The First Full Day

Saturday was the first full day in Berlin. I woke up at 4 AM originally, because it never totally gets dark out and the birds were going insane. Once I was able to fall sleep I slept until 10:30, making it 14 glorious hours of sleep. I woke up to the sounds of breakfast, so I decided to join them. It turns out that Andrea's friends were over, and when I thought before that the Bräckle's could speak quickly, they had nothing on these girls. Holy cow. Breakfast was soft pretzel with homemade strawberry jam and another roll with cheese, which was excellent.

After breakfast Thomas went out to pick some of their cherries, and after watching for a bit I decided to go exploring.

I first headed east to see if I could get on the field I saw on Google Maps, but it was locked, and people were giving me weird looks for trying to get on it, so I quickly walked away. Hopefully the track I saw will be available, but I am not very optimistic.

I then headed north, up Hauptstr., with the general goal of finding an ATM (Geldautomat) and a place to get some shampoo and a razor, both of which I left at home. I saw on my map that Hauptstr. also goes into the heart of Berlin, so that was a possible goal. I enjoyed walking along the street looking into windows and seeing what was around. There were many cool buildings and some interesting markets.

One of the cool buildings

I found an ATM, and I literally saw a person walk in, but when I tried pulling the door it wouldn't open, so I figured there was some trick that I didn't know and moved on. I tried the next place with ATM-like machines and managed to get in, but when I put in my card it angrily said I couldn't use that card here and I should call my bank. I was fine with this and was hoping that it would at least give me my card back. It did, and I hightailed it out of there. After that I decided to put my search for the ATM on the back burner until I did more research.

I kept heading north, passed a couple of gyms and a couple of stores, marking them in my mind so that I

Potsdamer Platz from afar

could come back and get some supplies. After a couple of hours, I made it to Potzdamer Platz, a very famous German shopping mall in the center of Berlin.

The view from under the Sony Center

I wasn't super interested in shopping, but I figured I had to walk through to see what it was like. There was a mini lego land, and a Sony center and some other interesting places, but I walked through to the other side, where I could see trees.

I came out of the building basically on the edge of the Tiergarten, a huge park in the middle of Berlin. This park is more organically shaped than Central Park in New York. The streets look like they were designed around the forest, not the other way around. I wandered through some of the statues and trees until seeing what I thought was a mirage through the trees.

What I thought was a mirage was actually the Memorial for the Fallen Jews. It consists of hundreds of stone obelisks in a grid of varying heights. The shadows between the stone and the light reflecting off of the top of the stone made it seem sort of like a mirage to me. As I got even closer, I saw that the ground sloped down in the middle, and the stones in the middle were up to 15 or 16 feet high, which was not immediately visible from afar. I walked down in between them and looked side to side and saw that there were rolling hills hidden in the stone. All in all I thought it was a very cool memorial.

The memorial

After the memorial, I figured I couldn't go to the center and not go to the Brandenburg Gate. So, I did the obligatory touristy thing and went there.

I even took a selfie!

Hungry, and beginning to tire, I decided to head home. I stopped by a bakery and got some really good strawberry and vanilla pastries. I also got a Döner from a street stand,which was ok. I am willing to try it again, seeing as every German and American who comes here raves about them, but my first taste wasn't incredible. I heard there is a good shop by the university, so I will check that out later. I also finally saw that you PUSH the door to get into the ATM (it is such that it cannot close when you are using the ATM. I realized that I had never tried that because I am used to America where every door must be a pull door (plus they had a handle on it, but not a push plate or anything...). I got some cash from the ATM (very cool, because they give you different denominations of bills instead of just 20s). I also stopped by Lidl, their main store chain, and got some shampoo and a razor.

I made it back to my house and rested a bit before a dinner of noodles with asparagus and salmon. We then watched some news and a very hilarious state sponsored "Entertainment" show, where they had a very elaborate setup, and made fun of fat people, etc. etc. Seemed very odd to me. (I will put up a small clip if I ever figure out how).

We then watched "The Family", a movie with Robert De Niro. It was originally all dubbed, but they thought it had lost its humor, so they switched it to English.

My First Look

I arrived on the 30th of May, and after getting my bags from the very small Tegel Airport (the baggage area was at the top of the ramp from the plane, and all outgoing planes were to Frankfurt), my first goal was getting a Taxi. This made me somewhat nervous, because it would be the first real test of my German. Luckily, all went smoothly and a ball-cap wearing taxi driver took me to Bennigsenstr. where I was to meet my host mother. I followed the trip on my phone, as Mom recommended, to make sure I said the right thing. The trip only cost about 24 Euros, which I thought was reasonable because I was told to expect 35 to the Univeristy (only a mile and a half away).

Photo taken somewhere between Tegel and Friedenau

The next thing was to find which apartment my host family lived in, but luckily that was circumvented by my host mother, Christa, meeting me on the steps. She is a wonderful Dutch woman who speaks pretty good English and German, so when I don't know how to say something in German, I can get my point across. This may be a bit of cheating, but I am sure it won't slow me down much in the long run.

After exploring the house, I set off to get my BVG (bus) pass for the month. I was told there was a BVG store down Hauptstr. (Main street) from where we were. I headed off and after walking for about 25 minutes realized I had walked probably about 10 streets too far, wthout seeing massive BVG letters anywhere. I walked back up the other side of the street thinking I had missed it. By the time I got back to my street I still hadn't found it. I relented and pulled out my phone to see where the heck the intersection I was looking for was, and realized it wasn't actually a BVG store...just a small store (called "lotto") that sold them. I walked in and had an extremely successful conversation with the store clerk and got my June card.

It starts on the first of June, so I can't use the card on Saturday (she said something at the end about the weekend, but I didn't catch it).

The monthly pass

I walked back and when I got back we had a great meal of chicken, sweet potatoes, carrots and peas and salad. Christa and her husband Thomas were there, along with Johannes, their 19 year old son, Andrea, their 25 year old daughter, and Christian, one of their older sons. It was a fun meal and they can talk very quickly. I had some trouble keeping up so I mostly just ate. I was dead tired, having been up for 27 hours at this point, so after the meal I excused myself to go sleep. I fell asleep at about 8 or 830, which was perfect to get my acclimated to the time change.

Willkommen!

Hey everyone,

I have arrived in Frankfurt successfully, and passed through a very very light border control. I am waiting at some pretty awesome tables and chairs by my gate (they have about half regular airport seating and other than that cafe style seats). I am currently using "data roaming" despite my phones warning that it may incur massive charges. I got a text when I entered Germany (and turned on my phone) saying I could...so I will see tomorrow to make sure it is all free (as promised by T mobile/Deutsche Telekom).

The flight was rather uneventful. I was asked to check the duffel I planned on carrying on because it was likely it would need to be gate checked if I didn't. It's good I did because they have a very strict one bag limit on the flight. It did make me realize I totally forgot about luggage tags, so I hope they make it there!

The Checked Bags

I had a great seat in economy. I was the last row of a section of our 747 (first time ever riding one!) So I could lean my seat back (not that it did anything) and I was on the aisle with decent leg room. I would have preferred a window, especially the one the woman down the row never looked out of, but the aisle was great.

I entertained myself with their tablet on the back of the seat in front of me, a magazine, some music on my phone, and speaking purely German to the flight attendants. It only seemed like I was failing some of it at dinner, when she wanted a longer conversation than I did. I watched Mary Poppins and some of The Wolf of Wall Street, and didn't sleep at all (I was expecting that).

Mary Poppins on the seat back tablet

I never can sleep on planes. They had the old TVs in the hallway of the plane, which required me to keep my ear-buds in at all times to prevent a migraine.

The dinner was pretty good. I had chicken with rice (Hühnchen mit Reis) and a sourdough roll with butter and cheese and crackers and a small amount of brownie. I also ate half of the cookies heather made me :-) . breakfast was not so great with some fake eggs, but that's fine. The coolest part is they handed out warm towels with tongs just like in the movies!

Hühnchen mit Reis and the rest of my dinner

Now I'm awaiting my 1245 flight to Berlin, where hopefully I will meet my luggage, get in a taxi, and head to my host family's house. I should have email and texting for my stay if you want to get in touch.

Tschüss!