After taking my exam Saturday morning, I hopped on a train to Frankfurt where my friend J. picked me up at the station. J. was my roommate while I was living in Norman, Oklahoma. For 9 months, we shared a room, and neither of us can believe how well that worked out and how well we got along. Not only was sharing such small space for such a long time really something to get used to, I also never expected us to get along as well as we did, because we are so different.

I think the only thing we have in common at first sight is that we are both German, we are both blondes, and we both went to the same university. That was reason enough (well, the blonde part didn’t really play a role) for us to decide to room together, rather than be paired up with a random stranger. But honestly, I never thought it would work as well as it did. J. majored in math, I major in literature. She is very pretty and very smart, and was quite the manizer (I know that’s not a word but now it is!) when we lived in Oklahoma. She always dresses up, always wears high heels, and considers a 3″ heel low. While I loved and still love wearing jeans and a t-shirt and flip flops. Now she works in management consulting which is so not my world and never will be. But you know, aside from these obvious differences, we really got along great, and we still do. Turns out, all those differences didn’t matter. And I am very glad that we went to Oklahoma and roomed there together, because without that, we would have probably never met, let alone become friends.

In late 2007, while I lived in Spain, J. graduated and moved to Frankfurt for a job, and the last time we met must have been sometime in or before July 2007. We did stay in touch, though, and when we were on the phone a few weeks ago, we decided that a meet-up was way overdue.

After J. picked me up at the train station, we went for some sight-seeing in the city center of Frankfurt, and then we went to her apartment to drop off my stuff. We had some wine (okay, I was actually pretty tipsy by the time we went out for dinner at 9:30pm), and then went for dinner at a sports bar (hello buffalo wings & country fries goodness!) and a cocktail at another bar. Back at her place we stayed up a little longer to chat and have a little more wine (resulting in my being somewhat hungover the next day) and today we slept in and had breakfast, and cooked lunch together.

Cooking together was actually a somewhat weekly tradition we had in Oklahoma and we reminisced about that time and about all the meals we had. Often we invited our friend B. over when we cooked, and he had to eat our sometimes good, sometimes not so good meals. I remember one time I tried to fry potatoes without cooking them first (which always works for my parents) but the potatoes stayed semi-raw (turns out you need to put a lid on the pan!), but we ate them anyway. Another time J.’s steaks didn’t turn out so great. And yet another time, B. thought it was very unusual for us to have made a lasagna without cottage cheese. Turns out, that’s how you cook lasagna in the States. Well, it’s not how we do lasagna here, it’s béchamel sauce all the way.

We both had an amazing time in Oklahoma, and it was great to remember things together, especially because we each remembered things the other had forgotten about. It was just great to spend time with her. It still seems very natural and we have a great time just chatting and laughing. We agreed that I would definitely visit her again before I leave Heidelberg, probably after my exams. I have no idea where I will be moving once I have a job, and while it could be Frankfurt, it could well be further away than I live now. So we want to make sure to hang out again before I leave.

I had such a blast with her, and it was a great way to unwind after the five-hour exam that I took Saturday morning. Which I will write about in another post.

How was your weekend?

P.S. I will publish another post shortly that will be protected of a picture of J. and me (for reasons of privacy). But if you have commented here before and are not a stranger, you are absolutely welcome to ask me for the password. Really, I do not mind at all. So either email me (dreamoncemore [at] gmail.com) or comment on this post and mention that you’d like the password.