You never know how hard it is to make friends till you leave all of your own behind. Everyone here has their networks of friends from childhood, work, and social groups. You get friendly with some, but many slip by as acquaintances rather then someone you can laugh with. Luckily for me, Ian is a friend magnet and attracts all types! After a lot of hanging around the computer and staring at each other, we are finally creating a pretty good friend base here in Berlin.
Last weekend entailed a couple friendly enterprises- a house party, our first non-Washingtonian guests, the super bowl, and a somewhat unwelcome tag along. The house party was a success although the Israeli/German guests just weren't putting their full wrist action into beer pong. I guess some thing don't translate. A couple Ian works with joined us at the apartment before the Superbowl to talk about Germans, stamps, and you know- stuff. From there we started out for our favorite sports bar- Salamas with a surprise guest. Ian can take it from here:
" The game started at 12:30 here, so we got on the tram around midnight with our friends to go to the bar. As we're waiting, this drunk guys comes right up to us and joins our circle. He spoke to us in English, and he even had somewhat of a British accent. Come to find out, he's some gay German guy, and he decides to tag alone with us for the night. Almost the entire first half he's sitting next to me, chatting my ear off. I just wanted to watch the game! Luckily he left pretty quick after half-time, but not before hitting on our friend. It made for quite the experience."
Ian means he hit on Justin, our new Canadian friend with his girlfriend Krisha & I trying to tell the German "No, you should not fondle his bum!" It was an event. May every weekend be that exciting...but maybe without the aggressive attempts at a pick-up. Maybe.
