12th March 2006 - Day 146

No plans to go anyway today. The bed seems much more comfortable anyway.

I couldn't finish my lunch of instant noodles as I felt quite full from some snacking earlier on. There are still a number of packets left, but they will be finished before I leave this place.

The afternoon was spent in hostel trying to read up the lab for tomorrow. I have a feeling I would forget what I've read when the Betreuer asks. I should read up on it again later.

I met Nan for dinner. We went to the Uni-Grill for Kebap. I seem to have a craving for Kebap these days. After dinner, we went to the Kippe for a drink.

The atmosphere in the Kippe is always good. It's cosy inside and the metal signboards on the walls are quite interesting to read.

Previously, while we were walking to the Kippe, we had unwittingly made a wrong turn. That brought us to the red light district. I mentioned that there was a Erotikmesse in Karlsruhe.

In the Kippe, we were discussing whether we should go visit this cultural event or not. I had read that it's opened till 2300 today. Since both of us haven't been to such exhibition before, we decided that it might make an interesting excursion for tonight.

When we got there, we learnt that the price for the entry ticket was 15€. This was a bit unexpected. We had decided that the maximum price we would pay is 10€. We tried to haggle a bit with the lady selling the ticket, but she refused to give in, saying that the original price was 25€.

Since we were already there, and that it is the last day of the exhibition here, we decided to go ahead with it.

We kind of felt cheated when we saw nothing especially raunchy inside. It was not unlike other exhibition where there are stalls selling various items. The only difference is that the items sold here were more...erm... novel.

DVDs, piercings, massage service, lubricant, vibrators, pumps from Sweden (do you recall Austin Powers?), and some other kinky toys were only part of the display. There was a stall selling chocolates in exotic shapes, with various sizes available.

There was a stall for Swingers. It looked like they were recruiting members. There were also photos from their past gatherings. Looks like they enjoyed themselves. We saw people signing up.

We expected that at such exhibition, the majority of the visitors would be understandably, male. But we were wrong, we saw quite a lot of females too. Some of them were intently staring at some of the above mentioned items. They really looked very serious.

We were in time to catch the last show of the day - a striptease act. Nothing much of interest really. It was a very detached experience since we were standing quite far away. There were people taking photographs and making movie clips though.

We left shortly afterwards, still feeling that 15€ was a bit too much to pay. But we would have regretted it if we didn't know how it looked like.

So, meine liebe Austauschstudenten, was habt ihr heute gelernt?