| My Traveling Journal |
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| My Adventures in Dortmund, Germany |
| April 12th- 17th, 2002 |
| Well I finally finished all of my projects from school and then on Friday, April 12th, I took a train to Dortmund, Germany. I originally planned to go there for 10 days to visit my friends Olli and Olivier. Olli was an exchange student at Unioto high school with me three years ago. I became pretty good friends with him, as well as practically all of the other students at my school. He came back again to Chillicothe to visit last year in 2000. But, this time he brought a friend with him, Olivier. Olivier, is � French and � German, so he can speak German, French, and English, talented huh! During he and Olivier�s one-week visit, I became friends with Olivier. Especially because we were the only two that could speak French, so we were able to have conversations and tell secrets in another language that no one else could understand! (hehehe) So now that I am in Europe, I thought that I should definitely go to Germany to visit them, and that�s just what I did! My train ride took 9 hours and was rather strange, because I didn�t know anyone the entire day, so I just did some homework on the ride and didn�t talk to anyone for like 6 hours. But I did meet this one woman on my train from K�ln to Dortmund. She was originally from the Tennessee so she spoke English!! We were both very excited to see someone else from the United States!!! She told me that met a German boy who was an exchange student at her university in Tenn., then they fell in love and she moved to Germany and they now have a 15 month old son, Felix. So, after our conversations and train ride together, I helped her with they baby and her things when she got off the train. So she was the only person that I spoke to during my entire trip until I arrived in Dortmund! Imagine that, me quite for 9 hours straight, I didn�t think that was possible! I finally made it to Dortmund, 5 broken fingernails, a 8-inch bruise on my shin, and 9 hours later. After 10 minutes of frantic searching in the train station, I finally found Olli and Olivier. I was soo jealous, because they are both extremely tan and since I�ve been away from a tanning bed for 4 months, I am white as a ghost!!! Things did immediately get better because for the first time in like 3 � months I was able to write in a car!!! Yessss, they had their own car so I didn�t have to take the city transportation system of metros or buses!! They took me to Olli�s apartment first, where I met his brother Sebastian. He�s not much of a people person, so I pretty much just got a �hello� out of him during my entire visit! (Hehehe) Then, I was taken to Olivier�s new apartment where I would be staying during my visit to Dortmund. It was really nice, especially with his huge selection of DVD�s, CD�s, and movies!!!! My first night there, they had some friends over to Olivier�s apartment, because it was one of the boy�s birthday. Of course they spoke German with each other, but a few of them tried to speak a little English with me, and one of the friends had even lived in Paris for a year, so I communicated with him in French. When the clock struck midnight, we all toasted with a glass of champagne to celebrate the boy�s birthday. You must keep in mind that Olli and Olivier had totally different schedules during my trip, so it was practically impossible to do things with them at the same time. It was more or less like having two divorced parents and them working out my custody situation. One of them would spend time with me, then drop me off to the other one, then I would spend time with that one. I had a good time none the less, but the two of them were always worried about who was going to have me next and for how long. (hehehe). Saturday evening I first went with Olli to his coach�s house. I guess Olli coaches soccer for a team of 13 year old boys, and the other coach and him are good friends. There were 7 of us there in total, Olli, his girlfriend (Julliet), the coach, his wife, his best friend, and another one of his friends. The coach�s wife made dinner for all of us, then we followed the meal by a game of darts. All of them had taken English in school, but it had been so long that they couldn�t really remember how to speak it! So I relied on my sign language skills or Olli to translate throughout the evening, and I did just fine! It was really funny at times, especially because they were all trying to make me try all these different German alcohols. (hehehe) I sampled a few, to be polite, but the more I drank, the worse my dart game became, and I could play darts at all to begin with! After our little adventure there, I was then turned over to Olivier. He then took me to a birthday party of one of his friends. Everything there started off really great, his friends were very hospitable, offering me all the food and drinks that they had there and they were all trying to speak English with me as well. Then about 2 hours into the party one of the boys sits in a chair in the middle of the room and one of they girls proceeds to straddle his lap. I just tried to grin and deal with it, but all of a sudden she starts taking off her clothes, one layer at a time until she is naked as a jay bird! Yep, it was getting a little harder to just accept this as typical. But no, I just got worse as she then took out a bottle of lotion, squirted some down her breasts and completely rubbed it in, all while trying to do exotic dances to a cheesy Michael Jackson song! Noooo, it kept going, so she took out a burning candle and dripped the hot wax down her nude body and finished by putting the lit wick out on her tongue. She not only put the candle out on her tongue once, but also another time! I couldn�t take it anymore, I finally looked over at Olivier on the other side of the room and we both started cracking up laughing!! All I could ask was � is this normal??,� much to my relief, he said no, but that this girl wanted to be a stripper in the future. I don�t know what made her choose to have me in her practice audience, I guess the situation just makes for a funny story now, huh! That evening ended at like 5 in the morning, you can believe that we all slept in the next morning!!! I quickly found out how long Olivier likes to sleep in! So I decided to make the best of the time while he was snoozing and I was awake! Of course I did manage to get in several hours of the German version of MTV, but I also managed to clean up Olivier�s apartment and do some dishes every morning before he woke up. I thought I was the least I could do seeing how they were all soo hospitable! As for meals, well since I stayed at Olivier�s apartment and had most my meals with him, we went to McDonalds! Yep, I went to good ol� Mc�y D�s like 7 times in 5 days!!! I met Olivier�s mom, Stephanie, one day while Olivier was taking to McDonalds, and she was like the typical American mom when she stated �McDonald�s isn�t good for you, you cant eat here everyday, you need to go grocery shopping and make your own food!� I just laughed, because I have several guy friends at home who couldn�t really cook when they first moved out of their parents home and were on their own for the first time, and Olivier was no exception, but I didn�t mind at all! To try and sum up the rest of my trip� I took a walk with Olli, Julliet, and 2 of Olli�s aunt�s dogs around the channel in their town, I walked around the towns center and seen a few shops as well as the two larger cathedrals, I learned a few choice German words (actually 17 words to be exact!), I ate ice cream at the airport and tried to watch the planes take off through the large glass windows, during our snack, watched several DVD�s, and most importantly�.I got to spend relaxing time with some friends that I haven�t seen in a while! The only problem was when we went to the train station on Tuesday night to get my return ticket to come back on Saturday! They were completely booked for all trains on Saturday, Friday, Thursday, and the only one left was the one that departed on Wednesday, the following morning at 5 AM!! Yep, that meant that my trip went from like 5 more days, to 8 hours left! We didn�t expect that at all, but had to deal with it unless I wanted to try to find an apartment and just start living in Dortmund and learning the language really quick. Being the late sleepers that we are, Olivier and I were afraid to oversleep the alarm the next morning for the train, so we went to the DVD rental store and rented 3 DVD�s. We stayed up and watched them until it was 4:20 AM, then we headed off to the train station for my departure, then Olivier helped me onto my train and waved goodbye to me until we couldn�t see each other. That, along with my next 9 hour train travel, ended my trip to Germany. Definitely a nice trip, but the coolest part is that Olivier, and possibly Olli will be coming to visit me here in Angers during the month of May, so it will be my turn to be the host and show them a little bit of France!! |