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The New Year's Story Part 1

Me and Conni in front of the Cologne Cathedral

Note: Once again with the delays. Sorry folks, in addition to work-related issues, I've been battling a nasty stomach flu which has rendered me incapable of keeping food/nutrients down or in. I know this is probably way too much information for my blog. However, it's also sort of fitting, because the following entries are probably going to get a little long and a little personal. So, sit tight. This might take awhile...

Frosty and I left Giessen/Annerod on Sunday (the 28th) and headed down (over to?) Cologne, where we planned to ring in the new year. We felt tense after spending the last five days with his relatives and even though we were giving up the privacy (bow-chicka-bow-bow) of the basement guest room in his grandparents' home, we were looking forward to relaxing with friends and partying and so forth.

Originally, our New Year's plan was to celebrate in Warsaw (Poland) or in Dresden. Then later, Warsaw was replaced with Leipzig (for financial reasons and general logistics problems). Finally, Leipzig was rejected for plans to spend New Year's in Cologne with Atze, Frosty's homeboy from Dresden who had moved to Cologne a mere six months ago.

You might recall, I lived in Cologne for two months in 2004, so I was all sorts of excited about this plan. I wrote to the peeps that I still knew in the city, but alas, all but one of them responded that they wouldn’t be in town when I would be there. LF, a good friend from way back in the Rudolf-Laun-Haus/barteam days, moved to Cologne a while back and now works for Ford. He was going to be in the city for New Year's and offered to host Christine (my former student who's currently in Germany on an exchange program) and her friend Courtney (also a former student of mine, who was in Germany visiting Christine). LF becomes vital later in this story.

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