So as I left off, I arrived in Germany with some cash burning a hole in my pocket, little responsibility, and a whole slew or academic bores, at least a quarter of whom also turned out to be unbearably pretentious, a feature much more common within the women of the group. I am not implying that one is cause for the other, merely making an observation. Now, there were a couple exception among the crowd, two in particular. Let's surreptitiously name them Ernie and Val. Both of these gentleman were a little older than myself and pursuing PhD's. Ernie had already spent a substantial amount of time living abroad and completed his MS in Europe. He was fluent in a language aside from English and was determined to make the same advancement in German. I and Val were both quite novice in comparison with Ernie, linguistically speaking. Neither of us had any formal German lessons and so we were both in the lowest level of the four offered; Ernie was in the highest. In the beginning Ernie refused to speak any English in his venture to master German and Val and I had no chance to have an appreciable conversation with him in German. With that said, Ernie will play a smaller role in my story, for the time being. Val and I, on the other hand, became friends rather quickly. He became the one person to whom I would reach out when I wanted to go on a weekend bender (which normally started about Wednesday). As any reasonable person would and should do, he often rejected the idea of going out as frequently as I would have liked, after all we did have class every day beginning at 9 AM. Although I didn't blame him I was also frustrated. I had quickly learned that reaching out to any of the others was nothing more than a waste of time and a call for them to judge my decisions and question how the hell I even received the fellowship in the first place. Furthermore, the town in which we lived was quite small. There were beautiful areas to walk and small, specialty shops lined the cobblestone paths. This, however, did mean that there were few places to throw down. There were a handful of tame bars and maybe two "clubs" (although I do feel strange assigning that designation, for what they really were does not resemble a club as one might expect). I was at a loss. I arrived excited for a wild time with others that would see this opportunity in a similar light and so far I felt my expectations were betrayed. Sure, we had a couple parties every few weekends and I did drag Val out to find some honnies to mack on but it was NOT what I envisioned. I was fortunate enough to find a couple guys on my floor that had some hash they didn't need so I bought what I could and rolled myself some spliffs for whenever I was bored. As you might guess, I was high most of each day until I ran out, which didn't take very long.
Fast forward through the depressing day-in and day-out monotony of class, throw in a few field trips to some gorgeous German towns, and finally we approach a story worth telling. We were probably half-way into our language course and Ernie must have gotten bored as hell. Over time, through group activities, Ernie realized he would fit in well with Val and myself. Eventually, he decided that he was missing out on too much by being so damn committed to the German language. At this point, I had become moderately conversational, but the sad truth is that I didn't (and really still don't) have much of a personality when speaking German; I felt like a drone. It was incredibly frustrating because I am extremely animated, overly sarcastic, and rarely serious, none of which is easy to deliver when your fumbling around in your own head, digging for word choice for which you might actually be able to produce a reasonable translation. Ernie often told me (natürlich, auf Deutsch) how impressed he was with how quickly I learned the language but my dis-impassioned delivery was a clear flag that if he wanted to have some fun, he would have to be more flexible.
One night, Ernie and I were out to dinner with a few of the others waiting to greet another grant recipient, one who was not enrolled in the language course. As it turns out, she was already fluent in German and actually has family in the town in which we were living. Naturally, she knew what would make a fun night. Most of the other snores went home immediately after dinner, while a couple stayed for a few drinks, but at the end of the night (which was really the beginning for me) only myself, Ernie, and our new tour guide were left. This new girl suggested that we go to a bar off the beaten path. I was initially reluctant, not because I didn't want to go out, but because I wanted to have a shit storm of a time and a little bar didn't sound like the place to go. Well, I wasn't wrong. It wasn't a shit storm but it sure was a night I'll never forget...this is the story of the outlaw biker bar in a small German city. Stay tuned...
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