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.