Moin, Moin Hamburg!

This is going to be a long one... Still better than studying for my Midterm tomorrow though!

I went directly from Weimar to Hamburg on Friday.  It only took about 4 hours on the train, and I have a 50% off card from BU so the price wasn't too bad either.  I had to transfer once in Göttenstein (I don't think I'll ever get the name of that place right.)  Taking the train was pretty fun while the sun was still out, but every time I looked out the window and saw the landscape and the farms I thought I was back in Wisconsin for a second!  Naturally that made me a little bit homesick. :-(  I was hoping to get some sleep once it got dark, but they kept all the lights on and made announcements like every 15 minutes.

I got to Hamburg a little after 9 pm (the train was 3 minutes late - haha DB fail!)  Oli met me at the Hauptbahnhof and then we went to his dorm at Hamburg Universität.  His dormroom is much better than mine.  The suites there actually have livingrooms  and personal sinks in each room (not to mention real beds with real mattresses!)  I have yet to see any double rooms in German dorms.  Maybe it's a privacy thing?  Maybe Germans don't find as much humor in the Real Life drama that results from sharing a room with someone else lol.

Oli had gone out and gotten me a  mozzarella and cheese sandwich and some apples, bananas, and grapes.  He's so sweet!  He even said he tried to find Poptarts but they weren't even in any of the international food stores.  Oh well, my parents promised to send a package soon!  (Maybe if I'm not too greedy I can make some money selling them to the Science students downstairs!)  Oli had also gotten some Bacardi Gold and Coke for me, and of course some Red Bull for him because he's German and apparently that's all they like to mix with their alcohol.  We pregamed a bit and then went to the Hamburg Stadtfest.

The Stadtfest there was much bigger than Dresden's, and it was so packed we could barely move.  We walked around and got some chocolate-dipped strawberries and more to drink.  Oli played one of the carnie games and won me a rose, but I lost it in the Disko that night. :-(  All of the live music was in English and very American-sounding, which confused me quite a bit.  It felt like a county fair where everything was just a little bit off from the norm.

We would have walked around more, but it was so crowded and we'd already missed the fireworks so we decided to head down to a Disko at Reeperbahn Straße.  This street is famous for its numerous sex shops, strip clubs, and of course brothels.  Oli and I tried to go in one (just to do some window shopping), but they said no girls.  Maybe there's a special street for lesbians?  I wondered how all of these strip clubs could stay in business when they're all right next to each other.  Maybe the guys like to go bar-hopping, except with strip clubs.  I also wondered how one tips the strippers when the smallest paper denomination in euros is a 5.  Are the strippers okay with collecting coins?  Where do they put them?  (These would be good questions for Culture Class, but I think if my teacher actually did the know the answer I would be a little weirded out for the rest of the semester lol.)

The Disko (China Lounge) was really nice and posh, and since Oli was friends with the DJ that night we got in for free. :-)  It was already 11 pm but the place was pretty much empty.  Like I said, the party gets started a lot later here.  We hung out in the lounge until people started showing up at 12 or so.  Then once the party started it really got packed.  There were tables we could dance on, but no one was dancing too crazy (except for me of course!)  My new favorite German song "Nein, Mann" came on at about 2 am, which was kinda funny because it's a song about the Disko closing for the night.  Either way, I was definitely excited to hear some German techno!

Ok, I'm gonna write about Saturday and Sunday later...time for a Pause...