Reunion in Germany

My week in Germany was too short. I arrived on Sunday night. Christoph picked me up at the airport and we went straight to dinner with his dad, brother, and girlfriend. It was nice to be back in Recklinghausen visiting my German brother after 5 years. Monday, we had a late morning followed by a train ride to Essen for the Christmas market. Over the next three hours I’m pretty sure that we tried almost every kind of festival food available there. My favorite thing was the reibekuchen, a potato fritter eaten by hand and dipped in applesauce. We also had various baked goods, German Christmas cookies, and glühwein- a traditional drink. On the following day Christoph and I walked around the city center of Recklinghausen. After a couple hours we drove over to Marl, where his mom lives. After a day full of exploring the towns Christoph grew up in, we went shopping for German beer for a tasting we had planned that night. Later, Wolfgang, Christoph, Stephan, and I tried all 18 different kinds of beer. We compared our notes and generally agreed on what we liked best. Wednesday started off with another late morning. Then Christoph, Stephan, and I went to a day spa. This place is like nothing I’ve ever seen in the States. There are saunas and pools of every temperature. Five years ago when I was visiting, Christoph and I spent a day there and it was such a good experience that I had to go back this time. To keep this PG, I’ll leave out the best details. Feel free to ask me about it in a PM. After spending the day cleansing our bodies we ate currywurst, basically a bratwurst smothered in some kind of curry sauce served with seasoned fries. It was heaven on a plate. That night we took a late train to Münster with two of Christoph’s basketball girls for a night of dancing. Unfortunately it took us two hours to make the 45 minute train ride because somebody got hit by a train at one of the stations. We finally got to the club though and were surprised to find it packed on a Wednesday night. We danced until the club closed until 3 AM, finished our beers, and then walked to a nearby station to get doner kebab. We caught the 4 AM train back to Recklinghausen and called it a night. Thursday was a lazy day for recovery and Friday I flew back to the US. 

Bittersweet Goodbyes

The last week was packed full of doing things that I had wanted to do the rest of my time there, but always put off. It was also full of goodbyes. I made some really good friends in Barcelona and not knowing when I was going to see them again made it tough to say goodbye. Since tourist season is over, waiting in line to see the inside of Sagrada Familia is no longer a daunting and time consuming task. On busy days, it can take hours of standing in line to see the inside of this iconic church. Leah and I waited less than 20 minutes. To learn more we both got audio guides. I was feeling rather confident in myself, so I got mine in Spanish. The inside is utterly amazing. There just aren’t words to describe it that would be thorough enough. I’ve never seen that much light and color inside of a church. In typical fashion of the Catholic churches, it stresses to the masses the importance of accepting poverty to help those that are more in need… psh yeah right. The only people the church inspires a life of poverty to are the patrons. It cost over $25 to go inside and look around. I also visited the Erotic Museum of Barcelona with some friends that I will tell on now; Leah, Fallon, Chris, and Jan. The small building was full of rooms with different themes and eras. Overall there was erotic art (porn) from the past two thousand years. There were a few Egyptian artifacts, pages from the Kama Sutra, and a 20^th century pleasure chair that looked more like an electric chair with a very uncomfortable seat. The most captivating thing was a video commissioned in 1920 by King Alfonso XII of Spain. We have the Catholic Church to thank for its existence today. You have not seen a silent movie until you’ve seen silent porn from 1920. Imagine ragtime music playing while an awkwardly skinny man and a behemoth of a woman go at it. We couldn’t look away and that was only a small portion of the entire series, casting a variety of people of different shapes and sized doing a plethora of comically pornographic things.

Thursday was my second Thanksgiving away from home. It was definitely easier this time, but still sad. Most of the day felt like business as usual. It was my last day of work, so I got up and went to work just like any other day. That night was amazing though. My company, Knok, was hosting an American style Thanksgiving, partnering with another cooperative company, EatWith. The whole Knok team was invited and I was allowed to bring Leah with me. Aside from the 9 Knok employees, we had 11 other guests with diverse backgrounds. All were very interesting people and easy to talk to. There was an American who was hiking from Gibraltar all the way to Bilbao, using no form of transportation other than his feet, two couples comprising of American men and Spanish women, and a French girl that just wanted to experience an American Thanksgiving to name a few. My supervisor, Rachel, managed to find the ingredients to make pumpkin pie and my bosses had a Turkey prepared professionally to complete the holiday.

Friday, we toured the FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou. To most of our group it was a cool landmark, I was a little more excited than that; so excited that I actually fell into the tourist trap and bought the professional pictures that look like I’m standing with real Barcelona players. We got to see the locker room, press box, a museum, and the best part was walking down the tunnel and onto the pitch. It was surreal to walk in the halls where the greatest players of this generation have stood and called home. That night Leah and I went out with Jan and Jazmin, first to the board game bar that I’ve mentioned several times before and then to THE mojito bar. The game of choice for the night was Munchkin… in Spanish. While playing, we had the opportunity to polish our knowledge of absurd Spanish diction.

Saturday was tough. I finally accepted that I was about to leave and packed my bags. Leah and I took the last opportunity to check out a park on our maps that came to be known as “the octopus park.” It was something we had wanted to check out since she arrived, but never went because it was pretty far out of the way; it turned out to be a 25 minute metro ride. The park itself wasn’t that impressive, but climbing the hill that surrounded it gave us an amazing panorama of Barcelona. The lunch we had was definitely worth the trip as well. That night we went back to the restaurant where we had our first date for dinner. I’ll never forget how cute she looked that first time with horribly stained teeth, courtesy of her black bean and rice starter dish. Stuffed, we went to Plaza Catalunya to enjoy the Christmas lights together and so I could say goodbye to my new Spanish friend, Marya, who was working. Even though there was no more room for food in our bellies, we bought churros and chocolate and had no problem cleaning them up. Finally, we returned home to relax for the rest of the night.