One weekend my friends Sofia, Catherine, and I, went to a city near Frankfurt (Oder) called Cottbus to see Catherine’s favorite German comedian for her birthday. Sofia and I took the train to Cottbus together planning to meet Catherine there, since she was coming from Berlin. We expected to meet Catherine at the train station but she expected we would meet at the theater. We had very limited wifi connection, so communication was difficult and we couldn’t figure out which direction to go to get to the city center. After asking several people and taking a few wrong turns, we finally arrived at the theater. Catherine had our tickets and we had no way of contacting her at that point. Thankfully she was waiting for us so we got let in.
The show was very unique because the comedian, Bodo Wadke, plays the piano while singing funny songs that he writes himself. It was interesting to see German humor in action, as it is is simultaneously goofy and satirical. We had a great time and Catherine got a picture with the comedian after the show. We hadn’t kept track of time and left close to 11pm. As we were leaving we realized that the last train back to Frankfurt (Oder) left around the same time. The next train to Frankfurt (Oder) would be at 5am. We had no place to stay so our only option was to find a way to do pass the time. We walked around the city center for a bit and found a Russian hookah cafe, Sochi, that was open until 4am. We ordered and tried to stay awake by talking, but most of the time we tried to sleep. When the cafe closed, we started walking back toward the train station. We ended up going the wrong direction and getting really lost. When we finally realized which way to go, it was getting close to 5am. We ran the last several minutes and barely made the train back to Frankfurt (Oder).
While this experience was stressful at times, it was mostly an exciting and hilarious bonding experience for the three of us. Practically, this experience also taught us the importance of checking the train schedule before leaving for a small town. We will always look back on this memory fondly and laugh.
If you want to hear more about my many adventures in Frankfurt (Oder) check out my other posts here!
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