Drinking in Bavaria

I woke up with a bad hangover this morning in bed with an almost naked man. The apartment is filled with bottles and orange feathers and there are 134 new pictures on my camera that I don't remember taking. My brother is asleep on the kitchen floor in a pile of towels. There's pizza on the ironing board and the apartment looks like it was hit by a tornado. (A feathery tornado.) I must be in Bavaria.


Here's how I ended up in the awkward situation.

Leaving Berlin was difficult due to the fact that our mission to buy sexy pants ended up taking us hours longer than I had hoped. However the sexy pants were bought, and sent to the US to an excited roommate.
We set out to hitchhike across Germany but didn't start until 4PM. At that point we couldn't get a ride and after hours standing in the rain, ended up coming back to Pierre's house sad and dejected. I was so miserable that the owner of the internet cafe with whom I have become friends let me call California for almost nothing. I am ashamed to say I dialed the number of my sweet (ex) boyfriend without even thinking and rambled on and on about how miserable I was and how frustrated I am with my life and how I don't know what I'm doing here and how no one speaks English and how I'm sooooo miserable.  He's a good listner and I'm afraid he got a real earful. However, in true Greg fashion he said just the right things at the right times and an hour later I left the cafe feeling like I was on top of the world and could accomplish my dreams in an epic montage to the soundtrack of the movie Rocky.

The next morning we got up early and headed out for another attempt. After about an hour I found a truck driver who was heading south. He only had one available seat but after a short discussion mostly composed of miming and pleading on my part, "bitte take two please bitte is my brother (gesture wildly to the Burble who is oblivious to my plight) bitte I can't leave him (gesture that suggests Burble is small and can't take care of himself) I'm really little (point to myself and make a small gesture with my hands) I'll even ride on the roof (gesture to the roof while pleading) BITTE!!!" he was almost in tears from laughing so hard and finally let Burble ride in the seat while I lay in the bed compartment over the cab curled up with the backpacks.

The truck brought us to Leipzig where we quickly found a man heading further south. He turned out to be insane but not dangerous, talking the whole way in very broken English and almost never looking at the road. He would turn around to talk to me in the back seat while the car drifted ominously towards the edge of the highway. However a nerveracking hour later he dropped us in Nurnberg, only 200 km from Munich. He even gave us a bunch of food and drinks. In Nurnberg we met another hitchhiker named Yannik and the three of us managed to score a ride with some Romanians in a van. For a few minutes this was enjoyable, Yannik and I talked about the merrits and difficulties of relationships and were moving on to the insanity of women when the van left the road for Munich and headed in the opposite direction. Given the fact that our drivers spoke neither German nor English we had another one of those gesture conversations I seem to be having so many of these days. They seemed to be following another car that was apparently their boss (what?) and he had to go somewhere and do something, so now we were all going to do that thing with him. We pulled off the road and our Romanian drivers got out and started yelling at the people in the car we had been following. We all got out to try to figure out what the hell was going on and the Romanian boss (who might be in the Romanian mafia) asked Yannik if I was his wife. He responded that I wasn't and then we got quickly back into the van because Yannik thought that they were trying to buy me and I thought it was best not to be seen anymore. After some time I guess they decided I wasn't for sale because we drove off and resumed our route for Munich. I have absolutly no idea what happened but I'm really glad they didn't sell me off. Burble said he would protect me but there were a lot more of them than us. At any rate our Romanian friends made up the time we had lost by driving 115 miles per hour for the duration of the trip. We made in into Munich in good time with my virtue intact.

There we met Hugo. A little back-story on Hugo.
Hugo was the love of my childhood. We grew up together in France and I think my mother thought we would get married from the day we became friends. We went to high school together and all the hours he helped me with homework I fantasized about how we would end up together some day. He was a serious studious boy, very dilligent in his classes and a total rule-follower. I always assumed he didn't like me because I was too wild and crazy. Turns out I never had a chance because he came out of the closet when we were 17. I hadn't seen him since the day he told me that unfortunately he just doesn't bat for my team. Fastforward to 2012 and here comes my boy rolling up in a fancy car looking very dashing in a perfectly matched suit and tie. I didn't even recognise him and he had to rely on a photo from my mom to recognise me. Somewhere along the way I guess we both grew up.

And this is not the boy I used to know. Hugo is in his element here. He is happy as a clam in this city that boasts a ridiculous number of gorgeous slutty gay boys. He has his own apartment in the city center only a couple of subway stops from the vibrant gay bars and karaoke clubs. It's amazing how happy he is here and I am thrilled to see the relaxed party-boy side of the serious quiet kid I knew in childhood. He immediately took us out for a beer at a bar where every man was unbelievably beautiful and unbelievably not interested in me. I find it incredibly relaxing to not worry about boys hitting on me. I am fervently against shitty pop music but they put on Rihanna's S and M and that is unfortunately my song. Hugo and I practiced our slutty dancing while comparing notes on various hotties around the room. He looked so suave in his suit he probably could have had his pick of any of them but eventually the three of us headed back to his apartment without any phone numbers. I may have been a little drunk because I decided to show off my aerial tricks on the pole of the train to the amusement of Hugo and the disgust of the rest of the passengers who threw us disapproving looks. Back at the apartment the boys put on a great show singing Coldplay and dancing around the room.

Hugo was working the next day so I headed out to wander around this city. It's the complete opposite of Berlin in every way and if Hugo weren't here I would never have stayed here. The city is beautiful but rich. It feels like you would have to be a millionaire just to set foot in any of these houses. There are beautiful parks and mansions and golden statues but after slumming it in various squats across Germany and Holland I feel bizarrely out of place. There's no graffitti, no punks, no homeless people. It's like a perfect city, clean, beautiful and sterile. I don't know what to do with myself here. Even their ambulances are pretty and I bet all of the equipment works perfectly. They probably throw out the backboards after one use and I'm pretty sure no one here ever bleeds on anything.



I took a long walk along the river to clear my head and try to decide what I'm doing with my life. I have a lot of things that interest me and a lot of really lofty dreams. But this trip is giving me a lot of alone time with my thoughts and I don't know where I want to go from here. I went on this trip thinking this would be my last hurrah before school but now I'm more confused about my life than when I left.

The park on the river is called the English Garden. It's so beautiful, it has ponds with wonderful fat fish and statues and lots of ducks. (Ducks make a really nice noise.) They even have Mandarin Ducks which I was thrilled to see. They're so incredible and I've always wanted to see one.
It's almot spring here. There are birds EVERYWHERE. I caught a photo of one that flies to the bottom of a tree and hops up the trunk looking for food. I guess it can't go down the trunk, just up. It's adorable.

 

When I got back Hugo and Burble and I went out to get pizza and drink Hugos, a drink that tastes like candy (very fitting) and is bubbly and very alcoholic. This started our night of madness, as we returned to Hugo's house to eat pizza and drink wine. There it gets a little fuzzy. According to the pictures we all swapped clothes and then danced around the apartment. I wore Hugo's suit for at least some of the night and he wore my tank top. Then we lay on the bed and pretended to be on acid which was actually pretty realistic. I have this vague memory of Hugo twitching and petting my hat and saying it was a Mandarin duck. Then Burble drowned and then we all danced while lying on the bed. I don't know why. In reality there were no drugs involved but it's amazing how high you can get by pretending. Peter Pan would have been proud.




Somewhere along the line I drank all the wine so we cracked a bottle of questionable Rum and then Cognac. Then we played Glitch Mob and Burble did interpretive dances with the hat-duck. Then we looked at pictures of Canada. Then I showed Hugo pictures of Greg and he says he's going to turn him gay and steal him just for the challenge. Then we sent drunk messages to my friends on gmail. Then Hugo and I pretended to have sex cause he doesn't know how straight sex works. Also I don't know why but I think we disturbed the Burble because he started throwing up in the sink. Also there was a feather boa somewhere in there. Eventually Burble passed out on the floor and Hugo and I fell asleep sideways across the bed. I haven't been this hungover in a long time. So this morning we woke up and we went to do laundry in a laundrimat/cafe/restaurant called Wash and Coffee.

Tomorrow we'll hitch up to Leipzig to work on a farm for a couple of weeks and detox from Munich. I'm looking forward to the country and work because I feel like I'm having an existential crisis and Burble is always in existential crisis.