Anecdotes: My Vacation in Germany or the Time When I Couchsurfed for the First Time: Episode I

"Goodbye Hermano," I whispered, as I forced my embrace onto my roommate's body. "Safe flight, get off me," he said, as he tried to move his luggage into the taxi.

We were all leaving that day. I was going to Germany, the Friendly Giantess was going home, and my roommate and his girlfriend was going to HIS home. We said our goodbyes, and the Giantess and I went out for dinner, with this guy known as Schoolmate (because he didn't regard us as his friends T.T). We (Schoolmate and I) had one last Canadian beer, talked about Portugal or something, and went home to prepare for the long flight.

When we got back, my Hermano and his girlfriend was already home. One month has passed, not really, their flight was cancelled. They told us that due to the foggy weather, many flights were cancelled. We checked and pretty much all flights that day were cancelled, except ours. We got our stuff, we picked up Schoolmate, checked in and all those shindig.

When we got in, there was a guy doing a survey. He asked what was our relationship. We were all awkwardly quiet for awhile, but then as I was about to say 'we're friends', he said "we're schoolmates" (thus the name). So Schoolmate is forever Schoolmate. If you're reading this SCHOOLMATE, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, hej!

All 3 of us were taking the same flight to Heathrow, that's where we split up and fly to our respective places. I barely had any sleep in my 5 hours flight, but I did watch Mr Robot though. The flight from Heathrow to Frankfurt was only an hour or so, and I slept throughout the flight.

My couchsurf host was there to pick me up at the Frankfurt airport (how nice of him!). We took my stuff to his place, and then we walked around the city. My first day wasn't very interesting (for you), but it was for me, because it was one of the biggest challenge I faced during my vacation, which was trying to stay awake without looking disinterested. At night, he brought me to his friend's house party. I spoke most with this guy who barely speaks any English. 75% of the night was just me speaking broken German, as he replied in broken English. That night basically cemented my habit of saying "schön" to everything, for the rest of the trip.

That night was the 'Night of the Museums', where you can buy 1 ticket that allows admission to all of Frankfurt's museums, and the museums will be opened until 2am. But alas, poor Jerry, he was too tired to go out that night, and frankfurtly, he almost fell asleep multiple times during the party, so he and his host went back and he finally took a well-deserved sleep.

I woke up 12 hours later, and my host already prepared breakfast for us. I don't know what Frischkäse is, but it was really really good, and is now my favourite cheese.

Figure 10.1: Top to bottom, Flatbread, tomatoes, some olive oil thing, Frischkäse, butter, cheese, feta cheese, cheese and honey

Today, we took the train to Darmstadt, a little city south of Frankfurt, to meet up with his friends in a Spielhaus. I met his friends there, they were all international students, they were all very nice. Germany may be the hub for board games, but as we arrived there, we encountered a complication: all the instructions and manuals are in German. None of us are fluent enough to explain the rules, so we ended playing with playing cards.

The next day, we met up with another couchsurfer. We practically spent our entire day in Goethe-Haus. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived an extremely luxurious life. Not gonna spoil anything here, its extremely worth going. Fun fact: Goethe's mom's favourite drink was hot chocolate. Many of the other museums were closed because museums in Germany do not open on a Monday, so we were pretty lucky with Goethe-Haus.

We then had dinner, and went back to my host's place to watch the season premiere of Game of Thrones. I know nothing, so I was quite annoying during the show (who's this? Who's that?), but luckily, the other surfer was very excited, and does not hesitate on explaining what is going on. We watched for 3 mins, and then he paused the show for the next 5 minute, explaining to us the backstory of the scene. This went on for the rest of the show.

The next day was the day I left Frankfurt, onward to Ingolstadt. That was my first time coming to Germany, and also my first time couchsurfing. It was an amazing experience, the people are rather helpful and I would absolutely recommend couchsurfing to people. My host taught me everything I need to know about Germany, it's dining ethics, how Deutsche Bahn works (which really really really helped, as I rely heavily on it), and showed me how nice people can be. Also I had a dream about Emperor Palpatine, I actually didn't, but I just threw that in there to make my title relevant. Here are some photos of my Frankfurt-Darmstadt trip.