grill. I got there really early because the weather was so nice and I knew it was going to be crowded. I just put down my blanket and laid down for about an hour before Gleyson showed up with the grill. After a little while Frederic showed up, too, and later Elena and Aljona showed up with sparkling wine to celebrate Elena's birthday. Fred had to leave at some point to go home and to find his friends, who were here visiting from France for the weekend. He was supposed to be gone for about an hour or so, but he ended up never coming back because things got complicated. Rosaria was there for a little while, too.At about 10 or 10:30 at night we were out of beer, so they sent me to the Kiosk down the street to buy some. There were 4 people in our group at the time, and we were still expecting Fred to come back with his friends, so I figured the best thing to do was to buy a case of beer so that we didn't have to go back and buy more later. So I'm walking back to the park with this case of beer, and
it started raining. I mean, really raining. When I got back to where all of our stuff was, the girls had left and it was just Geu standing there with a really sweet woman that he had started talking to when she came by to collect our empty bottles. That's when the full force of the thunderstorm kicked in, and we had to quickly pack up all of our stuff and drag it to the bar that was really close to where we were so that we could huddle under one of their umbrellas. Everything was completely soaked! My hair was dripping wet, my clothes were wet (and I was wearing white shorts, which is awesome), and I was wrapped up in my blanket, which was also wet. Good thing it was a summer storm, because it would really have sucked if it was cold. Once the rain stopped, we just went home. There wasn't really any point in staying there, and we were exhausted, so we called it a night.Yesterday was a good day, too. I went into Köln again to meet up with Frederic and his friends at the same place we were on Friday. I brought all of the beers (minus the one that shattered when the bike fell over) and the rest of the grill meat/vegetables with me for them to grill because today was supposed to be the start of our fast and I needed to get rid of everything. One of Fred's friends at one point declared that I was "the perfect woman" because I showed up with
beer and a soccer ball. I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, we hung out there for a while, played soccer, attempted to walk across a tight rope (which is really freaking hard!) and just had a good time. Then late last night we went to Fred's apartment to eat some dinner and watch the fireworks. Last night was the Köllner Lichte, which is a fireworks show on the Rhein basically for the sake of having fireworks. They do it every year in July. Afterward we headed to Altstadt to hang out at an Irish pub. We had to take a taxi, and it probably wasn't so smart for Fred and I to stick together in one taxi and send the 4 non-German speakers in the other one, but it all worked out ok. We were at the pub until almost 5 in the morning. It was about 5:30 when we got back to Frederic's apartment, and we all just crashed. Everyone was so tired. This morning (or rather afternoon) we all headed back to the river to get something to eat before they had to go back to the airport to head home.The next part of my day today actually kind of sucked. I got off the train here in Königsdorf and went to go get the bike to ride home, only to find that the bike wasn't actually there. Yeah, someone stole the bike from the train station last night. Freaking awesome. So now we need to replace the adapter to hold the child seat on the back of the bike because it was on this bike when it was stolen, and we need to replace the bike and/or fix the other broken old one. And by we I mean me, because I'm the jackass that left the bike over night at the station. Good times.
