To many germans, it was inconceivable that I have never smoked weed (cannabis) when I lived in Ecuador. In their minds, South America was the fabric of marihuana for the entire world! In this post, I will tell my story on how did I meet this drug when I went to Germany.
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
A Sleepover
On the third or fourth day that I arrived, my host brother from Brück invited me to a sleepover with his friends. Since I didn't know anyone in Germany, it was a great start to make friends.
We were playing passing the soccer ball outside of the Brück's house with my brother and his cousin. The objective of the kick-around is to lightly kick the ball to maintain it above the ground. The longer time you can keep it in the air, the better.
An unexpected Question
My brother asked me a few questions:
- [Brother from Brück] Do you drink alcohol? {English}
- [Juditova] Yes but sometimes. {English}
- [Brother from Brück] Cool. Do you smoke? {English}
- [Juditova] No, I have never smoked in my life. {English}
- [Brother from Brück] And do you smoke cigarettes? {English}
I stared at him with a strange face of surprise and I replied “no, neither”. I laughed and smiled. Did he meant Weed?
Going to the Plan
When I got to his friend's house, I introduced myself and met other friends of his who were going to stay over as well. A few that I remember were Decimus, Lucas and Timothy. Lucas was of Italian descent and Timothy of Romanian. Since I spoke very little german, most of the first conversations were in english.
The first thing we did was play Super Smash Bros on the Nintendo Gamecube where I had a terrific skill. I have played this game before on Nintendo 64. Afterwards we played Super Mario Strikers which I had never played before but it was just great and fun. They had prepared finger food, such as potatoes and soda, and were sitting in various chairs and on the sofa around the television.
Here comes the Weed
After playing for a few hours, they started pulling out a marijuana joint and getting ready. Wow, for me it was the first time I saw marijuana up close, it was literally 2m from me. They told me “Let's smoke Weed, do you think you care?” I answered no, consciously and without being surprised. After a while I was thinking about what was happening.
Out of their Minds, for Weed
They stopped playing (they didn't even bother to turn off the video game console or the television) and went out to smoke professionally in the garden like crazy. When I realized it, I was alone in the living room, eating potatoes.
The owner of the house came into the living room to sit next to me and hug me on the sofa. He apologized for leaving me alone and he told me it would never happen again. All this he told me “hanging on my neck” and speaking with difficulty; he was clearly already under the influence of marihuana.
Let's try to socialize without knocking over
I went out to the garden to talk with them but it was complicated because:
- They spoke german among themselves. At that time, I didn't speak much and it was difficult for me to understand what they were talking about. Even if I spoke in English, they would answer me in English but then they would speak German again to each other.
- They were on a different wavelength. All were drugged with weed and I was the only sober of the group. The topics of conversation were going to end soon.
After all, they were in a circle laughing about anything, for a very very long time.
Next Post
This wasn't the only culture shock that I got. In future posts, I will describe for differences from the german culture and my homeland, Ecuador.
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