I haven’t shared any crazy German(y) stories here for a while, but this one deserved to be told. Yesterday Dave and I were walking around in town heading from the main train station (a pretty bad part of town, and the red light district) to the Zeil, the main shopping and downtown area (a nice upscale area). Just before we got to the Zeil we saw some guy sort of limping/running on the other side of the street. He ran up to an expensive car with two well dressed men in it, one driving and the other getting into the car with the door open. The limping guy started stabbing the man getting into the car with a knife so he took off down the street to get away and the dude with the knife disappeared. The driver got out to figure out where his friend had gone to but the whole time he looked totally nonchallant about the whole thing, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. When the passenger came back you could see the knife wounds bleeding all over his back and shoulders.
This definately takes the cake as far as knife fights. The one we saw in the train station months ago doesn’t even compare. It was almost like a Turkish mafia hit, by the dreaded cripple or something. Frankfurt’s full of excitement, as always.
I don’t think I ever really appreciated the heat enough in Houston. Sure it gets hot; pretty damn hot. But for 3 months of the year we stay inside in the over airconditioned houses and buildings. Rarely do we have to actually deal with the heat from morning to night. In other parts of the US and the world that is not the case. Such as Germany. I swear that the only place in town that is airconditioned to Houston standards is the Peek & Cloppburg department store. I’m tempted to spend all day “shopping” in that one store because that’s the only way to not feel like I’m melting. So basically, I hate hot weather, and no longer think it is tolerable. And I wish I were back in the most airconditioned city in the world; Houston.
Aside from the lousy weather, things are going quite well in Frankfurt these days. Dave is still here but I can’t believe he’s already been here for two weeks. Time flies. Last weekend I went to Erfurt for a couple days. An old east German city that suffered very little damage in the war, I’ve wanted to visit it for a long time. So I was excited to have a chance to go, but because of the timing with other stuff going on I didn’t actually see much of the city. The only time I spent walking around in Erfurt was after midnight so it was dark, and there was a huge festival going on all weekend so even then mostly all you could see were people and food stands. A little disappointing, but the weekend was a blast getting to see all the other German-American club students for probably the last time.
I feel like I haven’t gone to class a whole lot in the last couple weeks, and it’s probably true. But I need to get in gear to start writing papers like crazy because they’re all going to be due around the beginning of July, and that’s coming right up. Ok, I’m going now to make french toast for brunch. But when I think about how hot it is that becomes much less appealing. Maybe I’ll have watermelon instead.