Christmas 2007 Pt. 1

As most of you probably already know, I spent Christmas and New Years with a friend of mine, Rolf, that I met in Wyoming last year. He was an exchange student. We actually did a lot, so I’m going to be breaking it down into parts because I’m lazy and don’t really want to type everything up at one time. So here’s the first part.

Christmas break officially started on December 22, but I left for Rostock on the 21st because it was a Friday and I don’t have any classes on Fridays. Rolf’s university is in Rostock. I left early in the morning (about 10) and arrived at around 3 in the afternoon. Of course, since it’s Germany and because it was the shortest day of the year, it was already dark. Rolf then drove me back to his apartment where we sat around for a little while and chatted with his roommates and a couple of other friends of his. After a while, we decided to go to the Rostock Weihnachtsmarkt which is an event where a bunch of small shops are setup downtown and people can walk by them and buy things. We had one here in Oldenburg too, but the one in Rostock was much bigger. There I had a bratwurst and some glühwein (which is warm red wine that tastes like hot cider that Germans drink at Christmas time). We weren’t there for long because it was really cold outside and all of the shops are setup outside.

Since we were going to celebrate Christmas that night with his friends in Rostock before everyone went home for the break, we got out the whiskey and coke and, of course, the beer once we got back to his place. After we were all quite drunk and had enough sitting around and talking (I can quite frankly say that drinking can lead to atrocious German on my part), we left for a club on the harbor that the university had rented out for a university Christmas party. We were there for a while (I have no idea how long, I was too drunk to notice the time), then we decided to leave. When we arrived, we had our coats hung up at a counter specifically there for that purpose. Your coat gets a tag with a number taped to it and you get a tag with the same number so that you can get the right coat back. Well, when we went to go get our coats to leave, I discovered I had at some point lost my tag. By then I was extremely drunk and I couldn’t help but think that the entire situation was hilarious. I tried to describe my coat so I could get it back, but they still wouldn’t give it back to me. Eventually one of Rolf’s roommates who went to go look for my tag came back with it. He had found it on the dance floor. That was lucky. After that, I don’t remember much of that night. I remember going to get something to eat (a döner), but that’s it. I woke up on Rolf’s bedroom floor the next morning.

After waking up, we watched TV for a while. I felt a little sick and threw up a couple of times, then I felt fine the rest of the day. I don’t know if I would call it much of a hangover though since I was perfectly fine after throwing up. We then left for his hometown of Lübz after I felt better. Lübz is a very small town in the middle of nowhere. What I didn’t realize though was that his family doesn’t actually live in the town, but rather in a small village of 12 houses about a 15 minute drive outside of Lübz. Anyway, we drove there and arrived after dark, so I didn’t actually get to see the village until the next day. The house was quite large. Rolf had 2 rooms to himself: a bedroom and a living room. His parents had their rooms: a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. His grandmother who also lives with them and she had her own rooms to herself: a bedroom, 2 living rooms and a kitchen. Rolf let me sleep in his bedroom and he slept in another room. To get to the room he slept in, you had to go through one of his grandmother’s living rooms, her kitchen, then through a series of doors and hallways. He didn’t want me to worry about going to and from it.

Of course while I was there, I got a bit of history about the village and, of course, the house. All of the houses in the village sit on a farm. Rolf and his dad explained to me that the land that the people in the village now own used to belong to a rich family until Hitler came into power. They explained that one of the things that Hitler did to become so popular among the poor was to take the land from the rich and divide it up amongst the poor. Well, Rolf’s grandfather was a recipient of the piece of land that Rolf’s parents now live on. The means that essentially the village was founded by Hitler. Anyway, the house was an old farm house. Up until about 15 years ago or so (I forget exactly what they told me now), it used to consist of only a few rooms (the rooms Rolf’s grandmother now occupies) and the rest used to be for animals. The 2nd floor was for hay and had 3 tiny bedrooms that were made into one room that is now Rolf’s living room. Since Rolf’s parents don’t farm, they decided to renovate. Everything is now finished and the land they own is rented out to someone else in the village to use as farm land. The whole house is now finished and quite large.

Anyway, the night Rolf and I arrived at his parents’ house, we ate dinner with his parents and he introduced me to his grandmother that night. Then we watched a little bit of TV and went to bed. The next day we didn’t really do much. We slept in and when we woke up, we had lunch with his parents and his grandmother. For them, the biggest meal is lunch instead of dinner. Other than that, we just sat around, watched TV and didn’t do much at all. One of the guys that Rolf knows from one of the other houses in the village came over and hung out with us. That night we went to his house and watched soccer with his dad. For those that care, we watched Real Madrid vs Barcelona. I don’t remember who won. We also helped Rolf’s parents setup their Christmas tree. The major difference I noticed with German Christmas trees is that they just decorate them with generic ornaments and everything is the same color. They had red ornaments. One of the questions Rolf’s mom asked me was what color our ornaments are back home. I had to explain that each member of the family has their own ornaments and we don’t have a color scheme like here in Germany.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll write more probably tomorrow.