The Aryan Goes Home

The Aryan Goes Home

I hereby swear that I have recounted this story with as much accuracy as possible. I have gotten the input from multiple people involved and have pieced it together thusly:

As you might have guessed from my name my family comes from the bratwurst-loving, beer-swilling, occasionally ornery nation of Germany (sidenote: Hitler was a huge UGA fan). We still have lots of family over there and I occasionally visit them. I went over after I graduated from U of M to spend a few weeks traveling around and getting hammered in various regions of Europe. One of my main stops was the University of Hamburg. I have two cousins who attend U of H: one cousin is a legitimately nice human being who goes out of her way to do whatever she can to help people (GoodCousin); the other is a complete shit-bag degenerate alcoholic loser (BadCousin). Naturally, I spent all my time there with him. I was spending a few days crashing with BadCousin and the people he lived with. We had been drinking since basically the moment I arrived (in fact when BadCousin and Co. met me at the train stop BadCousin was visibly swaying and leaning on his friend for support…it’s obvious we’re related.

While hanging out with BadCousin I was introduced to all of the German college drinking games and traditions. They aren’t that different than the American ones, speed and quantity of consumption are always the keys to success. There was one tradition that I found hilarious and will briefly share here. It’s called “Nassmachen” which literally translates to “wetting”. Essentially, when someone is passing out or passed out from alcohol consumption these kids literally will piss on them in the crotch region and then slap them awake and accuse them of pissing themselves. The disoriented and incredibly intoxicated victim often assumes this must be the case and runs off while everyone laughs. BadCousin had a friend, Freddy, who was regarded by all as the most creative “Nassmachen” participant. Freddy promised to put on a good show for me and he certainly delivered. One of their roommates was teetering on the brink of blackout for quite a while (I should add that these kids definitely impressed me with their drinking capacity as a group), and he finally stumbled up the stairs and went into his room and passed out. At this moment Freddy told me and some of the other people that were still (barely) forming memories at that point to follow him upstairs for the show. Freddy then proceeded to break into the kids room using his student ID, he pissed all over the kid while he was sleeping in his bed, he then came back to the door, closed it, locked it, and climbed out the kids window and down the fire escape. The kid woke up the next morning in his room covered in piss but with the door locked from the inside. He never knew what hit him. I almost passed out from how hard I was laughing. It seriously felt like I was going to cough up a lung or something.

On what was supposed to be my last night in Hamburg BadCousin, Freddy, and Co. decided they were going to take me to the Reeperbahn which is the Hamburg’s red light district, home of the St. Pauli girls, and affectionately referred to as “the sinful mile”. This area of the city is basically all bars and brothels which made me question why we hadn’t spent more time there. BadCousin laughed and told me that more than one day there and I may never leave. We get there at around 10 in the evening. There are neon lights as far as the eye can see, drunks spilling out of every bar drinking in the street, and whores EVERYWHERE. Like Hookers are literally standing around drinking with the locals, playing drinking games, and then taking money to fuck. I was on sensory overload (and I was also already trashed). The next several hours were a blur. One of the clear memories I have was that it was Lucky’s (one of BadCousin’s friends) birthday and his girlfriend was haggling the price for him to get a blowjob from a stripper. We were also at a bar where they actually had Das Boot glasses. I had always assumed this was some Americanized image of Germany that doesn’t really exist. Over the next several hours I screamed “Das Boot” and drank a whole boot closet full of them…this lead me directly into my blackout…

…I woke up completely disoriented. I looked around and saw BadCousin, a prostitute, Lucky, Freddy, their girlfriends, and the girl I had hooked up with the first night I was in Hamburg. I was the only one awake. We were on a moving train. I shook BadCousin awake and he looked around and started laughing. I asked him very politely where the fuck we were, and he gave me a funny look and said “we’re on our way to Amsterdam”.

I sat back. Obviously there was no way I was going to make it back in Hamburg in time to catch my early afternoon train to Munich so I just sat back and went with it. To this day I have absolutely no recollection of leaving the Reeperbahn, taking the local train to the main train station, purchasing a ticket at the main train station to take the last train to Amsterdam, or getting on board that train. This was apparently the general theme among everybody in our party. People were all generally surprised and amused by what happened. Except Freddy’s girlfriend. She was not amused. She was furious. She was supposed to pick her grandmother up from the doctor’s office the next morning. Guess granny will have to wait.

We got off the train in Amsterdam and, because of Freddy’s girlfriend, we immediately sought out the ticket counter to get tickets for the earliest train back to Hamburg (which was 2 hours away). This is when our big problem popped up. Because of the nature of the Reeperbahn as being a crime-ridden area (it is a red light district after all), BadCousin and Co. had advised me to only bring cash, and leave my wallet behind so if I got mugged it wouldn’t be the end of the world. They had all followed suit, and between the 8 of us we had approximately enough money to buy three and a half tickets back. BadCousin stood up, asked for all of our cash, and said he was going to go get help. He came back 15 minutes later with 2 cases of beer. I couldn’t help but laugh. Freddy’s girlfriend looked like she was going to cry.

It actually turned out that BadCousin didn’t completely shirk off his responsibilities as the S.O.S. party. He called GoodCousin and had her buy us all tickets online. GoodCousin really might be too nice of a person. If BadCousin ever called me and asked me to buy him something online I’d tell him to go fuck himself. We proceeded to sit in the train station for 2 hours and get hammered again. I never set foot outside.

-The Aryan