Tuesday 2 April 2013

Es war in Oberwinter....

Nicht davor und nicht dahinter,
Es war gleich mittendrin, als ich damals auf dich reingefallen bin.....


These corrupted lyrics form the basis of an old-Volksmusik song heard on a train (original title "Es war in Königswinter") on the way from Koblenz to Köln, sung not only by a group of drunken Germans......but by a group of drunken Germans on a stag do, who we had met randomly in the centre of Koblenz, bought us an entire night's worth of drinks and had even after all of that then invited us up to Köln on the train with a free ticket that they had already bought. We passed quite a few stations en route, and Oberwinter was one of those which sparked an enormous amount of singing and cheering from 10 drunken men on the train. It was awesome.

Me and Liam (who i'm currently staying with until I find a fucking apartment grrr) only went out for a quiet drink and a shisha in one of the bars in the Koblenz Altstadt. 12 hours later we were still drunk and wandering around Köln after one of the best nights of my entire life.

I realise that it's an enormous cliché to say that, but really....the bizarre way that the night had panned out and the warmth and friendliness of almost everyone we met that night was a credit to the German people and a great starter for the third (and not necessarily the last) part of my Erasmus-Auslandssemester's adventure of awesomeness.

And we were surprisingly dressed for the occasion, as we ended up in an exclusive bar in the Rudolfplatz area of Köln with a surprisingly tight dress code on entry. Liam had his entire outfit scoped out, but we got in nevertheless. There were cocktail dresses and suits everywhere and without wanting to draw out my already enormous posts on here, it was fab.

After all of this we then stumbled upon a squat bar (?) underneath a growshop covered in graffiti, smoked a bit, drank a few, listened to the now-stoned DJ play some light jazz-house and then we made our way back home on the Bahn.


To go into stereotypes and to make stereotypes of Germans without mentioning strict following of rules and a no-tolerance attitude from the 'establishment' would be unthinkable. And not to mention schwarzfahren translating loosely as fare-dodging, it is one of the crimes punishable by execution by the German rail network Deutsche Bahn and can cost you quite a large sump of money if you're caught without holding a valid ticket, stamped and verified twice or three times (just to make sure) by the conductors.
so drunk and with minutes to spare until the next train back to Koblenz we decided it would be fine.

It worked. 3.50€ each later and a whole load of pretending to be drunk, stupid English tourists without any money, ID or other means of getting home to Koblenz, we were back where it all started.......