The Girl Who Ate Everything

If you're thinking, "Hey, haven't you been writing about your trip to Germany for like the last five months?" the answer is yes, followed by a sigh of failure. BUT I'M STILL CHUGGING AWAY! I WILL CHUG UNTIL I FINISH/DIE. For an overview of my trip that took place from April 5 to 12, check out this introductory post. I'm a total noob when it comes to Berlin and German history, and all German translations I've presented are done with Google Translate; if I've written anything that's wrong, please let me know!

This looks sort of abandoned.

The outdoor train platform in Falkenberg featured an abandoned-looking food stand. This seemed worse than having nothing. "Nothing" could say, "This is a small, quiet town," while "abandoned something" could say, "This is a small, quiet town...where murders happen. And feeding people who were about to die felt unsettling, so we put an end to that. The feeding, not the murders."

But not long after I pondered this highly improbably situation, life appeared. And the life was friendly. And came bearing cameras.

A group of football fans approached Kåre (boyfriend), Diana (longtime friend), and me (me), asking if we could help them take their photo. They had stopped in Falkenberg on the way to their respective homes from a game between Energie Cottbus, their club of choice, and Hansa Rostock. ...A game we later found out Cottbus had lost, but we couldn't tell from the group's smiles and cheers.

Paul and his didn't-cost-a-buttload ticket. [Photograph: beatsinthebox]

After we got settled on the train to Berlin, we recognized one of the fans as he walked into our car. Rather than wave and keep on walking—which is probably what I would've done because I'm unreasonably afraid of most humans—Paul was too friendly to ignore us, and he sat across the aisle for a good chat. A chat that included being told about the metric buttload of euros we would've saved if we had bought unlimited train tickets instead of single use tickets. Oops.

Our lives would be pretty much the same if we hadn't become friends with Paul, but I can't help laying out the trail of "ifs" that helped make it happen. (I'm speaking as someone who almost never makes friends with random people I meet in real life. Because I am made of the aforementioned fear.) If we had decided to go to Dresden on another day, we wouldn't have met him. If we didn't leave Dresden when we did, we wouldn't have met him. If Paul's friend hadn't wanted to take a different route after the game, Paul wouldn't have ended up in Falkenberg. If more people had been on the train platform, we may not have ended up taking the group photo. If we had been sitting in a different car, Paul may not have passed us. And so on and so on and so on.

So while Falkenberg isn't where anyone would want to be at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, I'm glad our four-hour train ride from Dresden to Berlin brought us through there.

Moritzburg

Come along and let me show you the sights of Moritzburg!

Schloss Moritzburg

...Ok, I'm done. [dusts off hands]

Well. There's more than that, but that's the most famous thing in this picturesque village of 8,300 people. And a baroque palace on a man-made island surrounded by a lake is quite a thing—hence why, at Diana's suggestion, we took a 30 minute bus ride from Dresden to get there.