last drunken Saturday

Last Saturday Jeremi and I had two invitations for afternoon activities - Raul from my German class invited us to the park by the river for some grilling (a very German thing to do on the weekend), and Calin and Susanne invited us for drinks and then supper at the brew pub just west of town, on the way to Cospeda, where they live. (Cospeda is really part of Jena officially, but it's up on the plateau above town, and feels more like a smaller town.)

So firstly we stopped by the Paradies Park, by the river, to meet up with the grill party, most of whom were either Spanish or related to someone from Spain. Oh yeah, and us. On the way to the park we stopped at the market downtown to pick up some cherries and tomatoes as snacks, and we came across a group of Portugese drummers. There's a sort of Portugese festival going on in Jena right now, with a bunch of musical performances by artists from Portugal, Brazil, and Mozambique (and possibly elsewhere). There's also lots of capoeira, and other vaguely Portugese-related things. For such a small town, Jena really does seem to always have some sort of festival or something going on. Anyhow here's a picture of the drummers. They sounded more interesting than they looked, of course.
And here's a picture that Jeremi took of me and some of the others hanging out at Paradies Park. You can't really tell here, but it was wicked hot, at least 30 degrees, and sunny. Interestingly, neither Jeremi nor I has gotten the least bit sunburnt here, despite the fact that we don't have any sunblock yet, and I blame the dirty European air. We were outside all day last Saturday and Sunday, with blazing sun, and we're only slightly tanned now. In Canada we'd be lobsters after doing that in mid-June.
As we had to go meet Calin and Susanne, we had to leave after the first food was just coming off the grill, and we rode our bikes out to the Papier Muele (paper mill), to meet up with them and their friend Franz, an Austrian guy who's considering moving to Vancouver for grad school. We gave him our mixed impression of life on the West coast, but he still seemed to think it was a good idea. Here's Franz having a beer.
And here's a picture of Jeremi and I having one of many beers that day. We had already had a couple at the park with the grilling (three for Jer and two for me), and then we had several more over the course of the afternoon/early evening at this bar (seven more for Jer and six more for me). You must remember of course that these are half litres as well, and though the average bottled beer is not as strong as that in Canada, the Papier Muele makes their own, and some varieties are a bit stronger. In any case, 4-5 litres of any beer is enough to get most people drunk on a hot summer day.
After supper, Calin and Susanne and Jeremi and I headed downtown to go for ice cream (in the case of Calin and Susanne) or a small second supper (in the case of Jeremi and I). And after this we decided to head to the Mexican restaurant for the end of "happy hour", which runs from 9:00-midnight every night, and involves half-priced (€1,90) margaritas. After a few of those (alas, no pictures), we decided to call it a night.

And so we headed home, rather drunk, to prepare for our epic bike ride the next day. But you'll have to read about that in the next post...