I'm Gonna Drink One More Than You.....

Well it has been another busy fortnight hence me not updating my blog for so long. With working full time, walking Roman so much and general constant partying it can sometimes be difficult to find the time to spend to update so I must apologise to anyone who is reading and hoping for more regular updates. These last two weeks, especially, have been full of parties including a big carnival called Fasching and a pretty much all weekend session in Hamburg.

Two weekends ago it was Fasching here in Germany and this generally means that everyone takes extra days off work around the weekend to dress up like idiots and get completely and utterly wasted. I didn’t dress up as I don’t really have any costumes to wear but I did adhere to the second rule quite spectacularly! On the Saturday I headed up to the pub as usual with Roman to watch the football before taking him home for his tea. Once Roman was sorted I had to walk back to Kirschhausen (I did some walking that day!) to meet up with all of my friends and head to the restaurant in the village for a crazy night of partying.

There were some really cool outfits on display and I managed to get a few of my friends to let me try on some of their props so there are now some really stupid photos of me on there for you all to laugh at in the Deutschland album. The partying went on pretty much all the night and I headed off home at about 3am as I was offered a lift and thought that was a better prospect than having to walk home! Once home, as I often do, I took Roman for a 3km walk as I hate leaving him for so long and him not being able to go out to the toilet. Yes, I am selfish for going out and leaving him whilst I party but at least I have the decency to walk him when I get back – even if it is sideways!

I finally got to bed sometime around 4am but wasn’t there for that long as the Sunday would be the main day of partying over the whole weekend. I got up at around 10am and arranged to meet Steffen and the others at around lunchtime in Heppenheim. I decided to take Roman for a walk before I went out so that he didn’t go crazy and then joined the others for the drinking to commence. To be fair, I still felt a little drunk from the night before after having drunk countless shots of spirits – don’t ask me what they were as I have no idea! – so I decided to pace myself a little in the first half of the day. The parade that came through the town was quite fun and they chucked loads of free treats into the crowd. At one point they even fired beer out of a hose over everybody and I got soaked – if I had known I would have opened my mouth to try and catch some!

After the parade had finished we all went to a couple of bars but everywhere was so busy so I decided to head home for a couple of hours so that I could have something to eat and freshen up. I also wanted to give Roman another decent walk so he didn’t feel like he had been abandoned. I do feel guilty for leaving him at times but if I walk him plenty I suppose its ok, right? I think I am lucky to be fair though as he is such an easy dog to own in that respect. When I am not walking him he pretty much sleeps constantly. Sometimes I think he has the perfect life – no stress, plenty of exercise, no job, free food and copious amounts of sleep. Sounds like bliss doesn’t it?

I headed out to meet up with Steffen and Nathalie just before 8pm and they were already in Apfelbaum so I went straight there. It was really busy there, as expected, and I had to queue up for about ten minutes to get in. By 9pm Steffen was pretty much ready to go home as he had not paced himself at all throughout the day and was completely and utterly smashed! He bought 10 glasses of cola apfelwein (you get it cheaper like that) and by the time he had drunk one Nathalie had drunk two and I had finished the rest off! We decided to get some food in the restaurant upstairs and that proved to be a pretty amusing experience.

When we got up to the restaurant it was pretty full and there was nowhere really for us to sit. Steffen decided to sit down with a table of girls whilst myself and Nathalie managed to get a couple of seats by the bar. We ordered our food and then proceeded to laugh at Steffen’s drunkenness. He had one of the girls sat on his lap, although he didn’t know them as far as I could see, and was singing Frankfurt football songs quite loudly – not exactly what you want if you are sitting down to eat! The food came for me and Nathalie and Steffen hadn’t even ordered his. He was trying to get us to go and sit down by a table but there wasn’t enough space there as there was already a couple sat eating. He decided to sit down with them anyway and started singing his football songs again!

I found the whole thing quite amusing and there were a couple of lads by the bar who were also laughing but the staff there didn’t seem to happy and I can’t even imagine what the poor couple who he had plonked himself down by were thinking – all I can say is that I hope they weren’t trying to eat in a romantic atmosphere as it would have been completely spoilt! Steffen eventually came back to the bar and ordered himself a pizza – it’s probably worth mentioning that before we had headed into the restaurant Steffen had just been to the toilets to be sick as he was so drunk. Whilst he was waiting for his pizza he decided to have a little sleep on the bar, much to the annoyance of the staff.

When his pizza did eventually come he managed to eat one slice before falling asleep on the bar again and I had to finish it off for him as he said he wanted to be sick again. After falling asleep again he finally realized that he had had far too much to drink and said that he was going to go home. Steffen is a top lad, I would say my best mate here in Germany by a long way, but he can be hard work when he is so drunk! At least he helps to provide an atmosphere though – much better than standing by a speaker looking at your feet!

Once he had gone my drinking session started and boy did I do a good job! After another round of cola apfelweins I decided to start on the Jack Daniels and tequila. Anyone who goes drinking with me knows what I am like on spirits – especially tequila and sambuca – but I really did myself proud that night. By the time I left at about 5am I had spent over 150€ on alcohol and was a little bit tipsy to say the least. I lost count of the number of drinks I had but in the three separate bars about five or six of the staff knew exactly what I was drinking every time I headed back to the bar so I must have had a lot!

Once more I walked Roman when I got home although I don’t really remember doing it but my Facebook status update told me I did and there was a 30 minute gap in activity – it normally takes me about 25 minutes to walk him so this seemed feasible! I was very glad that I had decided to book the Monday off work as, when I woke up, I felt a little delicate. It’s times like these that owning a Rottweiler really becomes difficult – if I had a small dog then a two minute walk around the block at a gentle pace would be quite enough but Roman needs about an hour a day at a quick pace so it makes it really hard when you have a major hangover. Still, that’s the responsibility I took on when I got him so it’s just something I have to do.

The rest of the week was pretty much just all work as I didn’t really go out through the week. It took me until Wednesday to really recover from the exploits of that weekend and before I knew it the week was over and another weekend was upon me. On Friday I finished at 1pm and Steffen picked me up from work so we could pop to the bookies and put a couple of bets on. I decided to stay home after that though as another friend, Leonard, had called me on the Thursday night to say he had a spare ticket for the Hamburg – Frankfurt game for the Saturday if I was interested in going. Hamburg is about 600km away from Heppenheim so we had to be picked up by a coach at 6.15am on Saturday so I wanted to get as early a night as possible.

The Saturday this weekend was all sorts of crazy and was something that I don’t think I could do every weekend – even if I am not far off that anyway at the moment! Steffen had kindly agreed to look after Roman for me whilst I was in Hamburg so, after feeding and walking him at 5.30am, I headed off to meet up with the coach. By 6.22am I was already drinking cola apfelwein and by 10am both myself and Leonard had already put seven or eight cans away. We stopped at a motorway service station to get a bite to eat so I bought a small bottle of Jägermeister to spice things up a little. By the time we got to the stadium in Hamburg just before 3pm I think a fair few of us were quite drunk!

On the journey they were playing all kinds of crap music – Germans seem to love crap music! – so I managed to get them to hook my iPod up to the stereo so I could give them a lesson in the merits of Dizzee Rascal. It went down quite well and there was certainly a bit of a party taking place on the back of the coach! I got on really well with everybody on the coach and I think I have made a fair few more friends this weekend. I am not sure when I will be able to go to an away game again – it’s not fair to ask other people to look after Roman too often and I would feel bad on him too – but I think it will certainly be another enjoyable experience.

The game itself wasn’t exactly the most exciting as the two teams played out a 0-0 draw but this was a good result for Frankfurt as Hamburg are flying high in the league and are in the top 4. I wasn’t really too impressed with Hamburg as they didn’t create many chances and Frankfurt looked to be the better side if anything. During the game we goaded a few of the home fans through the fence which was quite funny as about five or six of them got thrown out for trying to climb over the fence to get to us – idiots! There is only ever going to be one outcome when things like that happen but it was funny to see them behaving like that!

After the game we had to get a bus, then a train then another train to get into St Pauli’s party district. Luckily, the St Pauli firm had agreed to let Frankfurt have their pub and they had ordered in a load of apfelwein to keep the party going. We partied in there until almost 1am before we had to head back to the coach to go home. Leonard was completely smashed and turned down all my offers of tequila, apart from when we found a 99 cent bar, and he was sick when we were walking back to the coach. The youth of today, they just can’t keep up! We managed to find the coach – don’t ask me how! – and had about ten minutes to spare before we had to leave.

The journey home took about 9 hours and I managed to sleep from about 2am until about 6am before we started drinking again. More apfelwein flowed and Leonard cracked out his bottle of Vodka schnapps – I don’t know why but I was the only one who seemed prepared to drink it! By the time we got back to Heppenheim just after 9am I was pretty drunk again and also pretty tired but I had a massive craving for a McDonald’s breakfast – I haven’t had one in months and there’s nothing like a crazed drinking session to make you want crap food! After we had eaten some breakfast – I had a sausage and egg muffin meal and a bacon and egg muffin (bacon ones are crap but I hadn’t had one for years so thought I would remind myself what they were like) – we all went our separate ways home.

I arrived home at 10am and was yet again greeted by a very happy Roman. I decided to not even sit down after feeding him and instead put his lead on him so that I could take him for a walk. It was bloody hard work although Roman was really good and walked right by my side all the way without really needing to be told. I think he picks up on my general wellbeing quite well as he never seems to give me problems when I am a little worse for wear! It was no fun picking his poo up yesterday morning either but that’s another one of the responsibilities you must take on when owning a dog!

Once I was home I decided to have a bit of a mong day and put The Wire on using my iMac. I managed to watch three episodes before falling asleep for a few hours until 6pm. Once I woke up I fed Roman again and took him for another walk before deciding to cook myself some tea to help my stomach to not feel so empty! I managed to eat a full meal then a yoghurt and then a bowl of cereal too. After that I couldn’t really be bothered cooking again so I left it at that. I watched another five or six episodes of The Wire before deciding to go to bed at around 2am. I had to be in work this morning and had already decided I wouldn’t start until about 10am so I didn’t get up until about 9am today. It was harder work than normal…..