People Watching

The first weekend is coming to a close and I've enjoyed it, though it's been leisurely. I spent Saturday running errands with Mandy and napping until I headed over to Lissi's for the night. I find it so awesome that I can just hop on a train and be there :) I don't have to plan for months ahead of time and buy a plane ticket, I can just decide to go and then take the bus, a short train ride, and walk to her door. Going there will probably be one of my favorite parts of this trip. When I got there, she had mini personal lasagnas made too, super awesome. Mine had little cheese on it and only one kind of cheese. Probably the first time in my life I've enjoyed lasagna, it was delicious. Watched "Where the Wild Things Are" in German, interesting... really cute movie though. Then hung out with Jonas and his friends as they played a poker tournament. I didn't want to pay the 3E entrance and they were half way through by the time I joined so I watched this time around.

Today we went to the Trudel Markt, a giant flee market with all sorts of useful and mostly useless things that one can barter for. I made off with a scarf and belt (since my pants are becoming loose) for 7,50E ($10). Not a bad deal. It was fun to walk around and look at things, see my facebook album for pictures. Lissi and Alfred let me take an entire kitchen's worth of stuff (awesome) back to the dorm so I can now cook :) Eating out isn't that expensive though when I do it with Mandy because we tend to split entrees. She doesn't eat much and I get bored eating only one thing so it totally works out and saves us both money ha ha. Like tonight: ordered a pizza that was 26 cm, 8 small slices. I ordered a salad also so I only ate two slices and saved two, Mandy got the other four. The pizza was 5E total so 2,50 each and for two meals, that's about as cheap as it gets. Awesome. We rock. Now I'm headed out to meet Gwen and others, should be the first time I'm wearing heels anywhere here :)

One of my favorite things about Germany is the public transportation and in general one of my favorite past times is people watching. Public transportation provides an endless stream of strangers to observe and make up stories about so I love taking the train. On the way to Lissi's yesterday I encountered a man on the 16 who was carrying a bouquet of flowers and was traveling alone. This man appeared older, possibly in his early 70's, about the age of retirement. I started to daydream about where he was going and who the flowers were for... Maybe he's a widower and he's off to visit his wife's grave. Maybe he's visiting his daughter for a Saturday evening dinner. Maybe he's recently retired and has been getting in his wife's way just sitting around the house, so he decided to go out for a stroll and is returning home for dinner with some flowers to say he's sorry but he loves her. Maybe he's brought her flowers every Saturday and it's become something lovely that she expects, a bright spot in her weekend, some springtime in her winter each week. I imagine he kisses her on the cheek as she takes them to put in the pot and then hugs her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist as he's done for probably fifty years.
I hope he's gotten them to celebrate something.
One can only imagine...

One can also only hope that this man is happy. That everyone's story is a happy one. Though some are not.