Went down to the Cities yesterday for a belated reunion with The Suburbanite and The Pancake Man at the former's St. Paul residence. The Pancake Man had to return to Vermont this morning, so this was my last chance to see my old acquaintances from Freiburg with any degree of efficiency.

The main event (or, at least, the reason people other than me were there at all) was a backyard BBQ, and I alternated between eating half the available bratwurst and sucking at an interesting backyard game called "polish golf," also known as "cowboy golf" or, if you're trying to sell something that anyone could easily build themselves, "ladder golf."

The Suburbanite is the social animal I'd always assumed she'd be. There were about a dozen people there, not from my chosen crowd (in fact, one Abercrombie-clad specimen boasted both obviously-bleached hair and obviously-bleached jeans) but nice people nonetheless. And The Suburbanite was, as in Freiburg, an attention locus.

It took me a surprisingly long time to get into a conversation with the only English major and Modest Mouse fan in attendance, so until then I talked to The Pancake Man.

Who is a different kind of social animal. I often wonder if he's actually a robot, built by desperate Venusian women who wanted the perfect man. He just asks questions and listens, then asks more questions, courting a rambling and tedious conversation.

And girls fall for it, every time. They talk about their majors and their family and their family's pet's diseases. It might be useful to imitate but I can't care about those details right off the bat, as he seems to, and I couldn't "fake it" without punching myself in the gut.

(His gift doesn't work on men, oddly enough. Attempting to schmooze with me, The Pancake Man asked about my family. I was just really weirded out by the question.)

I had a few drinks for no good reason (it might have been nerves, with all those bright and shiny people about) and most of The Suburbanite's friends did the same, eventually migrating to a bar somewhere.

And then there were three. And I'll say this: as a would-be director, The Pancake Man has some lofty filmmaking goals, but none of his projects (including our reenactment of Mission Impossible in Prague) will ever have the effect on me that his casual documentary from Freiburg did.

There's already so much I'd forgotten, which is absolutely scary. I'd forgotten names and field trips. I'd forgotten the ice I stuffed in my backpack on way to Oktoberfest. I'd forgotten that the signs at German crosswalks make a clicking sound, so the blind can tell when to cross.

To my complete surprise, I come off really well on the tapes; everyone does, with one glaring exception. I look pretty good, for whatever reasons. There are even a few brief moments of me acting like a decisive, well-adjusted human being.

And I'm hilarious, partially because I was rationing my English-language comments and partially because no scene in the film lasts long enough for me to make a complete spectacle of myself.

Hopefully I can get a copy.

(Along the same lines, I'm deliberating whether or not to buy a scanner, so I can have access to a lot more memories and cut down on my compulsive memento-hoarding. But I don't know that it's a bigger priority than, say, fixing my laptop.)

After the movie, we talked until the wee hours of the morning. Four o'clock. It was similar to many a conversation we'd had in Freiburg: The Suburbanite listened passively while The Pancake Man tried to convince me that everything he's been told by his parents is true. Our Bold Hero heroically donned the mantle of Moderatism and fought for Reason and Fairness.

We ran the usual gamut, from religion (ganging up on The Suburbanite's literal take on Genesis), to politics (I argued that the American media, though often owned by corporations with conservative tendencies, is liberal. The Pancake Man disagreed), to philosophy.

Most memorable argument? A half hour during which The Pancake Man tried to convince us that the gays are fighting essentially the same battle blacks once fought. Narrowly straddling the line between trivializing the civil rights movement and watering down his claim to the point of meaninglessness, our favorite Vermont Democrat seemed unusually earnest to affirm something. But whatever he was going for, The Suburbanite and I weren't about to follow.

The Suburbanite fried up some German pancakes (whatever that actually means) for breakfast early that morning, and I took my leave afterwards so that she could drive The Pancake Man to the airport. There wasn't anything else to do in the Cities, so I drove straight home.

I'm really tired now, but it was good to swim in nostalgia for a night. Ah, Freiburg.