smelled like roasted nuts.
~Patricia
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