Date: 7/15/98

Don't worry, at the end of this you'll hear how i managed to eat. Now back to the story...

So Hans, Phyllis, D___ and I go out to a wine bar. On the way, I tell D___ that the drunker we get Hans, the happier I will be - its such a great way to bond with someone, and we were going to be staying in his apartment for a couple days, after all. We order a couple bottles of wine and start drinking. Phyllis got rowdier and rowdier, in true australian style. Hans hasn't used his english in 10 years, but he seems to be pretty good at it. There are frequent stops to try to figure out words, and for some reason I seem to be the one of the group who is supposed to know the most german or be able to figure it out or something. Thanks to cognates and such, I was doing a pretty good job, although it was always odd to have Hans talk, stop, try to figure out a word, look at me, and say it in german, as if I knew anything at all about the language. I had a quarter's worth of German in 5th grade, more than ten years ago, but that didn't help at all. Mostly it was an exercise for my psychic abilities.

I happened to randomly know how to say "will you sleep with me tonight?" in German, thanks to the multicultural teachings of Ian Erickson, thus the phrase "Willst du heute abend mit mir schlafen?". We had been talking about the cute waiter, and wondering what his ethnicity was, so we called him over and asked. His name was Ahmed, and he was Egyptian. How nice. Now I had been the first one to comment that he was cute, so Phyllis called him over again and said the "Willst du" phrase, then pointed at me, indicating that I was the one who wanted this. The germans at the next table were cracking up at me saying the phrase slowly to Phyllis and her repeating it in a terrible accent. Ahmed was cracking up a bit too, obviously enjoying the attention.

We kept talking and drinking, and eventually asked Ahmed if he would come drink with us. He said that he couldn't until he got off work at 1AM. So we hung out and drank until then, as the restaraunt closed. Finally he sat down and we chatted a little, then we asked him if anywhere else was open. He said sure, so we hopped into his car and headed out. The first couple places we tried were closed, but the third was open. It was a hotel bar, and the hotel was gorgeous, obviously a very nice expensive place (five star). Before we went in, Ahmed explained to us, slowly and calmly, that he was "a little bit famous". He seemed to be a pretty slick guy, man around town and such. I'm not sure what he wanted us to do about it, i think he was saying that he had a reputation to consider. Phyllis was being loud and obnoxious, but he seemed to think that was ok, a normal thing for a drunk australian.

So we went into the hotel bar and got our beers and margaritas and whiskey sours and a nasty strong concoction called a zombie. Phyllis didn't want all her zombie, cuz it was strong, so naturally i was asked to be a nice male and help her with it. The bathrooms in this place were amazing, and you had to walk past conference halls and sculptures and art of all sorts to get to them. Not at all the place I would have taken drunk americans to, but i guess nothing else was open.

Finally the hotel bar closed, and we piled back into Ahmed's car and went to his flat (or his cousins or something). I think it was pretty nice, but I don't remember the details too well. We sat down, and he rolled a hash cigarette. That got passed around, and we chatted some more. Sometime while we were there, i'm not sure if it was before or after the hash, Ahmed took Phyllis out for a ride on his motorcycle. This is when I threw up for the first time. It was pretty obvious that he wanted to give her a better ride than that, so after a while we said we were ready to go.

For some reason, Phyllis didn't want to stay. Now if a cute egyptian waiter with a car and a motorcycle and hashish asked me to stay, well, i know what the right thing to do is. But Phyllis wasn't interested, mostly because she had no clue at all where this apartment was, or how to get back to Hans' place, or hell, even where Hans' place was. She didn't feel like being totally dependent on this random guy. We were all encouraging her to stay, because our vicarious desire for fun, because we felt he deserved it and was cute, and so forth. She got paranoid, wondering why we all wanted her to stay.

So despite a lot of pleading by Ahmed, Phyllis insisted we all leave. We had no idea where we were in Berlin, and we were on foot now, but Ahmed pointed in the direction of our street and said it was not too far. I didn't quite trust him at the time, but it turned out to be completely true. We wandered in that direction, and a couple of times we asked people if our street was that way and they said yes, and after 15 minutes or so we discovered to our amazement that we were home. Alright! God looks out for fools and drunkards, so if you need help, make sure you are both.

There was a little more to the story before we crashed at what must have been 3 or 4 or 5 AM. There was a big bed set up in Andrew's room, which was for me and pam and D___. But when we got into the apartment, Hans used the classic phrase "I don't want to sleep alone tonight", obviously a strong hint to Phyllis. She didn't seem interested, so Hans grabbed an extra mattress and laid it town next to ours in the room, and we all passed out in a row, all four of us.

Poor Hans had to go to work at a television station at 8 in the morning, he apparently had a miserable day at work. It was all of his own free will, of course, so i felt no guilt, and we certainly had done quite a bit of bonding. I woke up at 12 or 1 and couldn't keep down orange juice, and you heard about the rest of yesterday (tuesday) afternoon. After getting my stuff from the hostel, i returned to Hans' flat in the early evening, and managed to keep down bread and tea. Greatly encouraged by this, the four of us went out for dinner. Phyllis and Hans split a half liter of wine, the psycho freaks, while D___ and I abstained, and I winced and gave the carafe nasty looks.

We had some good italian food, and talked lots. I managed to eat an entire meal, felt a little queasy but kept it all down. We told each other various synonyms for sexual activities and names for genitalia in our languages, excellent cross-cultural activities. We even told jokes, doing our best to explain the puns or translate carefully to make the point clear. The first joke Hans told was a variant on a not uncommon american one, so it was interesting to note that sometime, it had crossed languages. (On a plane, pilot announces altitude and such, then, thinking the mic is off, says to the copilot "god, i could really use some coffee and a blowjob". the head stewardess rushes towards the cabin to tell them the mic is on before they say anything else stupid, and as she does, a passenger yells "Hey, don't forget the coffee!") Some of the others were harder to translate.

Anyway, we had a relaxing evening, after food we headed back to the apartment and listened to some music, and Hans went to bed early cuz he hadn't slept much the previous night.

I dunno what is going on over the next couple days. I think we are going to Prague on friday. Phyllis still needs to get a visa, since she is australian she can't just use her passport, and the embassy is only open for that sort of thing from 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning, and she never seems to get up in time. Phyllis and D___ both have all sorts of little errands and calls and such to do in the city which they keep not getting done. Andrew, the guy from this apartment that Phyllis actually knows, is returning this afternoon, and will naturally want his room back. Phyllis wants to jump him, so thats not a problem for her, but D___ and I may go back to the hostel or get a different one closer to the city center (this apartment is near the Tiergarten, but the old one was out in former East Berlin). I have about 2 weeks left, and the only places i really want to go to still are prague/vienna/budapest, which are all pretty close, so i'm just hanging out, enjoying time with D___ and watching Phyllis be more drunken and debauched than I ever want to be.

I'll let y'all know next time there is excitement.

your Cardinal of Correspondence and Vicar of Vicarious Living,

who is actually having almost as much fun as it sounds like I am,

Patri

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