The Kestrel's Dreams

June 22, 2014

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I was with a really mixed group of my friends; Zukin was there, as were at least two people from high school (my ex and Annie, one of my best friends), as well as some people I know from random times of my college career. We were all sitting at a table in some sort of large cafeteria-type place. Maybe a dorm's dining hall on campus? Now that I think about it, all of the people i nthe group, even the ones from highschool, went to my college, except for Annie.

Anyways. I digress too much. We were sitting at a large table, deciding what to do for Spring Break, which was in a few weeks. Zukin and I suggested we all go to Germany and/or Austria. The group liked the idea of that, and so we loosely decided to make it happen. We all went our separate ways.

About a week later (one and a half weeks until SB). I was walking around downtown, when i saw one of the girls from the group, a friend from high school (actually, from middle school! Wow. Known her a long time) was walking dwn the street with bright, bright orange hair. I asked her what was up, and she said she had gone to the salon to get her hair colored, and they'd told her she could walk around outside while the color set. She'd gone walking around, and forgotten to go back, and her hair had turned bright orange like this. She was skeptical about whether or not she would be going on the trip or not because of this. I told her it looked awesome (I love orange) and that even if she didn't like it, she could just re-dye it before the trip. She said she'd get back to me about it.

Jump ahead about half a week, and I'm online, looking at flight prices. I found a super great deal, and booked it right away, then messaged everyone in the group about it. They all said they would get the tickets very soon...

Jump again to the day before we leave for the trip; I am staying the night at Annie's apartment and for some reason my ex needed a place to stay that night, so Annie invited him, too. We all talked about the trip, and I found out that Annie had forgotten to get her ticket, so I was really worried that she wouldn't be able to go anymore, but we got online and found that tickets were still available for that flight.

The next morning, we all met up at the airport. It's the same airport that's always in my dreams. This airport is... a bit hard to describe. It's got bits from all the airports I've ever been in, as well as some aspects of Grand Central Station in Chicago and some of the train stations Zukin and I went to in Germany (like the entrance of Stuttgart HBF) The airport is even more maze-like than most real airports, causing my dream self to have gotten lost multiple times... There are also two different runways that I've seen in this airport...

Anyways, we got to Germany in one piece. I don't remember much about the plain ride. We got to Germany, and I got the rental car we'd arranged. Zukin and I went, by memory, to a campsite we had gone to in Austria before. But the road there was like the one in the beginning of Spirited Away. We were all in two cars, since we were so many people, and at some point the other car lost us. But at that point it was just one road and they couldn't go the wrong way without tearing through gobs of trees, so we didn't worry about them.

Oh. Did I mention we were all in full larp gear? Well, we were. Apparently the campsite in Austria was having a special event for larpers. Zukin and I were trying to get them all into larp.

We park the car when we reach the site, get out, and head toward the registration desk. There are so many people. It's more like a ren-fair than a larp event. At least, there were way more people than any larp event I've been to. We lost one of the guys in the group (oddly enough, the one person in the group that wasn't a person I know IRL)

Mel (the one I've known since middle school) asked, "Where's Bret (or Brad. I couldn't hear too well over the noise of the larpers around us) Garrett?"
"I dunno. The reservation is under his name though..."
I waved my hand. "He'll be fine, and I can speak German so it's all good."

We got up to the desk and I asked in German if we could check in. The women responded in English, with a pretty fake accent. "Name?"
"It'll be under Bret (or Brad) Garrett."
The woman, who was rather large but very very friendly looking, looked through some papers, and then handed them to me, adding, "You know, you can stay for free if you go into the woods, have a drink, and tell three strangers you love them."

I went back to the group and told them about the deal. Everyone seemed pretty okay with it, and as we were heading toward the woods, Bret/Brad came hastily over, hiding behind us. "Those guys jumped out of nowhere and started singing weird shit at me...!" I turned and saw a group of young men, each with an instrument, singing love songs to Bret/Brad. I think the people from the other car were just joining us as I woke up. I was laughing at Bret/Brad.