Peter

Wednesday night was a party for teachers and speakers of German as a foreign language at this place called the Rosenkeller - apparently it's more than 400 years old, making it the second oldest student club in Germany. Anyway, for 2.50 euro we got a bratwurst and a beer, and went down through a series of creepy tunnels into a network of stone rooms.

I'm going to take this moment to explain that earlier in the day I had a German lesson. My tutor, Luise, pretended to be a man named "Peter" who was attempting to pick me up at the bar. This was sort of tricky, since I can do little more than introduce myself and ask how someone is. Eventually, it was established that asking "Wie geht ist dir?" while raising the eyebrows with a brief glance at the crotch could be interpreted as a pick-up line.

Anyway, so while drinking beer number one I met some classmates of Jenny and Matt. I told them about my problem with the German toilet and I think they agreed. Here's a picture for you of Matt, who Christian calls "The epitome of a heterosexual male." I'll leave it to you to decide.


It actually isn't a very good picture. But I don't think he'll read this, so it's just as well.

During the next beer Jenny and I decided to find Peter. We decided a good way to go about this was to ask every guy meeting a minimum threshold of attractiveness (and by this I mostly mean heigt) and asking them "Bist du Peter?" It turns out this isn't an effective way of meeting men. Mostly they said no, and the conversation ended.

Meanwhile, Jenny and I were getting progressively bolder and at some point she offered me 10 euro to grab a guy's ass. Then Matt said he'd match it. I mean, 20 euro people! At the current exchange rate that's $31.34. Anyway, I did it. Here's the picture Jenny took right after:

That guy in the background? He looks happy, but really he was annoyed. So in order to see if it was just me, I offered 10 of my new euros to Jenny's German teacher (Mattias) to do the same thing. It turns out it wasn't me. That guy just doesn't like it. I thought Mattias might get his ass kicked. Anyway, we left muttonchops guy alone after that.

Meanwhile, we continued to ask men if their names were Peter. And they continued to say no. After a while a guy (whose name was Stefan, I think) came to talk to us. We asked him about German dating customs. I also got permission to post his picture if I sent him a link to the blog, so here's Stefan-Peter:


The things that I remember about him include 1) that he's learning to teach German as a second language 2) that he live in one of the nice sections of Jena, and 3) that he thought Jenny and I were a bit over the top.

The night more of less ended there. Matt and I decided we were tired and that it was time to go home. And so we did.