Nachdenken

Leipzig was... pretty cool. The part that I remember, anyway. It must have been fun, because Anna sent a bunch of pictures of me with my eyes half-closed and everyone looking like they're having a pretty good time; so I must have had a heck of a birthday. Parts I do remember include:

-how great it was to see Matt Johnson again. As we all expected, he's taken Cambridge by storm and now bends his Almighty Eye on the rest of academia and, dare I say it?, the world;

-a cool '70's-themed bar called "Flower Power", with flower-shaped tables, felt-draped ceilings and lamps, and all the best music ever made between 1960 and 1979;

-Anna doing "the Twist" in said bar, and looking like a painting all weekend as she wandered around in her blue scarf. The girl is just a dear. I'm glad I met you, Anna. :)

-Ivan "Here, Nikki, Have Another Peanut" Grubisic being the catalyst he usually is. And Anna and Jason brainstorming the best ways to bring the fresh-faced young Croatian into a life of hedonism and debauchery;

-Jason's lovely description of the joy of using a Q-tip to clean your ears;

-remembering how seeing Conny is always a breath of fresh air, and making plans to come visit her in the Erzgebirge in December;

-Bert's shocked response to Americans profaning beer with Irish Car Bombs (for the uninitiated, you drop a shot of Bailey's into a Guiness and chug it before the cream curdles. The aftertaste is delicious -- after you've gulped for air, of course). I think it was something like, "Ach, nein!" followed by looking at me with knitted eyebrows as I wiped my lips, and scolding, "Aber Frauen machen das nicht!"

-Nigel just being... Nigel. Thanks, Nigel. :)

-And, well, to be frank, a lot of unspoken thoughts on the last time I was in Leipzig. I didn't really think about it when we planned to make this trip in the first place, but the city has a lot of memories associated with it that made it hard to be there without brooding a lot of the time. For anyone to whom I might have appeared rather distant: sorry. That's much of the reason why I spent most of the weekend with either a beer or a Gluehwein in hand. Thank you for coming up, however, and making it a trip to (un)remember.






And to the source of the memories:
It's not the same city without you.