From Dresden

I'm in Dresden. I'm staying in a cool-ass hostel. I spent last night hanging out with some cool German guys we met on the street. Hint: a good way to meet guys, at least if you're in an area where young punkish people hang out drinking on street corners, is to purchase several bottles of beer and wander around looking for some nice guys to borrow a lighter from. It worked great; the guys didn't have a lighter, but (a)they recognized immediately what our desire was, i.e. lighter qua opener and not qua fire, and (b)the one guy was able to open the beer by knocking the top off on a handy marble ledge they were leaning against--without spilling any beer. See, I too can remove the cap from a beer using basically anything hard; in my time I've used the hub of a wheel on my van, a random chunk of steel cable sticking out of the ground near Under the Bridge, and even another capped beer (that one was pretty clever, I thought). But usually this operation ends with the beer foaming like a motherfucker amid a chorus of "CHUG!" and "OH SHIT DRINKITDRINKITDRINKIT!!"
So these boys were clearly capable fellows. And when we'd finished our street beers, they took us to this bar and bought us another one. They were hella cool.
And our awesome night last night is yet another example of why clara and I are the best travellers ever: because we started out yesterday afternoon with, Hey, I think we should go to Berlin tomorrow. Do you know what train we can take? No, but I'm sure it'll be easier to figure out if we just take a train over to the German border. Ok, sounds good. Thus, we ended up in Dresden, for some reason, but it still ruled, because that's just how we roll: we have fun whatever we're doing, even if it involves sleeping in a train station or staying up all freaking night on the Jersey Shore. Hells yes.