A Pirate´s life for me

Once again, I haven´t updated this in a while, so here goes another long episode of the wild and crazy adventure that is my life. On boxing day Nikki and I actually maanged to get up super early, get the good breakfast, shower, pack, organise our stuff in luggage, and be otherwise very industrious before sitting down to the consuming task of smoking the rest of our weed. Here´s a tip: don´t get high before doing anything improtant. After some time in the smoking room, we went to the train station to inquire about trains to Hamburg, because I still didn´t technically have a plan for what I was doing that night. The train was crazy expensive, so we had to negotiate the ridiculously complicated (when high) metro sytem in AMsterdam, to get to the bus station and inquire about bus prices. The bus was half the cost of the train, so I bought a ticket on the spot, and we wentback tothe hostel to spend our last hours together. We spent them in the smoking room. Good times.
I departed for my 3pm bus, and then spent the next 8 hours sitting on the bus, listening to music, reading the Scarlet Letter, and sobering up. It´s kind of sad that in 3 days I reached a state where it was really wierd to not be high. Oh wait, did I say sad? I meant awesome!
Anyway, when I arrived in Hamburg, I stil hadn´t heard from my friend Sandra who lives here, so I found a hostel to spend the night. I made buddies with the reception guy, and we went and got food at a restaurant in Hamburg´s giant and wicked red light district. I had a baked potatoe and he taught me some German words. The hostel was really clean and nice but had a creepy, sterile, hospital-like vibe that really freaked me out, so thenext day I stored my stuff at reception and went to an internet café in search of better conditions. I emailed about a million couchsurfing requests, and stalked Sandra a bit more. I fianlly got a hold of her, and we met up for coffee. Sandra is anotehr one of my German friends that I met when she was working at Taboo in G-Hurst. It was SO good to see her again, and we had a big run and hug moment when we first saw each other at our predetermined meeting point. It turns out that Sandra is still brand new to Hamburg and hadn´t been able to find a place, so is stayig in very cramped staff housing at the moment andcan´t take in a guest. She kept saying she felt so bad that she couldn´t tkae me in, but I was like, "dude, no worries, I´ll figure it out" and as fate would have it, I got a response from a German fellow with a couch to spare, and had somehwere to go that night. So long creepy sterile hostel! Hello crazy German apartment with a bathtub on the balcony! Oh yes! Sandra and I spent some hours together catching up and then I met up with my new CS host Jens. He gave me a driving tour of Hamburg, then took me to his crazy apartment where we hung out and watched movies. Hamburg is a really crazy city. It´s very historical, but giant patches of city were obliterated in WWII, so it also has lots of newer development areas. It´s a very chaotic mix of new and old, industrious and seedy, quaint and noisy. It has the largest, most historical, and most famous harbour in Germany and is definitely a pirate city. Ya´rr!
The next day I searched all the Beatles in Hamburg sights online and did a homemade Beatles tour. I saw the clubs they played, the apartment they lived in, and the neighbourhood they used to hang in. All very, very exciting for me! Another Bealtes pilgrimage. After that I wandered the red light district (which is bigger than Amsterdam´s and Paris´) and then scooted over to the harbour to watch the sunset. Sunsetover nothing but harbour as far as the eye could see- very magical. Add a cup of glüwein in my hand (which I did add) and it was friggin fantastic! Then I met up with Sandra and a friend of hers for late dinner in the red light district. After that we poked around some pubs to see if I could drum up some work, then back to Jens´flat for more movie watching. He has a huge projection screen in his livingroom so it was like being in a private theatre. Very cool.
The next two days were spent almost entirely at the computer sending out resumes like rapid-fire. I am in super huge need of income right now and I´m trying my ass off to find work. Not surpirsingly, this was incredibly boring and monotonous, so I decided to take the bus to Berlin for New Year´s eve to give myself a little break and a lot of fun.
A little information: Berlin has one of the world´s largest New Year´s eve parties. They close down about 8-10 city blocks, erect 3 huge stages, put up party tents, bar tents, and close to a hundred vendors of food, drinks, drinks, drinks, and random stuff. It is fucking crazy! I met a German man and his Mother on the bus to Berlin that were heading to the party, so they helped me find my way there. On the walk over more and more people joined the huge group all walking to the main event. Germans are obsessed with New Years and also very obsessed with fireworks, and all of New Years Eve day and night everyone, everywhere was setting off fireworks in the streets. As they were walking, people would light fireworks and just drop them on the road behind them. I´ve never seen anything like it! Or heard anything like it! It sounded like you were walking through guerilla warfare. Crazy Germans!
I arrived at the big street party (finally) and started pushing my way through the crowd (between glasses of glüwein, of course) to get to the main stage for the big countdown. It took an hour for me to get within eyesight of the stage, and at the countdown I was smushed into a bunch of people and still not quite at the stage crowd. At midnight there was about 15 minutes of fireworks, which were beautiful, and then I finally made it to the main stage and got my dance on. I made friends, lost friends in the crowd, drank glüwein, bought chips, bumped into strangers, danced, danced, danced. I did a tour of the rave tents, drank more glüwein, and had a crazy night. At 6am I took a cab to the bus station for my 7am bus back to Hamburg. I had a broken sleep on the bus and arrived at 10am in Hamburg, bleary-eyed, cold, smelly, and tired. I stumbled off the bus and my first daylight sight of the new year was "fuck you" graffitied on a bus sign in front of me. I laughed heartily and took it as a sign of something very cosmically funny.
I took the subway to Jens´place and picked up my (heavy) bags, then took the subway to central station to go to my new CS host´s place. Unfortunately on the way over I lost my directions my new host Andreas´house. I had the address and phone number and nothing else. I called from a payphone, but the German phones are crazy expensive and I got cut-off before I could get the directions down. I eventually had a lightbulb moment, and sought out the tourist office, where they looked up the road, printed me a map of the area, showed me the subway stop to go to, and were otherwise awesome. I finally made it to Andreas´house at about 2pm, dumped my stuff on the floor, and collapsed. He had a polish-german couple staying with him for one more night, and they were in hte guestroom still sleeping off the effects of partying. He was really hungover and I was half-dead, so after talking for a bit, he went back to bed and I napped on the couch.
Tht evening I met the couple staying there when they eventually got up, as well as Andreas´neighbour. The day was spent recovering, chatting, then eating yummy homemade pizza. The next morning I got up early and did some sightseeing with the couple before their afternoon train home. We took a ferry (hilariously covered in Jagermeister adverts) to the beach and walked around. We also walked around the historical Storage City that used to be a seperate country from Germany so that people could ship lots of goods and store and sell them without paying taxes. Sneaky German pirates! The couple took off for their train and I went to the Mseum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg central to see the Lichenstein exhibit they had going on. The museum is incredible! Loads of different exhibits, big enough to be awesome, but small enough not to be overwhelming. I loved it! On the way back to Andreas´ place I picked up some food for dinner and a big bottle of glüwein. Andreas remember me professing my love of glüwein and also bought some whilst I was away (haha). So after I spent a few hours online looking for work, we cooked, drank 3 litres of glüwein between the two of us (oh my poor liver), cooked food, and watched a movie on Picasso.
The next day, after sleeping off the glüwein, Andreas and I went to a big outdoor fleamarket that they have in the artsy area of Hamburg on Saturdays. After poking around for an hour or so, we warmed up over coffee, then went to the Parliment building dwntown so I could see it. It´s a beautiful, old, ornate building, covered in statues and detail-work. Then went to an Indian supermarket to get curry fixings and a rice cooker for Andreas. When we got back to his place Andreas felt a cold coming on and laid down whilst I cooked curry and read a wicked book he loaned me. I spent the rest of the night looking for work online, then reading. The next day Andreas felt like absolute death, so I set out alone to go sightseeing. I went to the famous Hamburg tunnel- underwater walkway- and walked around it for a while. After that I poked around downtown, then went out for coffee. When I got back Andreas was sequestered in his room for the rest of the night, so I cooked, drank tea, and finished reading the book.
Today after breakfast and such I´ve come right to an internet cafe to check emails, find a new place to stay, and look for work. Adreas´computer is in his room and he seems upset that he has to host someone while being sick, so I´m trying to make myself scarce right now.