Man, She's Fast

So Mary apparently spent her whole afternoon uploading photos, meaning I am now going to be very brav and put off a shower and bed so that you can get my longest post ever, with the most pictures ever. Yes. I am even going to go to the effort of making blogger display them at a decent size.

So Tuesday, some time after my post, my host mom drove me to the train station and I was the first one there, but then Priya showed up and we found Chris and Karl and then Blair and Bonnie got there just in time and we put ourselves into a compartment on the train and were loud, obnoxious Americans for the next four hours (Karl, an Australian, complained in his quiet, Australian way). We got to Köln Hauptbahnhof on time and Mary was waiting for me, and also for Casey and Emily. The others took themselves off to the Hostel while Mary and I went to C&E's tracks, only to have a few trains come, none of which contained our friends. Mary really had to pee, and had no interest in paying the €2 or whatever the train station wanted, so she decided that we should head on and let Casey and Emily find their way on their own, shoud they ever arrive. We found Bevelyn, though, and she was very happy, because she had been expecting Betreuers or someone to meet her at the train station, and had no idea where to go.
Not that Mary knew. Her "foot-by-foot" directions failed pretty quickly- we got on the U-Bahn and started talking and Mary said she was timing it (8 minutes) and then we hear her say, as the doors close, "Guys, I think that was our stop." Alright, no big, we get off at the next stop and wonder if we should ride back. I insisted, in my great Wisdom, that it wasn't that far and we could walk, and Mary and Bevelyn went with me because I am terribly persuasive. This was probably a bad idea. . . at some point, we saw a sign to the Hostel, and followed it. Of course, this was a sign for drivers, and, in fact, pointed us in the entirely wrong direction. We walked around a block or two (Mary complaining because she still had to pee) in the dark, found many buildings that are not hostels, and finally ran into Priya, who pointed us in the right direction. Then we started running into all sorts of people and there were enthusiastic hellos and Bev and I went in and Mary got lost in a crowd of greetings. I learned from Christian, who was in the lobby, that Emily and Casey, whose trains had been about an hour late but who had not gotten lost, were already there, and had claimed me for their room. I went up and we screamed and hugged and talked and waited and waited for Mary, who did eventually show up, but much later. Now, Mary had been knitting at the train station, because she had been there for four hours waiting for us, because she is brilliant (school ended early and she chose to come straight to Köln instead of going back home). And this leads to my first picture, a comparison of my sock and Mary's scarf. I don't think the picture quite captures how spastic Mary's poor scarf is- it was very cute.

Then it was time for dinner, where we saw so many more people and decided that speaking German is for losers, and took more pictures. The next three show me and Casey having a conversation. Note Casey's fancy new brown hair!



India was apparently quite startled at Mary's sudden bursts of enthusiastic affection (this became a theme for our week).

Me, Mary and Emily love each other very much.

After dinner, we headed downstairs for some sort of meeting that I don't remember. I do remember leaving the meeting and standing in a circle and talking and talking and talking all loud and fast and excitedly in English. Then, at some point, Dustin and Allyson broke off and had a hilarious fight of some sort.

This is the best picture of me ever.

We discovered the Elevator from Hell, although we didn't know it then. Seriously, this thing was creepy. The door never quite closed, so you could see the floors going past, and see how the door starts to open before you quite get to a floor. And it has this tendency to stop on floors without any known reason to do so. And it is slow. Anyway, Mary thought the sign in the elevator was entertaining. I don't know why.

We went to our room and had to make our beds, and then we saw Zimmer run down the hall in a monk robe and Harry Potter glasses, carrying a toilet brush. He was being chased by other people, and we were most confused. Pictures exist, I think, but I don't have them. Someone said something about a toga, and Emily wanted to join the fun instead of making her bed. The results were wonderful.



Casey also had trouble making the bed, because, man, making the bed is hard. She was cheerful about it, though!

Sure, Casey looks happy, but she is screaming. Screaming because she is in the Elevator from Hell.

Breakfast was pretty delicious the next morning, mainly because I was with wonderful friends and had not slept well on terrible hostel mattresses.

Mary apparently did not find her breakfast as satisfactory, because she spilled coffee all over it.

We got on a train and went into Bonn to visit the mayor and go to a museum and have fun. Of course, people are terrible at being on time, and we missed our first U-Bahn, and thus our first train, so this meant we had time for fun at the train station. Allyson (I hope it was Allyson, because my memory is blanking) and I went and looked at very sexy shoes, and Allyson and Dustin sang fun German songs, and life was grand. The train ride included Mike doing chin-ups on the bar, and also the first time I have ever been on a double-decker train (less exciting than hoped).



I still love the Dom. We spent some of our waiting-for-trains time outside looking at it, and I told Casey my Dom story, and we walked around in the Dom, and everyone else who was outside met some awesome Australian dude who showed us his thermal and gave us his card and was quite entertaining.


And that is as far as Mary's pictures go at the moment, so you'll have to content yourself with that for now.

I find the writing in this post quite terrible, but enjoy the pictures. I need a shower and my bed.