Last week, I was feeling pretty darn great. Tuesday evening, Arsenal impressed the football world by beating AC Milan 2-0 in the San Siro, deservedly advancing to the next round of Champions League.
Though I had a customer visiting me from the states for the entire week, I will still finding time to get everything done, and was actually getting out of work at a decent hour.
Normally I try to catch a train from Darmstadt back to Frankfurt every evening between 18.30 and 20.00; one runs about every 20-30 minutes.
Sometime I have to kill a bit of time, and usually plug in the ipod and smoke about on the platform. Wednesday evening I was intending to do just that, but while walking through the lounge to the train platforms, a big bird pooped on my head!
OK, it wasn't a sesame street sized bird, but it was big enough (or at least it's poop was) to totally fucking gross me out. Part of me wanted to be physically ill, but I was sort of laughing about it. I scrounged for 50 cents, then went into the pay toilets where I again grossed myself out by trying to find the best way to dunk my head under the faucet without actually touching the sink. Though I've previously mentioned that the cleanliness of public toilets in the regional train stations I've been through has been impressive, I'm taking this opportunity to change my mind.
On this particular day, things certainly appeared out of order, and I recalled seeing a group of homeless heroin addicts lounging around outside of the station. Clearly they'd been in here already.
At any rate, I did the best I could as quickly as I could, then scurried down to get on the train, hoping that I didn't really look like a guy who'd just had someone shit on him. I was also thanking the world that I hadn't been looking upwards toward the rafters (as I sometimes do) at the precise moment of the incident. I'm not sure I would have been able to deal with an eyeful of muck.
I went on to the gym (where I did have a better opportunity to scrub my head), then hit the pub to watch another night of matches. As usual, I stayed out a bit too late, and got home a bit before 1am.
Several signs had been posted around the local U-Bahn stations notifying a scheduled strike to be held on Thursday; none of the U-Bahns, Trams, or busses would be running for the entire day. Like an idiot, I just assumed that I would just take a taxi to the train station the following morning.
That would have been a really good plan had I not forgotten that about half the city uses the U-Bahn for the morning commute, and most of those folks would be getting taxis, too.
As tends to be the case when things aren't going so well, everything else seemed to fall apart. First, I overslept. Second, the realization that I'd have to hoof it 30 minutes on foot to the local S-Bahn station (note - the S-Bahns and regional trains were not striking on this day) didn't amuse me, especially since I'd chosen the wrong pair of shoes for a city hike. Third, the S-Bahn takes about twice as long as the normal train, and I wasn't so sure of the time table.
I will say it was a bit interesting hiking through the city with a lot of other commuters. No-one was particularly thrilled, but at least the weather wasn't rainy or too cold. Once I got to the station, I phoned a colleague and told him that I'd have to miss a conference call, then went on to complain that there were no coffee places on the platform, and I was in dire need of an espresso.
About an hour later, I arrived at Darmstadt, and taxied to the office. My colleague elected to phone me once during that trip to tell me he was sitting in his office enjoying a nice coffee. Bastard.
So, I finished the work day without too much trouble (albeit it seemed like a half day considering I strolled into the office just past 11am), find an S-Bahn back to Frankfurt, then rejoiced when I found a taxi stand with several taxis queued up.
Let me be very clear on why I enjoy urban living so much, and why I don't really miss having a car. Frankfurt's U-Bahn system (when not on strike) is fast and efficient. I'm 10 minutes away from the main train station, which is 6 stops from my local stop. I live about 4-5 minutes away from my local stop.
Taking a taxi from this same main train station takes about 20 minutes normally, and costs about 15 euros. Taking a taxi on this same route during rush hour costs about 24 euros and takes closer to 35 minutes.
For me, I prefer public transport, even if you have to put up with the odd lunatic from time to time. (note - I've got to believe that somewhere out there, some one has just written a similar article describing some lunatic THEY saw on the U-Bahn last week that had bird poop on his head)
At last, I got back to the comfort of the pub, where I once again stayed out too late.
Yep, I overslept again on Friday, but thank goodness all the transportation was running; I was only an hour late to work.
Friday evening, as usual, was spent celebrating the weekend. The special touch on this Friday was that two colleagues from work came with me into Frankfurt. We'd been talking about this for quite some time, and finally found the right evening. Both Ingmar and Salva are good guys, but it was funny that there was still that bit of awkwardness associated with going out for pints with people that work for you. Though we did talk a little shop, the evening was more about celebrating what we've accomplished over the past weeks and months; finally we're able to smile more when we come to work.
The weekend was all about a birthday celebration for three of my friends. Steve had his birthday earlier in the week, but combined his party with Nadja and Derrick for Saturday evening.
Custom in Germany is to gather at midnight to celebrate; it brings good luck. Nadja's birthday was the actual Saturday, so Salva, Ingmar, and I met up with Nadja and a few others down the street at the Schoenburger; a popular place in my neighborhood. We closed that down (interpret that as: obligatory birthday shots, several pints, etc), then a handful of us returned to the pub to continue celebrating. At this point, my colleagues (one was designated driver) wished me luck and returned to Darmstadt.
I believe I got home around 5, and have since heard that I played a chess move (on line) around 6am (yet another note - the notifier feature on facebook for the chess application is ganz toll!).
Saturday was spent in bed, as one can imagine, and I think I eventually got up around 4 or 5. During a conversation I'd had with Nadja the previous evening, she was expecting for me to make a mix CD for her party, and come to think of it, the pub owner had also asked me to burn a few birthday songs (Altered States, Beatles, etc).
I had no problem coming up with the perfect mix for Nadja, but I struggled to get the playlist in a burnable format, simply because it's on my ipod and not my pc's hard drive. This was an unfortunate unanticipated challenge. I cursed myself for waiting til the last minute, then was scrambling to pull some songs down from other websites.
There is a feature on the ipod where you can copy all the files back onto your hard drive, but they're not in any particular order, just loads of folders with weird coded songs, etc. Besides, I would have crashed my pc had I dumped my ipod back onto my hard drive.
Result! I got the tracks in order, popped in a blank disk, then jumped in the shower. Grocery shopping would simply have to wait til the next week. Thank goodness there was enough milk to cover a day's worth of coffee.
All festivities from earlier in the week were leading to this large gathering. An Irish band was playing, and the three birthday kiddos brought their friends and family. Thus, the pub became as full as I've ever seen it. At one point, there was no way to move whatsoever inside the bar. No one could even drink from their glass as everyone was shoulder to shoulder.
Several times I escaped to the terrace with the other smokers (and ironically, those looking for fresh oxygen), and was lucky to have a conversation with Goran about how much I enjoy his new CD. This was my first chance to feed back to him.
Well, the Irish band paused at midnight to wish Derrick (his birthday was Sunday) a happy birthday, and we surprised him with his birthday gift: a weekend in Prague. This gift was somewhat special as I'm a part of it. Several weeks ago, Max and Heike had approached me about going off on a weekend road trip with young Derrick, and I answered, "why the hell not?"
Money was collected, flights were booked, and I'll be chief chaperon (or chief instigator, depending on how you want to read the story).
After a couple of encores, the band broke set, and on came a DJ, who kept things lively for the remainder of the evening. The mix was good, so I elected to dance until the world started getting fuzzy...which, once again, was around 5.30am.
I do remember leaving, but certainly there are some points of the evening that I'll have to be reminded of. That said, it was quite the evening.
Said evening lasted until 7am, actually, but I was already fast asleep. I woke up Sunday afternoon in time to watch the Arsenal - Wigan match. Sure, I wasn't feeling too frisky, and I'm sure I haven't looked much worse, but oh well, sometimes those are the breaks.
Went beddy bye pretty early Sunday evening, and woke up Monday morning to discover that the trains were on strike, again. I managed to get to work (on time), but had to take the slower S-Bahn.
I'm laying low this week, trying to cardio up and keep myself out of trouble. After all, we've got another big weekend coming up.
Don't look up in the train stations, and keep the faith
bryan
no soundtrack this week - enjoy the silence
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