i'm back in beautiful BC now, and felt the urge to come here and share with you all a little story about my last night in magdeburg. it captures the essence of the city quite well, in my humble opinion. so sit back, relax, and be sure to take eye breaks every so often. i recommend once every five minutes, look down as far as you can, then up, left, and right. go crosseyed, then normal. repeat.
to begin with, i must first tell this little anecdote. part way into my stay, i went out to a club with my guy and some of his friends. at this club i happened to meet a hot girl, who apparently found me hot too, as she spent half the night telling me i was beautiful and kissing me. anything more than that had to be translated, because i didn't understand german and she didn't understand english. no matter, attraction is attraction after all. as the night ended, she gave me her bracelet as a "promise", and told me it was worth 1500 euros. i tried to give it back, she refused to take it, yada yada yada, two weeks later it was still kicking around, it was my last night in germany, and she wanted to meet up at the club again. i can't deny that running through my mind (and my guy's) was "threesome? threesome? hell yeah!" for the days leading up to it. so that was the whole reason we went there that night, and didn't just have a big house party.
so this brings us to friday night, and after picking up some friends from out of town, cooking them some dinner, and drinking lots of good german beer, we headed out to take the tram. the stop after ours, about 20 skinheads got on, and started singing at the top of their lungs. now, i'm no great linguist, and i don't understand german, but i can understand "heil hitler" when i hear it. especially when it's coming at loud volumes from my left, with a solitary voice joining in from the right. and i have to admit, stupid canadian that i am, i at first thought they were joking, and started laughing. but daniel, the german from out of town who, coincidentally, has a shaved head, put his toque on and told me to shut up. i got the message. at this point, ben, another canadian, began rummaging through his bag. we asked what he was looking for.
"my camera" was the answer. did he want to get killed?? no, no he didn't, and he zipped up his bag and sat there more nicely than an innocent first grade schoolgirl. through this, the skinheads were still singing. and they were still singing when we got off the tram ten minutes later. and i'm willing to bet they kept right on singing until we ran into them at the club again three hours later. but in the meantime, we had beer to drink, weed to smoke, and ruckus to cause. around half midnight we were still debaucherising when my guy's cell rang, and who should it be but hot girl from the club, wondering where the hell our canadian asses were. whoops. here i thought it was just a casual "we'll run into you there" type deal, but i guess not. so, not wanting to ruin our prospects any more, we hightailed it to the club.
cover's paid, jackets are checked, i've barely taken two steps into the room when hot girl is all over me, crying her eyes out. and that's about when i start freaking out. cause what the hell do you do when a girl throws herself at you and starts crying? apparently the look on my face was hilarious as i was trying to figure out what to do, cause my guy was laughing at me. and then, she gets him to translate for her. and tells me she loves me. and that she was scared she'd never see me again. and that she wants me all to herself. then starts crying and hugging me again. i finally manage to extricate myself, by saying that we have to go meet our friends (which we did).
so off we go to stand at the entranceway, all the while asking each other what the hell we were supposed to do, we hadn't counted on her being a psycho, and hadn't she looked hotter last time? the rest of our group couldn't show up fast enough, but unfortunately they left us in the lurch for the better part of half an hour. and in that half an hour, back psycho girl came, and in the process of telling me she loved me and kissing me, she burned me with her smoke. ouch. which set her off crying again. finally our friends showed up, and we all went out on the dance floor. by this time i'd filled a couple of them in (they'd been betting we'd be going home with her) and all they could do was laugh at me when back she came and started shakin her booty at me. not that i object to women shakin their booties at me, it's just disturbing when it comes attached to a psycho brain.
not one to be rude, however, i spent the next hour dancing with her, and pretending everything was ok. she'd disappear for a while, i'd start to think i was safe from her lovesick craziness, and back she'd come. who knew i had that effect on women. meet me twice and they fall in love. bleh, love. finally she had to go for good, as her ride was leaving. she hadn't even been gone ten minutes when a text msg appeared on my guy's cell, saying something to the effect of "tell caterina i want to share my bed with her once again" to which he replied "and me?". the only response was "i love her!" and we left it at that. i'm still not sure when i ever shared her bed in the first place, but i'll chalk that up to her inability to speak english, as opposed to me having been fed roofies.
after that, the night got better, even though the music got worse. we wound up smoking three joints in the club, pretending we were still in amsterdam, and i was so super high. i've never noticed how amazingly wonderful strobe lights are before. it was almost enough to be able to block out one of our friends, let's call him puffy, who had drunk way too much and was very clumsily hitting on me in english, his second language. it consisted of phrases like "i think i would like for you to be an angel", "you know how, no one is listening, when can you?" and "forget, i was never here". he then tried picking fights with skinheads twice his size, and drank even more.
so around five, it was slowing down, and we decided to book it. saved one of our girls from being hit on by two not-so-attractive guys (in the morning she found their numbers in her pocket and had no idea how they got there), and then headed back to her place. on the way, we decided to stop in at one of the other guy's place, because he had food. right at the corner of his street, puffy sits his ass down and refuses to move, because he thinks we all hated him and that no one wanted to talk to him. the entire walk he'd been trying to pick fights with the other guys, so we left him there with the only other german in the group, hans. hans ended up getting extremely frustrated with puffy, and followed us soon after. he showed up at the apartment with the news that there was an old, bloody man trying to kick in the door.
so, the four boys rushed downstairs to kick him out. they got him as far as the other side of the street when he began shouting. and shouting, and shouting. his favourite line seemed to be "Auslanders raust!" which, in case you don't know german, means, in no uncertain terms, "foreigners get the fck out of our country". he'd obviously been tailing us for a while and had heard us speaking english. so, a yelling match began, with the american and the brit screaming out the window that they were going to call the cops on him if he didn't get his intolerant ass out of there. (of course, there were other obscenities and forceful words, but for these purposes i'll keep it nice) and he shouted back at them something to the effect of "i'm a german and germans are the only people who deserve to be in this country!" and kept going on in this vein, punctuating everything with the good old "Auslanders raust!".
and then, hans gets up at the window, and begins a huge tirade that i think only a native magdeburg german speaker would understand. i'm sure it was full of colourful language and deadly insults, but the result was for the bloody man in the street to return the speach by telling hans that he was actually a foreigner. talk about confusing. it was around this point that one of the roommates woke up, walked to the window in his underpants, took one look at the situation and walked back into is room. he came out five seconds later with a giant stick and ran downstairs, into the street, and chased the man away with the stick.
soon after, hans left to find puffy and take a tram home. we learned later that he'd found puffy on the same corner, talking to the bleeding man. we ourselves left soon after, to crash at another friend's place, and on the way who should we see but bleeding old man. he had a bloodstain the size of a CD on his right side, his hands were covered in blood, and his fly was open. but, he didn't talk to us, didn't even recognize us. home free. i think it was sometime past six thirty when we found a deflating air mattress and collapsed.
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and that's the end of that long, crazy, night. i think it topped a week in amsterdam on the list of european craziness. watch this space for more canadian craziness in europe!
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