Tickets, Holidays, and the Whisk Story Concludes

Hey all!

Life is wonderful, as usual.  Here are all the fun things that have happened in the last few days.

Wednesday I decided to be a good person and call the place I had bought my Ed Sheeran tickets from.  The bank came through and refunded my money, but I figured I'd call the vendor and let them know to sell my tickets and not send them to me.  I just wound up getting into a phone fight with the lady who insisted that I pay for the tickets anyway because they had already been printed out.  I said, "I'm not paying for tickets I can't use, with money the bank has already refunded.  Do not send them to me.  Sell them to someone else."  She just keep repeating "But we've already printed them," in the same horrified tone of voice one would also use to say "But the pill is so reliable," while waving around a home pregnancy test.  And I kept saying, "Excellent.  Now sell them."  "What if we can't!  Then we'll have printed two tickets for nothing!"  "...Congratulations, you've finally worked out what recycling is for."

Of course I didn't say that.  We came to the compromise that if she couldn't sell my tickets in a week, I would pay for them and then sell them here.  I love this country, but sometimes, its inability to deal with...anything...is actually impressive.

Oh, wait, I already wrote that blog post.  Never mind.  Moving on.

Yesterday was a national holiday!  Yes, another one.  How Germany gets anything done with this many days off, I don't know, but the fact that never-ending parade of national holidays hasn't bankrupted anyone yet is admirable.  Anyway, the weather was unexpectedly nice, so I met up with the Kiwi and German Mountain Man in the city for lunch.  After wandering around to nine different cafes on nine different sides of town, we decided we all really wanted burgers.  So we found a cheap burger place, sat ourselves down, and promptly made friends with the ballsiest sparrow I've ever met in my life.  The little bastard ate french fry pieces out of my hand.  I wanted to take him home and love him forever, but that plan got vetoed.  However, I also made friends with an old married couple because the woman had a Vera Bradley purse and wanted to know where I'd gotten mine.  Turns out, she bought hers while vacationing in Lancaster.  Yay, Amish people!

After burgers, we went and got ice cream at a place the Kiwi and I had never been to. There, we discovered After Eight ice creams they put in giant cups so you could take them with you.  After Eight is colloquially known as The Greatest Ice Cream Invention Ever, and it looks like so:

Mint chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate ice cream, ten gallons of whipped cream, chocolate syrup, Hulk-green mint syrup.  Topped off with After Eight mints, chocolate pieces, and a waffle cracker.  In case you didn't have a reason to move to Germany before, now you do.  I ate ice cream until I was sick, and then passed the rest off to German Mountain Man before I died.  

Then we briefly parted ways while I went back to my apartment, grabbed every towel I own, and then claimed prime real estate by the river.  Shortly thereafter I was joined by Roommate, then the Kiwi and German Mountain Man, and we all sat down in the sun and did uni work (read: made bad jokes and shooed away the beetles).  Around 7, Al showed up, and we all waited around until it was time to go see the fireworks.  Once we realized the fireworks were on Saturday, we watched an episode of Smash, and the Kiwi and German Mountain Man headed out.  

Roommate then had lots of fun friend over for a Game Night, which I unexpectedly won because I may or may not have a tendency to bend the rules in my favor.  

This morning I had class with a British guest lecturer, and it was lovely to not lose track of the discussion when I momentarily zoned out.  Afterwards I met up with Al, Roommate, and a Japanese friend for lunch, but then had to come straight home because I had baking to do.

Our epic flunkyball/grill party is going down tomorrow, and I, because I was feeling ambitious, decided to make Portuguese pigs in a blanket.  These differ from normal pigs in a blanket (or "Sleepy Pig Blankets," as Galway started calling them) because the crust (blanket?) is made out of potatoes, not bread, which makes for little wiener delicious-ness that even Sam will put her vegetarianism on hold for long enough to eat.  

The main problem was that we don't own a potato-masher, and I forgot to buy one.  So I mashed two pounds of potatoes with a garlic crusher, which, although functional, took forever.  And then the entire rolling-out process took another eternity, so by the time all was said and baked, I'd been at it for nearly six and a half hours--plus, I had a crap ton of extra dough, which I would up cutting into strips and turning into weird potato-dough-fry-things.  But I think everything came out okay, we shall see!

Today at the couchsurfer meet-up, two highly entertaining things happened:

1) one of my Gypsy friends who lives across from me walked into the bar selling roses. I call him "friend" even though I've never seen him up close, we just sort of yell at each other out our windows.  But we instantly recognized each other, waved and said hi, and then he disappeared only to come back five minutes later and give me a rose. Yay flowers!

2)  While talking to British friend, the whisk story came up in conversation. Suddenly she turned to me and said, "Oh, remember Ginger American, who was also there that night?  Yeah, he has your whisk."  I said "I though Mya had it?"  "Mya is apparently his housemate.  I found this out two days ago.  He's coming to the grill party tomorrow, maybe he'll bring it."

So, the whisk came full circle.  It didn't go home with the correct American, but if I couldn't have it, at least one of my countrymen could.