The Valpo group ended up getting back around 5 p.m., and I was
still waiting on the student to arrive. Eric and I decided to make dinner once
I was done, and I headed out to the Fishbowl to welcome the student to
Reutlingen at 5:15. He arrived and we lugged his suitcase up a long series of
stairs to the 2nd floor where his room was. I said my spiel, and was
about to leave when he started asking question. Unfortunately, I don’t really
know the answers to too many questions quite yet, so I did what I could.
Eric and I ended up making spaetzle with fried zucchini,
garlic, and tomato. It ended up being really good with a few extra seasonings
thrown in! We met a few girls on Eric’s floor. They had a Keurig-like coffee
maker that makes me miss my little Keuring mini!
After dinner, Allie, Sarah, Eric, and I were on our way to Tübingen to check out Top 10.
Another girl from the group, Tammi, ended up going with us. Everything
was going so well! We caught the right bus, got to Tübingen okay on the proper train, and then it
all went kind of downhill.
First off, I would like to say, that the directions from
Naldo.de were extremely confusing. We ended up walking the wrong way from the
train station, so we were doomed from the start. Despite this fact, we did end
up seeing a bunch of Tübingen, which was gorgeous, and makes me excited to go
back to the city when it is a bit more light out! We were lost and I wasn’t
quite sure how we were going to get where we were going, so we ended up asking
for directions. The people answered that the club was reallllllly far away and
that we would be best off going back to the train station to catch a bus or a
taxi.
So. We began walking back to the train station. Then, we
found this path next to the river with big globe-like lights to illuminate it.
It seemed like a good idea to follow the river, as the street we were supposed
to take was supposed to cross the river. Well, as the road went on, it got darker
and darker, and the distance between lamps got larger and larger. We ended up
turning around again and taking a small bridge to get to the train station.
We figured at that point that it wasn’t going to be worth
trying to walk to the club and got a taxi. It took all of 5 minutes to get
where we were going. Our taxi driver took us a really wacky way with a lot of
twists and turns, but we got there! We tried to figure out the money situation
and you could tell the taxi driver was getting annoyed. He left before we could
give him a tip. But, es war egal. (it didn’t matter).
We had made it! We were excited and ready for the night. But
then. The bouncers at the door were checking ids and we realized that someone
in our group did not have their id. The bouncers were deaf to our excuses and said
that there was no way they would let us in.
Oh.
Well, after all of that, we decided to just go home. We knew
which way we were supposed to go now and we just would walk it back to the
train station. Easy, right?
Well, it would have been easy if the heavy rain hadn't started. It felt like everything that could go wrong, went
wrong tonight.
We made our way to the McDonalds across the street from Top
10, just to get out of the rain and to call a taxi. I asked for the number for
a taxi from the woman behind the counter and she gave me a number – it didn’t work.
We then used the wi-fi to find another number for a taxi
place in Tübingen. The man answered and told us we were calling the wrong
number.
Sigh. Really.
We hung out for a few more minutes and then, once the rain
had mostly let up, we walked back to the club to see if they had a number for a
taxi company. I called and told them where we needed to be picked up from and
how many people we had and he responded in a long string of difficult to
understand German words. I had no idea what he was saying, but hoped he was sending a
taxi our way.
About five minutes later, when a taxi came to a halt in front of the club, we ran over
to it and asked him if he would take us back to the train station, despite having one extra person for his car. He let us know that another driver was
coming to pick us up. Things were looking up!
Up pulled the poor taxi man who had gotten us to the club
about a half hour before. He laughed and helped us in the van and took us back
to where we had begun. Once we got to the station, we looked up at the board to
see when trains would be taking us, soaking wet after our adventures in the
rain, back to Reutlingen. There was a train leaving AT THAT MOMENT and we ran
to see if we could catch it. There was no train on the track, so we knew we
missed it – until we saw the sign saying that the train that supposedly left
was pulling into the station. We piled on, excited that something had finally
gone our way! Then, the train pulled out of the station in the opposite
direction that we had thought we came.
Panic set in. Exhaustion set in.
What were we going to do.
Well, thank goodness that we did not have to answer that
question. We WERE going the right way and we did make it back to Reutlingen! We
decided a visit to the Irish pub was a good way to end a bad night. I got another cider and Allie and I ended up doing an Irish Carbon!
I’ll be really honest, I always thought the shot that ends up tasting like
chocolate milk was called an Irish Carbomb (Terrible? Yes. But that’s what I
thought it was called!). It was delicious and we were on our way to becoming
friends with the Greek owner of the Irish pub.
We were at the pub for about an hour, having pleasant
conversation. Then, because it started raining again, we took a cab back to the
university. Our cab driver was so friendly and, after seeing Tammi start to
dance to the music he had playing on in the car, blasted the music and we had
our own little dance party.
We had to be thankful – we made it safely to and from Tübingen
and had a memorable night. We decided to maybe try again in a few weeks when
the pain of the not-so-pleasant and rainy evening has faded from our memories.
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