Christmas Clubbing

WOAH. It has been a whirlwind of christmas-ing. Carols, Hot Wine, too many chocolates, board games, Santa, gifts... and a rather unexpected event:

"What did you do on Christmas Day?"
"We went to the Club."

By far, the strangest Christmas I've ever had. The CLUB! Who goes dancing on Christmas? Everyone in Jena, Germany, apparently. At about 10:30 p.m. Tarek drives us to the city and leads us up a set of metal stairs into a warehouse. I was a bit skeptical from the start, but admittedly, it was better than I thought. There was a live band rocking out, and they were fabulous. King Creole, they call themselves. A trio of two guys and a very crazy girl. This girl was hilarious to watch, she even put on a moustache for one of her songs (which were all English by the way). She danced, sang and jumped about, all the while playing her drum kit (standing). Every now and then she would pull out yet another treasure from her small tickle trunk (like the moustache) and that made me laugh. After the band played, the music went from awesome to awful. One minute we were listening to great live music, the next we were transported to shitty american club, thanks to the earsplitting drum & bass beats and jay-z. It was alright for the first half an hour or so... we wuz shakin our boooties all da way home! But by FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING my brain hurt and I wanted to scrape my eyes out. So we dragged Tarek out of there and went home to our beds. Sleeping never felt so good!

Yesterday we headed to the town of Erfurt, to do a bit of sightseeing with a few friends. We saw a fairly important Cathedral to this area and caught up on our Catholic/Protestant history. Afterwards we sat down to eat at a restaurant, where we were served by a very friendly waiter. He was from Egypt, and told us a bit about his life story and asked us about ours... at the end of our meal he gave us all free Grappa. I never would've guessed that I would be making a new Egyptian friend, sitting in a Mediterranean restaurant in Germany on a brisk December afternoon. Life is full of surprises!

On another note: today is a very important day for us. We are headed to the city on a mission to sort out some "paperwork" that could make or break our travels. Keep your fingers crossed!