When someone travels far away, is pleasant to see a familiar face most of the time. Since I was abroad in my exchange year in Germany, everything and everyone was new and unknown to me. Luckily for me, I have got a visit from a friend from Ecuador, Dankmar. We spoke to each other and arranged not one but two meetings.
This post and many more are related to my Exchange Year in Germany from 2008 to 2009. In this country I lived with various host families and learned German too. Click in the link below to read more.
Table of Contents
Some background from the visit from a friend
Dankmar had spend a year in Germany like I did a few years ago. He arrived in a city called Bochum, in a neighborhood called Wattenscheid. It's located in the same state where I arrived, Nordrhein Westfalen. We were only a few hours away.
Dankmar's host father was a pastor of a protestant church called Friedenskirche. He and his wife had no children and saw Dankmar as the son they always wanted to have. So when he returned to Ecuador, the pastor would deposit money into an Ecuadorian savings account every month so that he would return to Germany every year.
I travel to his town
In order for me to visit his city, I had to ask my exchange agency for permission. Traveling was an issue within the agency since they didn't like the students to travel while they were aboard. Nevertheless, I have got the permission but this was perhaps the only time they did not make me any trouble.
He invited me to come during the day to see his town. On August 10 of 2008 after my language classes, I traveled to his town in a regional red train. When I arrived at the train station, Dankmar came to meet me by bicycle because the pastor's house was not far.
Visiting a Protestant Church and a small Hangout
There I met two of his friends and we went for a walk in the center of the city. The pastor invited us to church and he gave us a small tour. Across the hall, where parishioners celebrate Mass, was the rectory. We visited the choir, the domes, the attic and the machine room of the church that are in charge of operating the bells. Its was the first time I visited a temple from a different religion but it wasn't by any means shocking. It was similar at first glance to catholic churches.
On the way back, we meet in the garden dining room and have beer like “Moritz Fiege Pils”. When it was around 5 or 6 in the afternoon, I took my train back to go home. I thanked everybody for the day, it was nice to see the surroudings.
Dankmar comes to visit me
My friend came to visit me in Cologne on August 20 of 2008 with three of his friends. He wanted to visit again the cathedral since there was a small detail that he missed last time. When he returned to Ecuador, he found out that the three holy Kings were buried there. Now that he was there again, he didn't want to miss the opportunity.
I took him to see the inside of the cathedral, visit the Three Holy Kings, and then the domes. Dankmar smoked cigarettes at that time (and I think he still does) and it took him a lot of effort to climb the 533 steps to reach the 150m of the dome.
After taking photos of the city from above, we went down to go to the park in front of the Rhine. Dankmar had brought some packs of cigarettes to sell, as well as handicrafts and trinkets. He suggested that cigarettes in Ecuador were worth maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of the cost in Germany. Dankmar had seen an opportunity there. He disguised himself with an eyepatch, placed the merchandise in a yellow shawl, and began offering it to passersby. A seller of handicrafts approached us to trade with Dankmar.
We were also approached by about 2 preachers offering to follow their new path of faith from a non-Christian religion and Dankmar listened to their long sermon in German. Fortunately, I didn't understand the language at the time so I did skip the long long conversation. When the preachers left, my friend told us:
- [Dankmar] What a strange religion. When these kind of people approach you, whether they are salespeople or preachers, always say in German “Nein danke” {spanish}.
Finally, we went to a Middle Eastern restaurant to smoke Hooka. In Ecuador, we used to call it “sisha” or Arabic pipe. I'm sure it was the first time I had ever tried to smoke anything and therefore I got sick from it in a few minutes, but luckily nothing bad happened. Describing it as just ‘tasteful‘ wouldn't be enough. It would certainly be the only thing I would smoke in my entire exchange year.
What are the pipes like? They are a cylindrical tower, usually made of glass and ceramic. There are models that has variable heights, such as 30cm, 50cm, 100cm, etc. Water is placed at the bottom. On top of the flavor is aluminum foil and red-hot, glowing charcoal. Just by inhaling with the hose, one could taste smoke of the flavor of their choice from their throat.
At the top is placed the flavor that can be:
- Grape.
- Apple.
- Coffee.
- Plum.
- Etc.
It was a pleasant pastime, then it was time to say goodbye to Dankmar and to their friends. It would be the last time I would see him at the exchange year. Dankmar would return to Ecuador in a few more days afterwards.
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