Okay everyone, I know that Julia has been looking after this blog and she has been doing a wonderful job, but it's about time i got on board and added something to this Blogger McBlogstein. After all it is my trip too! So this is (in some way) the story of the first hostel friend i have ever made.
It all began on our first night after arriving in Berlin. Julia, Ross and myself decided we would have a quiet drink down at the Hostel Bar. A quiet drink soon gained momentum into a giant snowball of drunkenness and Julia and Ross were intensely involved in a discussion about smoking (which i had NO part of). Somewhere in the conversation someone dropped the W word and out of nowhere an American voice popped out of the dark corners of the bar and joined us. He introduced himself with a very heavy America accent as Graham (although to my ears it sounded like Gram, i was corrected later), a solo traveler who had come to Berlin for New Years and obviously to try and make some friends. After joining in on our conversation on smoking, Julia and Ross soon got dragged into another involving discussion and I was left to chat with this interesting American Man.
Now, I had already been indulging quite heavily in the cheap (about $3 AU), half litre bottles of Erdinger Dunkel but i will try to communicate as much as i can remember of this fine young gentleman. As his initial 'in' to the conversation with us (Julia and Ross were now well and truly occupied in their 'discussion') was drugs, he began to tell me a story about what had just happened to him. Like us, he had just arrived in Berlin that day but he had come from Amsterdam where he had spent the last week doing the things that can only be done in that crazy Dutch country. Regardless as he was leaving, one of the people he met in the hostel (from Lithuania i believe he said) offered him a little package of 'something something' (pronounced with a bit of ghetto) to enjoy when he arrived in Berlin. So off he went and waited at the train station for his train. Now he didn't say (or i can't remember) if he was an animal person or not but after he arrived in Berlin a lovely, friendly dog came up to say hi. So he calmly gave the dog a pat and went to tell the owners that he thought their dog was so lovely and friendly. Unfortunately it turned out that the 'friendly dog' was actually a sniffer dog and that the owners were actually undercover policemen. So off they took him for interrogation.
Now personally i can't think of anything more terrifying then being taken away by German police in possession of a Lithuanian's idea of a good time in a tiny little plastic bag but he was telling the story so obviously they didn't kill him. Turns out while he was in the police station there were other people getting interrogated begging to be let free and swearing they didn't know what it was or where it came from or who it got there or who gave it to them. However our American friend had a plan. When ever the police asked him anything he told them nothing but the truth (including selling the Lithuanian drug lord down the river) and after a while they let him go. The only thing he didn't admit to was knowing that there was actually something a little stronger then just a funny smelling spice in that plastic bag.
So our conversation continued on for the rest of the evening, he had been to college to study some political bachelor which we talked about for a little while, we chatted about my upcoming trip to New York where he suggested moving to Brooklyn because it was very cool and 'up and coming'. All in all a good chat. Then off he went to the bathroom and with Julia and Ross' 'discussion' coming to an end we decided we had enjoyed enough beverages and went off to bed. It wasn't until we got upstairs that I realized I had forgotten to say good night to our new friend.
Whoops.
Unfortunately this became a running joke between Julia, Ross and myself about this poor guy who we had been (well really only me) talking to for a few hours and then as soon as he left we all bolted out of the bar and to our rooms. I can't imagine what he must have thought when he came back from the toilet.
Regardless we did end up seeing him the next evening as we were actually sitting in the exact same seats as the previous night. None of us being able to remember his name (nor him remember ours) we had another awkward reintroduction and got back into another conversation. Julia and Ross (clearly with enough friends in the world) continued their exclusive talk which left me to chat with this gentleman again. After being joined by a pair of American girls from Connecticut, I left Graham with the company of these girls and went off to dinner with Julia and Ross.
Over the course of the next few days we saw him quite a few times drinking in the bar but it seemed he hadn't really appreciated being ditched by me twice in as many nights so we didn't manage to hang out and really chat again until the final night. Before Julia and I left Berlin, we decided we wanted to get this giant box of Pizza we had seen people eating a few nights in a row before we left. The pizza was literally two family pizzas stuck together to make a giant pizzalicious oval in a super big box, nothing sounds better then that. Sadly, we had to assume these pizzas were awesome because as it was New Years Day most things were closed (we wandered up and down the street for 30 minutes before finding the closed pizzeria hiding behind a roller door). In our travels though we discovered what looked like a nice greasy chicken spot. So feeling a little seedy from New Years and wanting something awesomely greasy we went in and bought enough deep fried chicken to feed a family (probably why it was called a family pack). Now who else was sitting in this chicken eatery other then our lovely American friend, Graham.
So on the last night we managed to wrap up our friendship with a lovely little chat about where he was going next (i think he was going back to Amsterdam) and we wished him well on his travels and he us.
Well there you have it, my first travel story about my first hostel friend and my first blog post, hope you enjoyed it!
T
Amusing stuff man
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