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Saturday, January 24, 2009

The New Year's Story Part 7

After our power nap, I felt completely refreshed. It was amazing, it's like we got a completely fresh start. LF offered to drive us to the store for supplies (like new toothbrushes) and I offered to pay for the groceries, since he now had two extra people in the apartment.

I felt bad for Conni, because like I said, we love Conni and we basically abandoned him in Crazytown. Conni kept trying to get a hold of us to mediate the Atze situation and see if there was even the most remote of possibilities for all of us to celebrate together.

Eventually, Frosty made arrangements for us to meet up with Conni before midnight -- with the condition that he couldn't bring Atze or his friends along. Still, Frosty told me that Atze was probably going to show up anyway, because that's the kind of jerk that he is.

I continued with New Year's Eve preparations. I had planned to cook Spinach-Artichoke Cheesy Tortellini (both Frosty and Christine are vegetarian). Next, we would do some Bleigießen (which is a tradition where you melt little metal figurines, dump the liquid metal in water, and try to distinguish some sort of shape to divine your fortune for the new year). Then we would, of course, watch Dinner for One before heading into town.

That plan went off without a hitch. Shortly before 11pm, we left the apartment. LF was out with group of his acquaintances eating raclette, but said he would call around or shortly after midnight to see where we were and possibly meet up.

Conni called us again and said that he was ready to meet and to make things easy (since none of us were really in a position to pick out any other meeting place) we decided that we would just go to the cathedral.

It wasn't as crowded as I had imagined (or at least by Hamburg standards), but as is with German New Year's Eve traditions -- people were shooting off tons of fireworks all around us. We stood at the front entrance way to the cathedral and waited for Conni. He arrived about 15 minutes before midnight...

with Atze and Lina following closely behind.

Determined not to let our night be ruined, Frosty and I pretty much pretended that Atze wasn't even there.

At midnight there were hugs, kisses, champagne and fireworks. It was lovely.

LF called to tell us that his crew was heading over to a gyros place to grab a bite to eat and we plans to meet up there. Once we arrived, I explained that Atze had come along, even though we had told him that he wasn't welcome. LF had heard about all the drama thus far, but was about to witness the spectacular climax.

Unfortunately, it was at this precise moment that my bladder was full to bursting, so I personally missed out on the scene. However, I took statements from everyone present and all of the versions matched up.

LF's friends were sitting at a table. Frosty, Conni, Courtney and Christine were sitting with them. Atze and Lina were outside of the shop having an argument. Later, they both came inside. I was peeing the whole time this went down.

Atze tried to join in on whatever conversation was going on referring to Lina as his girlfriend, to which she apparently replied, "Ex-girlfriend."

Then, in a move that I would have paid to see over and over again... Lina stood up, walked over to Atze (who was sitting on the outside seat of the table), grabbed him around the collar and pulled him out of the seat and on to the ground before running out of the eating establishment. He then ran after her.

When I came out of the bathroom, I hadn't even noticed that they weren't there. But everyone told me that I had just missed the most amazing thing.

LF and his friends got up to go to the club and we went with. The cover was 10€ and the club supposedly specialized in rock music, two things that Frosty and Conni weren't all too keen on.
A few days later, I found out that the club was actually playing hip-hop that night, which is why LF didn't stay that long and is ultimately how he got separated from Courtney and Christine.

That said, I could understand why Conni and Frosty didn't want to go inside, so while LF went in with his friends and the two Americans -- Frosty, Conni and I decided to party Pfadfinder-style, buying beer from kiosks and using whatever elements we could find in nature to make our own fun.

However, before we could do that, the on-going saga of the Atze drama reared its big ugly head one last time. The couple stood arguing outside the club and Frosty and Conni intervened, trying their damnedest to convince Lina to just leave Atze once and for all and go back to Dresden, her parents and school.

At one point, Conni broke down. After spending the entire day alone with Atze and Lina, he simply couldn't take it anymore. It wasn't the pathetic crying witnessed earlier that day coming from Atze, but rather very weary "I don't know what the fuck to do about this extremely fucked up situation" tears. We all kind of felt like that. I gave him a hug and told him to come back with us to LF's place. Normally, I wouldn't just like invite someone to someone else's apartment -- but I felt like it was kind of an emergency and that I could explain & smooth it over with LF.

Most of our concern was for Lina, though. I couldn't take her with us. I didn't want to take the chance that Atze would follow us back to LF's apartment and, at any rate, once we all left Cologne, she would have to go somewhere else anyway.

We stood outside for a long time and in spite of the tears and shouting going on, it mostly seemed like we were talking in circles. I told the boys that I wasn't going to spend the first hours of the new year dealing with this crap and then I told Lina one last time that she deserved better than this and that Atze was mostly likely never going to change.

With that, Frosty, Conni and I started to walk away.

Atze and Lina followed, staying several meters behind us.

The three of us got onto a train.

Atze and Lina got on the train too.

Conni asked where he was going, to which Atze simply replied, "Home."

"But you live in the opposite direction, dude."

We got off at the next stop, the couple still following, but maintaining a slight distance. We made our way to another train stop and got on. They got on the same train again.

"Just go home, Atze."

Again, we exited the train at the next stop. This time, the two of them stayed on. I don't even know what train it was or if it was the right direction for them. I honestly didn't even care anymore.

Frosty, Conni and I had a couple more beers and some delicious 1€ slices of pizza before heading back to the apartment. As luck would have it, Christine and Courtney were on the exact same train as us -- so we all ended back up at LF's place at the same time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i just can give the compliments back!
i love you ravs, you´re great, keep on posting