Thursday, October 21
More Alcohol? Don't Mind If I Do
Yes, more drinking tales. The end of last week was a little over the top, if truth be told, but I'm telling myself that it was allowed because now we've started classes we can't go out drinking all the time, or to that extent. He says, going out tonight. Dammit.Last Saturday then. What a day.
It started by trying to find somewhere to watch the Arsenal game. I'd been informed by the good people at the Arseblog Forums that it was on Irish TV, and I also knew that the two Irish pubs here in Heidelberg definitely had that channel. Quids in, my first Arsenal game for a good few weeks. I was having withdrawal symptoms, I swear.
Unfortunately, the first one I went to with Jamie, The Dubliner, had an utterly inept barmaid, who didn't know her ass from her face. She was German, and I explained (in German!) that it was on an Irish channel, and that they had the Irish channel in the pub, but she didn't want to know. Wait till the boss gets back at 5, she said.
Fucking hell, the game will be almost over by then! After a bit of ummming and ahhhhing, we headed over the bridge to O'Reilly's, altogether a better pub. We got there, and it didn't look promising. There was no football to be seen on the big screens, just adverts or something, so I asked Johnny (the barman. Yes, I'm on first name terms with the barman in less than 6 weeks) if they had the Arsenal game on.
Johnny is the most intense, rude and crazy person I've ever met. He's brilliant with it, and will quite happily swear at you for your entire stay in the pub. Fucking good laugh, to be honest. His response when I asked about the Arsenal game? "How many fookin' screens do yer wan' it ahn?" It turned out that they did indeed have it on the big screen, much to my relief.
The worst thing about watching the Arsenal game is that I had a beer. I'd said to Jamie whilst in The Dubliner that I was planning to go without alcohol for as long as possible in the foreseeable future, what with uni starting and everything. I really meant it too: my alcohol consumption level has been startling since I arrived in Germany, and Thursday night's amount was just stupid. I need a break from it.
Again, he says, going out tonight.
My giving up lasted all of 45 minutes. We got into O'Reilly's, found a table to watch the game, and then as soon as the waitress came over to take our order, I found my lips instinctively ordering a beer for me. Dammit, I didn't even fucking think about it!
I headed home after the game, and was planning a quiet night in when I was informed of Beer Pong at a friend's place. Bang goes my quiet night in. I'm such a sucker for beer pressure, I need to learn to say no to alcohol. I didn't take any beers with me, because I knew I still had a few there from last time, and in any case I wasn't up for drinking too much.
For some reason, though, one of my friends kept topping up my glass with Pink Stuff. Pink Stuff is legendary: it's strawberry sparkling wine, is only 99cents per bottle (per bottle!), and gets you very drunk very quickly, because it's so easy to drink. After 3 or 4 tumblers of the Stuff, I was up for Beer Pong, or more accurately, Pink Stuff Pong.
I can't be arsed to describe Beer Pong here, but it's a great game. Google for it, you'll soon see what all the fuss is about. I'd never played it before I moved out here, but I've been introduced to it by a few American friends. Suffice to say it fucking rocks.
I played two games in a row, and was on my way to being drunk by the end of the second. It was at this point that someone suggested going to Bar Drei. Damn them, whomever it was. I blame them entirely for my drunkenness later that evening.
We hopped on a bus, and as we arrived I thought to text a friend who lived nearby, sort of in the hope that she'd also bring along the girl that I might possibly be slightly interested in thinking about getting to know a bit better. To my surprise, both texted me back! I could be getting somewhere, possibly. Maybe.
I spent most of the evening (well, between drinks) chatting to the girl that I might possibly be slightly interested in thinking about getting to know a bit better (she needs a catchier name for here. Does GTIMPBSIITAGTKABB work?), which was great. We were sat at the bar, and were also talking with this random German guy for a bit.
I think (memory is iffy) that he had studied in Wales for a little while, so he tried to speak to us in English, whereas we answered in German. I like conversations like that, because I don't speak German as often as I should do most days. No idea what we spoke about, but I remember being a nice guy. I was a bit pissed though, so probably didn't make the best impression.
I remember a load of my friends leaving sometime around 3, but I was still going strong, still chatting to GTIMPBSIITAGTKABB (yes, I'll work on a suitable name), and still drinking. As it happened, they'd gone up to my mate's kitchen for a round of sandwiches, just like we did on Thursday night. By about 4 I decided that I was hungry, so I rang Jamie to get him to come back down to the bar, just to give me the opportunity to talk him into making
What does the next paragraph contain? Can you feel the tension?!
A trip just to fetch some bread in fact turned into half an hour of us two on her bed. Just looking at photos though! Oh, how I toy with your expectations. Nope, nothing happened, but it was cool to just sit around and listen to her talk about all of her friends back home. I think I mentioned that she comes from a town back in Wiltshire which is only 10 miles from mine, which is quite spooky.
So no, nothing happened. Could something happen? I don't know, I'll have to get back to you on that one. We'll see. Would I like something to happen? Of course I would, she's a great girl, really nice, and stunning to boot. I'd be a fool not to want it to happen, but yet again my shyness in this kind of situation lets me down. I'm still inept around girls I like. For shame.
Anyway, after half an hour or so of chatting, we headed back into Bar Drei, met a slightly forlorn and abandoned Jamie, and went up to his place for sandwiches. The man is a legend, this time he made me a bacon and egg buttie, with the egg cooked to perfection. You know the kind, when the yolk bursts as you take the first bite, and then runs all over your fingers. Yes, a great way to impress a girl you like, I know.
We stayed up there for a little while, chatting with a few Italian guys about this and that. I already knew one of them from football, but he quickly passed out on the table. That left us talking about religion and philosophy, the typical pissed topics, but in German. Theology in German whilst pissed? Don't mind if I do.
Just a typical, run of the mill Saturday night then. The walk home did nothing to sober me up, and I slept it until gone 4 on Sunday afternoon. No hangover, but then you'd expect that with waking up that late. In my defence, that was still only just over 10 hours sleep. I'm not lazy, I swear.
And so ends yet another post about drinking. Christ, those 3 days were completely and utterly dictated by alcohol. I've got out of that cycle now, thank fuck, but seeing as my 4-day weekend (more on my timetable and uni stuff in another post) has just begun, and Beer Pong is once more afoot, it could all go downhill again.
Very quickly.
Very quickly indeed.