From Darmstadt to Dresden

Ok, so long time no update. Right now I feel like I am back in College Park in a good ol' freshman dorm. Why, you ask? Because after going to the school cafeteria with Jeff where I picked from 5 preset meals, me and Greg went to get a train ticket, and are now chilling in a bedroom listening to 90s American pop writing on the internet. I came to Europe to pretend I am in America. But I am getting ahead of myself...

Darmstadt, the nice lil' city below Frankfurt am Main
I really liked Darmstadt. It was a real small city... only about 100,000 people. But beyond that I really liked how it was relatively untouched by people trying to make a buck off of the history the city had. They really did have a lot of pretty buildings and monuments. As I always promise... I will post some pictures when we can get them up. Considering we haven't updated since Sheffield, England don't hold your breath. But yeah, it was real cool... when you walk into the zentrum of the city its all tram tracks and pedestrian walkways. The whole center of the city is pretty much what makes the city liveable. It is all the local shops, eateries, bakeries, corporate stores, etc. But it is not done in a Greenbelt plaza kind of way... it is done very well. So me and Greg walked around there quite a bit. We also used the internet to contact Jeff being as we were fully intending to mooch off of him. And then Laura was awesome and bought us food at some nice lil cafe joint. The food was pretty good. I got an interesting salad with some bad "yoghurt" dressing and Greg and Laura got a vegetarian pizza with ham. Makes sense, right? And of course because beer is cheaper than water we got beer to wash it all down.

We got to experience a good bit of the night life in Darmstadt I think. I also realized I was way in over my head. We went to a club, I forget the name of it, and met some of Lauras friends. Some people from Virginia Tech and other random schools. The beers were fairly priced and came with a 50 cent refund if you returned the bottle. By this time I had already pregamed a lot so wasn't drinking much. But the business man in me decided to make back my cover charge by returning some random bottles. I also got a falaffel (this is the beginning of an addiction you will be hearing about). I got real tired and sat down... cause it was friggen 3am. I asked when the bar/club closed and was told once the last person left. I made it obvious I wanted to go home and we left a little after 4am I think.... the club was still pretty packed. I hand it to the Germans.... they party harder than I could handle.

Laura had a Rhine river boat cruise the whole next day so once again Greg and I walked around the city. We took some pictures and dodged into buildings to avoid the rain all day. When Laura got back we met up with her and some other friends in the park. The park has one of those life size chess boards too, which was pretty cool. We just got wine and drank in front of some student building til he told us to leave. We then went to a Turkish hooka place so the other kids could do their hooka. Got a beer (apparently you have to since the hooka is so cheap). We got a doner. Remember I said the start of an addiction last night? Well after one, we couldn't help but get a second literally 15 minutes later. We had two German kids our age take us to "Doner land" and then run off to catch a tram so her dad wouldn't be pissed at him.

That was our last day in Darmstadt, overall it was a really nice city and I had fun. I would go back and try to visit some more of the history and get a better feel for the city if I could... but alas Jeff awaits!

The train ride to Dresden
The train ride was supposed to be 8 hours with 3 transfers or so. Needless to say train rides are always fun. First train as we were sitting there... a few girls in cop uniforms made their way through and made an announcement over the trains intercom. It was in gibberish (German) so we didn't understand but the other people were laughing. A few minutes later two others came back and made an announcement in English. APPARENTLY they were the FBI (beer in hand) and transporting a prisoner. We laughed. At this time I went to find the bathroom to clean out my nalgene so I could make a mixed drink. Well a few cars back I run into the root of the previous episode. A car full of thirty girls in cop uniforms. I must of froze out of surprise because by the time I knew what was happening two of the cops dragged me in. They gave me some German beer. They told me their friend was getting married (the one dressed like Paris Hilton) and they were going to create crazy all night. Me and Greg were invited. We had a train transfer in literally 2 minutes though so we had to go. It was quite funny, though.

The transfer went fine. We met two bikers who were biking all across Germany. They were cool. AND AGAIN a bachelorette party got on. Much smaller and tame though. They were selling beer, lollipops, kisses, hugs, etc to help pay for the wedding. They got off pretty quickly and we mainly talked to the biker guys. They were pretty cool and were into a lot of good bands like NOFX, Less than Jake, Reel Big Fish, etc. I was getting pretty drunk as I had brought a bottle of Jager for myself. A group of four older women who were touring got on the train. We helped them load their bikes. We just talked about our individual tours. Exchanged candy, drinks, etc. They gave us a sandwich as they left. Score.

Ok... so the next transfer is where it gets interesting. I went and got a sandwich first. I got back and sat next to our bikes and stuff while Greg went and got some food. A guy with a shaved head came up to me and started drunkenly screaming German shit at me. I stayed calm and just asked if he spoke English in German. He got irritated, and in English, told me that if I was in fuckin Deutschland I should speak Deutsch. Oh great. I shrugged not knowing how to communicate with this irate guy. And then I got it. The Steel Toe Nazi Handshake. Yup, he was a Nazi as evidenced by his 3 prong swastika belt. He kicked me a few times, I was pretty shocked. His friend stopped him and some other German guy stepped in and talked for me. The guy said white power a few times and his friend kept telling him to get on the train. Apparently my hair is not Aryan enough.

Other than that the train ride went without a hitch. The guy who helped me out was a student from Munich. His nephew was getting involved in the Nazi shit so he had to give him a talk over his break. He was real cool and we just talked about ignorance in society and some politics for a while.

Arrival in Dresden
Because we missed a transfer somewhere we were 40 minutes late. Jeff was not waiting for us. We helped all the older folk get their bikes off of the train and then we unloaded our. We went out front the train station. All we had was Jeffs address. I asked some cabbies and none of them spoke English. As karma would have it... one of the people we helped get off the train came over and asked where we were going. We showed him the address. He led us to Jeff's International Guest House and there Jeff and his friend Jess were waiting to greet us.

to be continued....