Sunday was the first of several mandatory trips for my group, this one to Dresden. Dresden is historically significant mostly because the allies bombed the ever-loving shit out of it in WWII. The buildings there are gorgeous, like Disneyland except actually real, and all are sort of this patchwork between creme-brulee colored stone, and charred-black bricks. The black bricks come from the structures original material, scorched black by the incendiary bombs, and the prettier blocks are the places they needed to fill in the gaps. We were given a short tour and then left to our own devices, which as a direct result caused myself, Jon, and Jeff to be surrounded by a group of German guys (one of which wearing an "Ayran Brotherhood" shirt, another wearing a pink bunny costume) who were trying to raise money by selling what appeared to be the contents of a junk drawer, with condoms, tiny bottles of booze, and a porn mag all to be had for just a Euro each. Their sales tactics were aggressive to say the last, as after a long and excited sales pitch (in German) they all began chanting "KAUFEN! KAUFEN! KAUFEN! KAUFEN!" (buy). I negotiated a bright red bottle of vodka out of them for just 80 Euro cents, mostly to make them go away. Dresden was a 3-hour train ride away though, and despite having a dirty glass of cheap wine with some Israeli backpackers, I wasn't so thrilled about it.

On Monday we had the day off and visited the massive Kulturkarneval going on in Berlin. "Culture" mostly means "Africa." A few guys in the group dropped some coin on some African souvenirs  (from... Germany) and we tried some Banana Beer, but other than that, it was roughly equivalent to a state fair in the States. We have found, however, that much of the time beer is actually cheaper than water (as restaurants will not bring you anything other than bottled water).

I have found in my travels that a sincere effort at even extremely poor and stilted German makes German girls find you just adorable. Meeting girls here in this way is like fishing with dynamite. Suddenly I regret not working harder all those semesters in German class, because there's a gorgeous, blonde-haired blue-eyed girl nearly everywhere you look.

We're planning on heading to a pool that's built on a boat floating on the Elbe river, and last night I saw a very cool performance at a place called Bang Bang Club, a dive bar built under a bridge. Jeff, Sophie, and I expected a band but were instead treated to an hour and a half of one man, with a computer and a mixer, creating a techno song as he went. If you had told me what it would be beforehand I'd have written it off as the dumbest thing ever, but having seen it, I'm glad I didn't. The talent this guy must have to memorize what all these tracks sound like without headphones to sample them moments before, which ones work together and which ones don't, and how to blend it all seamlessly to take us from one completely different sound to another with no perception of the change must be enormous. And, it just sounded cool.

Tonight, we're all getting drunk and going salsa dancing. Veil spass.