From Frankfurt To Enschede, Or, How God-Damn Great It Is To Fuck My Girlfriend Again!

Wow, what an amazing week… Time to catch you up. So, Germany, last Tuesday (the 22nd). Hmm, lets go to my travel journal:

04-22-08,
2:30pm: Well, I’m in Germany. Finally got to smoke… Fuck, haven’t had a head-rush like that in a while… Now I have to train into Frankfurt proper, and catch a train into the Netherlands to see my babe! Damn, I can’t wait… Now, how the hell am I going to manage this luggage without a carrier… Hmm..

6:15pm: On the train from Dortmund, Germany, en route to Enchede (pronounced En-skid-day) in the Netherlands. Will be another 2 hours or so… Took the train from Frankfurt to Dortmund, the ICE line, aka the Inter-City-Express; quick, convenient, and smooth. So smooth I fell asleep, and thank God Dortmund was a terminal station for that line. When I awoke, I was the only one on the train… Had just enough time to grab a smoke and get to the other train platform… Fuck, heaving 70kilos of luggage up train station stairs was NOT fun :P Oh well, looks like I’ll have a fair bit of that still to come. Anyhoo, I need food, I need to pee, and I wish I could smoke… (Fuck, since when did Germany go all smoke-free? Last time I was here you could smoke ANYWHERE… Looks like there’s still a touch of the big H kickin’ it round these days).

[If you didn’t get that.. It was a joke about Hitler and his anti-smoking laws.. Yeah... I’m funny.]

Anyway, the German countryside reminds me a lot of the Canadian countryside. Well, with less mountains, and more smokestacks (reminiscent of something, hmmm?). Oh, and a lot more graffiti over everything, surprisingly.

6:40pm: Things I’ve learned since landing:
1) Carry Euro coin: When you really have to pee, and you’re not allowed to bring your luggage down into the train-station W.C. it’s really useful to have coin for the luggage lockers.
2) Pay attention on the train! It’s too easy to get on the wrong train, or stay on a train you need to switch from. (Thank you to random non-English-speaking German guy for saving my bacon there… ugh)
3) Watch the conductor! When he goes out to smoke (and they all do), you can go out to smoke. Just be back on the train before him!

So, then I arrived in Enschede… I had texted Sam previously about when my arrival was set for, however I didn’t see her on the platform when I got there. So, I wandered off the platform over to the nearest grass space by the road, and lit up a smoke… Wondering if I should call her, I saw all the pavilion tents set up for her school’s festival beside the station, and lo and behold, wandering into a building across the street was a purple sweater and a mop of black hair. A bright purple sweater in the Netherlands… There’s only one girl that could possibly be. So I wander over to that building and of course I see her inside. So I call her, see her answer and come outside to talk, a mere 3 feet away, saying to her, “look three feet to your left!” To which she answers, “What? I can’t hear you…” So I hang up. She gets this confused look on her face, and I say it again nice and loud from about three feet behind her. Next thing I know, I’ve dropped all my bags and she’s jumped up on me… I don’t think we stopped kissing for a good 15 minutes, but I’ll spare you the mushy shit.

After the amazing reunion, she introduced me to a few of her friends at the festival, and we hauled all my stuff back to her place; about a 15min walk or so. And of course we didn’t come back out until much later that night. Let’s turn to the journal:

So, we went out later that night and Sam showed me around Enschede, grabbed a donair (oh yeah, some things will never change no matter where you are!), and went and bought some pot legally! Fuck yeah! The quintessential Netherlands experience (well, next to a good smoke and a pancake). So, when you go into a “coffeeshop” (A café is a bar, a coffeshop is for weed-sales, and I still don’t know what you call somewhere that actually sells coffee [as it’s rare to find a coffeeshop selling coffee]), there’s a little window in the back with a menu posted beside it. I bought 2 grams of the K2, ran me 15Euro, which ironically, cost me more than at home! Oh well, everything’s more expensive in Europe.

(My Legal Weed!!!!)

The next day (Wed, 23rd), I spent settling in. I like Enchede, with its amazing quaint small-town Europe charm (though it’s really not that small). I’ll post some video from the town soon.

(The Amazing View From Sam's Balcony)

(And the Rooftop!)

Oh, and the church/small cathedral in the centre of town! Amazing! It has the most beautiful discordant cacophonous harmony of bells I’ve ever heard... on the 15 and the 45 of the hour… Anyways, I failed at finding a cheap bike, so we spent the sunny afternoon drinking with Sam’s friends at the Aki festival (Aki being her school).

(My Baby Mixing Drinks Outside the Library)

(The Aki Festival)

(Sander, Mhairi, and Sam)

In the evening, I doubled Sam on her bike to the old church that serves as the Aki student’s workspace for a little barbeque. 3Euro got ya as much bratwurst and sausage as you could eat. You just can’t say no to an offer like that! This church looks more like just another building in the street, but it had the most amazing little back patio all cobble-stone brick and strung up with pretty little red string lights.

(The old church is where those bikes are)

Oh, and they used to hide Jews in the basement during WWII… Kinda reminds me of a recent South Park episode, oddly enough. Anyhoo, after that we hit the hay… Which brings me to Thursday and a trip back into Germany…

(En Route to Essen)