Anna Murray and I (with some well-timed help from Liz, Anna’s mom) took the hi-speed train to Cork, Ireland, and Cormac picked us up in his car right outside the station. We immediately got a little tour of Cork by car and foot. We walked around the University College Cork campus where Cormac goes to school, and saw some crazy old stones which had carvings in them that were supposed to be one of the oldest written languages in the world (called Ogham).
After that we went to a little barbecue at one of Cormy’s friend’s houses that had great food and some crazy accents. There was one girl in particular at the party who I often didn’t understand. We stayed pretty late and had some great food as well, and got back to Cormac’s house just in time to wake up his mom by accident when fumbling with the keys and the door. Nice.
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I lucked out with a ride to Duesseldorf from Lenny, Oki’s boyfriend, who was headed there anyways, and attempted to meet up with a couchsurfing host who I had already contacted in the city. After about an hour of waiting around and attempting to get in touch at the central traion station, I decided to phone up Reinhold (My former Cologne host) again, who was only about 50 miles away in Bruehl. Reinhold agreed to host me another night, and I was glad.
I ran to catch a well-timed rain to meet Reinhold. We caught some dinner at his favorite local pub, and watched the film. We got up early in the morning and took the train into town where I met another mitfahr straight to the airport. The mitfahr was supposed to go Brussels, but the driver took a liking to me and agreed to go pretty far out of his way to spare me the train costs.
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My mitfahr to Goettingen was just me and one other guy in a really nice rented Opel car. We definitely capitalized on the lack of speed limits on the Autobahn and got to Goettingen in record time. I asked him to drop me off at the train station, as I hadn’t yet contacted the Schlegels to know where they were. It was still early in the day, so I managed to cover a HUGE amount of ground on foot for the first few hours.
Eventually I managed to regain contact with the girls and met up with them in downtown Goettingen, which is mainly two little intersecting high streets. The whole city is based around the University, and isn’t very big, so it has an incredibly cosy feel.
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I got a mitfahr to Aachen with a girl who had lived in California for a year, so we spoke English for most of the ride. She agreed to drop me off at the train station in Aachen, since there wasn’t really much to do in the city itself. I hopped a train back to Cologne, where I had stayed about a week earlier. I couldn’t get into the hostel I had stayed in before, but they helped me get setup at a place accross town.
I introduced myself to my roommates in the hostel, and again found a german who had spent time living in the U.S.A.
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