February 6, 2009: Feeling . . . Old

I got off work today at 15:30 because I got to work at 7:00. I got home and tried to decide what I was going to do with myself for the 4 hours before I was to meet up with Corey and Sarah. I decided to go for a run because the weather was so nice. My plan was to run the ring road around Ratingen, about 5km. I go running once a month at school usually but since I moved out here I have been ramping up. It took me less time then I thought it would to complete the loop and when I got back an amazing thing happened.

I got home and in just my t-shirt and shorts headed out to the balcony with a beer. I was surprised that it was warm enough out to finish the whole thing without getting cold. Spring has arrived!

At this point my nights activity begin as I boarded the S-Bahn to Corey and Sarah’s place. Just as I showed up to the station the train that I wanted pulled away so I had to wait 20min for the next one. I got off the train and walked to Corey and Sarah’s. They have a very nice modern apartment in a nice part of time with two huge orange sectional couches, a huge balcony and a bathroom with a bath, shower and sauna. How cool is that.

Just to fill all y’all in, Sarah is a translator for a cosmetics firm in Düsseldorf and Corey has his doctor-it in chemical engineering and works in sales for a chemical company in Düsseldorf. They are both in their mid-30s, Sarah is from the UK and Corey is from New York. After drinking a whiskey coke Jan showed up. Jan is a 27-year-old German guy who speaks German, English and Japanese. He is in the job market for a position with a Asian car company he said.

After some conversation about how nice their apartment was we were off to dinner. We decided on a Continental restaurant, I had never been to one of these, I think, but it seemed that they serve food from all over the place. I guess the whole continent of Europe? Jan and I ordered the same thing, some long German word I cannot remember. Sarah thankfully is a translator and could fill in the holes in my German menu reading ability spectacularly well. The food showed up and it was quite good, a very thin crusted pizza with cheese, bacon, onion and a cream sauce base. I washed it down with an Altbier and we were off to the karaoke.

We taxied it over to this place and got to the door. Oddly there were no front windows and you had to ring a bell to get in. We walked in and saw a bunch of “karaoke boxes” lining one wall and the entrance to the main bar area at the end of the hallway. We were waiting for another couple to show up so we sat in the lounge for a while. This was a Korean place and all the songs that were sung by people on the stage were in Korean. Like most Asian songs that I have heard with English parts the English was not all that good.

A 40-something year old Korean guy in a dress shirt and tie got up on stage and let loose. It took me a while to figure out that everyone (mostly Korean) was laughing because he was singing the ladies part of the song. I caught on when he sung “I woman waiting . . . fall in love” about six times in a row. Sarah could not wait to start singing so we headed to the box before the other people showed up. We (not me) opted for the big box which was 45 Euro/hour to rent.

Two hours of singing of varying quality followed. Jan sang a song in Japanese and shared a duet of 50 Cent “In Da Club” with me. The lyrics in the songs and the backup music were all put together by a South Korean company so often the lyrics were a bit off. This was a good time and went on for about 2 hours: then the bill came. I was the youngest person by about 7 years and felt slightly out of place but everyone was speaking English and was very funny so I was not complaining.

210 EURO!!! What!? Yeah, apparently the 3L pitchers were 30 Euro a pop and Sarah’s long island ice teas were 10 Euro a pop. This was nuts, I only had 15 Euro left after dinner. Very kindly Corey and Sarah offered to pick up 105 Euro of the bill because they were the ones that opted for the big box. I threw down my 15 Euro and felt bad because I drank more then half a pitcher. We left and I parted ways with them because I was out of cash and I was going home.

I got to the HBF (Main Train Station) and found out that it was an hour until my train. Damn. This however was when the funniest part of the night would go down. I have found that the only time that I feel comfortable talking to people in German is when I have had a beer or three. I found a spot to sit in the train station waiting room next to two Spanish people who were making out and a drunk looking guy with a toque on. I had an hour to wait and nothing to do so I started talking to Mr. Toque.

“Hallo,” I said, “Ich bin Tom.” “Wie es Ihr Name?” he perked up and said his name (I forget it). I asked if he spoke English (in German) he responded with what I think means “a little.” Turns out a “little” really is a little, this guy only spoke 4 words of English: England, 5% (five percent) and money. These are not ideal words for conversation but this guy whenever I asked, “What is ()” (in German) he responded with one of the words. However he did not just say it once, oh no, he repeated it 7 or 8 times. This was REALLY funny to listen to because I do not think he knew the meaning of these four words and used them interchangeably. I asked, “what is ‘Store’” and he responded England England England England England England. This conversation went on for about 45min before I left for my train.

I got home at 2:30 and went to bed.