BERLIN!

Now, to back up a bit.

Got up yesterday, ate, sat around a bit, went out to try to find some ziploc bags or something for the olive oil. Well, it turns out ziploc hasn't made its way to Turkey yet, so I ended up buying trash bags for 75 kuruks, which isn't so bad. On the way back got confused for an Australian by a man trying to sell me carpets, so I can add that one to the list. (English, German, Scandanavian, and Australian so far). I ended up popping my head into some random small place for lunch and saying “I need something quick,” the guy said only chicken was ready, I said that was perfect. So I had a chicken wrap and some really, really good lemonade for lunch while watching Apocalypto with both English and Turkish subtitles. At least, I think it was Apocalypto. That was only 7 liira, which was awesome, went back to the hotel, sat downstairs for a bit watching football with Nate because John had our roomkey (I had earlier left a key in the room, Nate got another key made, lent it to John, then John left with it and the original key was still in the room... yeah). John came back, I packed, taping the olive oil's cork down, wrapping it in a trash bag, wrapped in another trash bag, and then taping the hell out of that.

Bus to the airport, sign in, have to redistribute some of Becky's stuff because she's about 5 kilos over and cheated Egypt Air, go through one of the longer passport control lines we've seen, though it wasn't bad. The Azerbaijan wrestling team was there with a trophy, we congratulated them. Our gate changed from 202 to 206 to 211 but eventually we got on the plane. I slept almost that entire flight, 4 hours. Arrive in Riga, we're supposed to only have half an hour to get to the next plane so we really want to rush.

Move move move, passport control which seemed odd for a transfer, the woman was actually trying to make polite conversation (“what will you be doing in Berlin?”) but I was a little too frazzled for it, get to the gate... our plane's been delayed. Awesome, we don't have to panic. They didn't feed us on the flight over (don't fly Air Baltic, EVERYTHING costs money, even water), so Denny bought us all some sandwiches and water. Then our flight seemed to disappear altogether, which was a worrisome period. Then we heard it departed, then we heard no, it's still there... anyway, eventually after another flight left the one gate, we were able to get on. The plane had very few people on it, we probably could have spread out but we pretty much stuck to our seats, though I did switch with Sigrid (which was good, because I had an aisle and she had a window, and I was afraid in aisle some steward would notice my backpack being, well, my enormous freaking backpack). Got a little nerd work done on that plane, land, get our stuff off the carousel, and into Berlin!

We took the bus, the group of us sitting in the back speaking horrible horrible German to each other. Got off at Uhland Strasse and started walking to the Pension Funk. (Not pronounced how you think it is.) I warned David about the horrible German, he said be prepared for 8 days of being corrected constantly, I told him it wasn't just me.

Our hotel's pretty nice. It used to be the apartments of... let me check the brochure. “In the former residence of Asta Nielsen, star of the silent film.” Clay, Swaffie and I are in a very comfortable triple, our own bathroom and shower and all. After we settled in and got some food money from Denny, it was out to find dinner and beer (Bier!).

We walked towards the train station, having been told that was a good way to find food. Met some Belgian kids at least 4 years younger than us who were trying way too hard to smoke, they were clearly inexperienced and coughing regularly. Yeah, I don't smoke myself, but I still know how to recognize people who are new to it. They were outside a bar with 4 euro beers, we decided to keep walking. Eventually we found a pizza place and somehow ended up all eating together, which wasn't really a bad thing. I had a pizza margarita and a hefeweizen dunkel (dark). The krystalweizen was okay, the hefeweizen hell (light) was actually really good, and my dunkel was pretty good, we all swapped tastes as usual. The pizza was a pretty standard cheese pizza. But hey, all for something like 7 euro, I'm not complaining.

Some people stayed out longer but I came back to the hotel and went to bed. I had trouble falling asleep for whatever reason, but once I was out I stayed out, so that was good. Woke up some time around 6:45, if I had to guess, showered, got dressed, did my best not to disturb Swaffie and Clay but this building is not a quiet one. Breakfast starts in 10 minutes.

I'm SO excited to be in Berlin. Germany's the only country of the whole trip I've visited before, and I didn't get to Berlin last time. I mean... it's BERLIN. Capital city of one of my favorite countries of the world, and I had a great time in Heidelberg and Munich, so it follows that I'll have a great time in Berlin. I've been wanting to come here for a long time (probably after about my first year of German or so), so it's great to actually be here. And unlike the last two months of move move move, we get a full 8 days here. 3 of those days free (Thursday, specially requested as the day after St. Patty's, and Saturday and Sunday.) It's going to be fantastic.

Tuesday, March 16th, roughly 7:05-7:20 AM local time