What a crazy Friday!

Oh last Friday, what an exciting crazy filled day. I should have taken the hint from nearly being attacked by a wild pig it was going to be a crazy day.

Yes, I said it. I was nearly attacked by a wild pig. Let me first paint a picture of where I live. Wohltorf is a small town East of Hamburg just south of the river Elbe. In fact it runs right up to our property, I could put my feet in it. Wohltorf is one of those small quiet towns that appear to have nothing happen to it. It’s like Noonday, Texas, nothing happens to this beautiful little lakeside community. Wohltorf is actually the second richest city in Germany to live in--yea I picked ‘em good huh?

So in my sleepy little town that doesn’t have its own post office I went for a walk with our two dogs and the oldest daughter at 4 in the afternoon. It was a gorgeous day and the sun had finally come out after many months of hiding its face. We start out the gate with the dogs and I look to my left and watch the au pair next door letting the police come in. I call out “Alles klar?” Is everything alright? She shrugs that she doesn’t know what is going on. I just laughed because the mistress of that house is notorious for making up wild stories from a tiny portion of truth.
Emily and I headed behind our house where there are many lovely trails crossing over and along the Elbe. About twenty minutes into our walk a man calls out to us. We are at this point in the woods and not many people are around and he looks desperate, but not in a harmful way. He asks, all in German, if we had seen a young man in a black jacket. We said no and told him the direction we had just come from. We run into him a little bit further down the path and he asks for the location of the school and the park. Apparently he was trying to find this young man because he had stolen something from one of our neighbors cars and ran through my next door neighbors backyard. Although a little creeped out by a thief running around, we proceeded ahead.

We turned the corner near the bahn overpass and unaware I kept continuing while Emily stands still and starts to freak out. I see the dogs run off to our left in the brush and begin to taunt this ugly looking beast of an animal. I had no idea what it was--I had never seen something so ugly in my life except on tv. It looked like the massive rodents from Princess Bride. I thought we should just walk away when Emily runs and climbs up a tree. I thought it was absurd and I told her to get down. She told me it was a wild schwein and they could out run us and would eat us. The best thing to do was to climb the tree. So climb the tree I did. I had the two dog leashes and a bag of candy in my hands as I shimmied up this tree to get out of the way of this wild schwein. Eddie came to the base of the tree and began to whine--he is just a 7 month old puppy who has an appetite for my shoes. He’s not the brightest. Easy- the 7 year old dog, begins to get bored and starts swimming in the river. We waited for 5 minutes and it finally had gone away.

We arrived safely at home scared, exhilarated, and with a wonderful story to tell to an over-protective mother, who actually received it with laughter. Our tiny town is not so innocent. There have been several deaths of people falling in the river--this last spring break an old lady of 92 fell in. The Russian mafia actually had a hit out for audi cars and Wohltorf was there main stealing ground. Not the sleepy pocket community of Hamburg as it appears.

Then later that night Adena, the old au pair Maia, and I went to the Reeperbahn, Hamburgs main club strip. I had forgotten that my book had wrote that was the wildest part of town. The street next to it is where you can pick out your prostitute of choice who is sitting in a window. We did not go on that street thankfully. Reeperbahn is like Vegas. Bright lights, loud music, and drunk people everywhere. That is one of the only times I have been insulted for being American. To get into the clubs you either have to pay or have a ticket to get in. People are standing in the pedestrian street picking and choosing who they want to come into the club. You make your way through and choose the best offer you want. Well people somehow knew we were English speakers and automatically started speaking English to us and asking us where we are from. Believe it or not my accent has a bit of a British slant to it because most of the English learnt here is British English. Well, this one guy asked us where we are from and I said the states. He threw his hands up in the air with an gasp of exasperation and walked off. He turned around and made gun noises and a gun gestures with his hands as if he was shooting everyone. Well I had been drinking and I was completely offended so I said “Oh how rude! You don’t even know me!” He then replied “well do you like Obama?” I said yea I do. Then he said “oh, well that makes up for it.”

People here can be really rude that way and they don’t separate the idea of people and the government being different. Sometimes I just want to say I am from South Africa, but many times I want to loudly start singing “And I am proud to be an American…” But I am not ready to get shot and die just yet, so I keep my mouth shut.

Anyways, that night was crazy. To make a long story short, and to not completely expose myself on the internet, Adena and I had a lot of fun, met some fellow southerners from the states, but we drank too much and made complete fools of ourselves. Consequently I have banned myself from the Reeperbahn. Das ist verboten fur mich.

Words of wisdom- don’t go to the Reeperbahn drunk.