A decent weekend.

So, Ariana came over this weekend. We spent most of the weekend shoe-shopping, of all things. She needed winter boots, and we both kept getting distracted by the pretty shiny shoes, so it took forever to find. It was fun, though. It's nice to be able to be completely irresponsible and consumeristic for a day or two.

We also made our way over to Neustadt to do some shopping in the second-hand stores. There's actually quite a lot of good stuff over there. I really like that section of town in general. It's just...cool. Lots of character. On one street, there was a featherbed store, a reptile store, a used bookstore, and an African food specialties store, all in a row. Just very eclectic. And the people are really interesting - the place is full of punks and artsy sorts.

After a productive Saturday morning thrifting, we were lured into the Devil's Kitchen by their pretty sign, and discovered it to be an awesome retro-American-style diner. We had a couple of burgers with the best fries ever and wound up camping there for about two and a half hours. That's the awesome thing about eating out in Germany. They don't pressure you to leave. So it was nice. Look at the picture I found!

So, by this point, we were both pretty broke, so our entertainment Saturday night consisted of cooking tortellini (delicious!) and splitting a bottle of cheap vodka (bye-bye tortellini :( ) between the two of us. It was the kind of vodka that tastes fine mixed with coke until you get to the bottom of the glass, at which point it suddenly tastes like pure nail polish remover. It was fun, but I am extremely grouchy today because of it. Blah.

Today we went to the Hauptbahnhof for some good ol' fast food for lunch (yay for Burger King!) and there are Polizei everywhere. There's a helicopter over the city, police cars and vans on most corners, and groups of 5-10 cops in full riot gear with batons and muzzled dogs on pretty much every street. The reason? Dynamo Dresden, the local soccer team, lost last night and is playing again tonight. Damned hooligans... They tend to get extremely violent. So, on the one hand, it looks like a police state today. On the other hand, at least I won't be beaten by an enraged soccer fan today.

Okay, so now I'm off to prepare a lesson for tomorrow. G'night.