I keep getting behind on my travelling and another night passes where I must cycle late into the evening. It's a little past midnight when I pass through a lovely little town called Hoym. The streets all meet together in a large square outside a town hall, and I pull in there as I see twenty or so trendy German hipster kids getting their drink on. 'Trendy German hipster kids' may sound slightly patronising here, but actually I am a big fan of their style. Punk fashion in Germany is definitely still going strong, and a lot of the younger generation have really pronounced and interesting looks, even in these distant and remote little towns. Perhaps it's a little pretentious at times and they may not be everyone's cup of tea, though at least it is better than the head to toe kappa laden youths that you'd find plaguing equivalent villages in England.
I ask one for a lighter and go walk off back to my bike to have a cigerette. I'm donning a new cycling outfit today, drawn from my eclectic collection of about 5 different looks, which are all topped off by the unbeatable home-made South Africa world cup visor. I look completely awesome in all of them and know it will be just a matter of time before one of these trendy kids decides that they want to come over and talk to me. It's a matter of 5 seconds this time, as two German girls approach me. One speaks fluent English and we chat for a while about what I'm doing. They don't really understand it and find that I'm still cycling so late into the night very strange. They speak some German to each other as more join in on our little chat, and I hear the words Forest Gump get dropped and subsequently hear a lot of Germans laughing a lot. It's not too difficult to work out what the reference is and for the rest of the night I introduce myself as people to Forest, much to their amusement.
I end up getting pretty hammered with these guys. The party escalates as some more people drive in and start playing big German electro songs out of their pimped out rides. A couple of the girls start throwing down some pretty impressive, stern and slightly strange dancing outside the town hall, but not even a German is going to show me up on pretty strange, stern and slightly strange dance moves to German dance music, so I join in and teach them a lesson. They are no doubt impressed and I win a lot of street credit. In fact they are so impressed that Maria, a tall-leggy blonde (very German), invites me to come back and stay at her place. What do we have here ol' Samwell? I ask myself, and I find myself surprised by what suddenly might be on the table as I realise that the idea of a woman or even women at all has completely bypassed me for the last week. I imagine this has probably happened as a side-effect of the constant exhaustion and mountain of other problems that greet me every day, where already the normal world and it's every-day wonders seems to have become quite far away. We smile at each other and she asks if I want to sleep with her. She then giggles like a little girl at that request, going red as she explains that she meant that I can sleep in her house, not that she was inviting me to her bedroom. She's given her game away and I go off to get into her car, while some of the other people take my bike off to their house for me to collect in the morning. I give my bike (which also has all my possessions on it) off to essentially some strangers without battering an eyelid, and it seems this trip has started to make me a very trusting person.
I get into Maria's car and she sits in the passenger's seat, which I find a little odd with it being her car and all. It's turns out not to be a little odd, since it's not her car, but her boyfriend's, who then drives us home to his house where I sleep on his sofa-bed. Good. I was too tired anyway.
In the morning we all meet up on a big bench in a gorgeous little park. A huge picnic is shelled out onto the table, and about twenty of us have a lively feast in the scenic and sunny environment. They are all on holiday. I say that this is an amazing way to start the day and ask if this is something they always do. A girl tells me that they've never done it before and they just did it because I was here, that it was for me. It's really very touching, and I find myself smiling a lot as I sit with them. I am very happy.
No comments:
Post a Comment