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. It’s also packed with tradition, as the twins were able to point out with little anecdotes about the artefacts dotting the city.

We made it back to the Schlegels’ apartment which was a really nice flat, and hung around for a bit watching some German-subtitled MTV. It turns out MTV is available almost everywhere in Europe, and almost all of the shows the channel broadcasts make Americans look completely stupid. After a couple episodes of “Date My Mom,” or whichever show it was at the time, the Schlegel’s best friend “Oki” turned up, whose name may have actually been Nicole, but “Nicole” (or whatever Oki’s name was) was only mentioned the one time I asked where “Oki” came from, so it clearly didn’t stick!

The Schlegels were determined to show me a good time in Goettingen, so on my first night in we were headed out to go clubbing. We met up with a bunch of their other friends and had a few drinks by the little canal that runs through the town before heading out to the club. We tore up the club for several hours and ended up taking a taxi home at around 6am, after a trip to the 24hour Subway across the street of course.

Still determined to show me a good time, for my second night in Goettingen we were headed out to go clubbing again. We met up with their crew again in the same part of town, and went to a funky and crowded basement club. I will be the first to admit that I was pretty wasted, but it was still an enjoyable night despite the 3 hours where new memories were not formed. There were lots of people I met in and around the club, but like many of the people I meet on this whirlwind trip, they quickly become only memories. I got separated from the group at some point in the night around 3am and stayed out for a few more hours, but made my way back across town to the Schlegel’s apartment by 7:20am. Not bad.

The next day in Goettingen, the twins, Oki and I went out to a little bar and grill type place by the canal in downtown. The restaurant clearly was trying to be someone “American” style, not meaning with flags and stuff, but you could feel it in the design of the menus, and the name: Mr. Jones. Naturally I ordered a big cheeseburger.

Somewhere during the course of our meal we were joined by a couple of other friends who were all catching up with the Schlegels, as many other encounters over the days included. They had just recently returned from a year away from Goettingen, with the majority of their time spent in California, so everyone was curious about what they had been up to.

We had some cocktails and cruised around the city at night, doing limbo under random objects, and playing out other shenanigans as we pleased. We got some sweet mid-air photos, had our own dance party, and witnessed a story being told to a sleeping audience. It went by in a blur, but my party-time in Goettingen had already come to a close, and I had to head to Charleroi, Belgium to catch my flight to Dublin, Ireland.