"Entshuldigung, Hagebutten? Los!"

So here is the part where I provide a LONG boring text description of my adventures in Berlin. I promise I'll get photos and the video up soon. It is necessary since I will be going to Liverpool this weekend and will surely have more footage and pictures than I will know what to do with.

So Thursday was a pretty normal day- teaching 9-year-old children fun patterns on the djembe, keeping them from hitting the glockenspiels when they shouldn't be, making sure they are paying attention and play the glockenspiels when they are supposed to... It really is a lot of fun - I always leave teaching in a really great mood. But anyways, this post is about Germany! After school, I had to do some learning myself so I went off to British Pop which is a lot of fun. Our professor is very knowledgeable about pop music in general and specifically UK pop. More importantly, she is really into it and I always look forward to going to that class. Thursday was Beatles day since we are off to Liverpool soon, we should learn about those crazy kids first. Okay okay, really, I'll talk about Berlin...

So I was off to Victoria station immediately after class. I packed all of my things (3 shirts, some sweaters, some pants, a toothbrush, and a book to read) into my backpack earlier on Thursday and was happy that It all fit rather comfortably in my bag. Once at the station I became immediately displeased with the fact that a one-way ticket on the Gatwick Express was £16.90. Really now. Next time I will buying a moped, drive it to Gatwick Airport, and then sell it. Seriously though, that was the most money I spent the entire weekend other than the plane tickets. Rubbish.

The airport itself wasn't too bad. I made it through the security checkpoint with virtually no stress and minimal discomfort. I did drop my empty Glastonbury Spring water bottle and it bounced over into the nether-world of the security check people. The lady seemed nice so I ventured with:
"I'm terribly sorry, but I've dropped my water bottle and it went over there." With a very pleasant tone, she replied
"Oh it's alright love, I'll get it." Something in my face must have told her that this solution wasn't optimal.
"Or did you want to keep it?" She added.
"Yes, if that's alright. It's from Glastonbury." I chimed.
"Oooo Glastonbury." She said with less excitement then you'd imagine.
I thanked her and was off to my next destination: The Passenger Lounge.

This is the fancy name that was given to the area in-between check-in and the terminals. I'm not the most frequent flyer, but I don't think I've ever heard it called by such a name. It made me feel more relaxed and at ease- really! I had 2 and a half hours to lounge so I took my time looking around at the duty free shops and perused my dinner options. The winner was a little pub and grill called the Black Horse or something equally pub-like. I went in and took a seat and looked through the menu to search for some meal that would be decidedly English in nature. I found a cheeseburger.
But this story is exciting! Because I sat there for a good 15 minutes waiting for someone to come to take my order. If I had read the entire menu carefully, I would have seen the final page much sooner. The page that has, in English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian; "Instructions for ordering". If I had seen this page, I would have known to order the food at the bar and give them them my table number. Silly American. Anyways, it was a pretty good burger. I noticed that yellow mustard is called "English Mustard" and that Heinz ketchup still doesn't taste quite right here. I'm sure it is different in some way.
So after my dinner, I lounged about waiting for my boarding information to appear on the screen. I found it odd that they don't tell you which gate to report to until about 40 minutes before the flight is supposed to leave. At one point, I fancied a McFlurry with pieces of Yorkie in it. Alas, a higher power reminds me that McDonald's is never to be used as a means for nourishment- the ice cream machine was completely broke so I came away empty handed.

The flight itself was no more exciting than tying a shoe. I was very pleased at how quickly I was able to get into Germany though. Once off the plane, I just had a 5 minute jaunt through the arrivals labyrinth and then presented my passport to a German guy in a uniform with a beard. He stamped it and I was done. I don't recall international travel ever being so easy. I made it to the part where you walk out and see a ton of people waiting for friends to come off the planes and was delighted to spot my friend Tina was already there waiting for me.
I met Tina some 5 years ago when she came to the US as a foreign exchange student. We had been in touch and she convinced me that I should visit her while we are both in Europe and that we should hang out in Berlin.
Anyways, it was not too cold out in Berlin as we walked to the S-Bahn. For mass transit in Berlin, they have trams and two trains- the "Stadtschnellbahn" (fast city train) and the "Untergrundbahn" (under ground train). Thankfully these are abbreviated S-Bahn and U-Bahn respectively.
So a few minutes later, we were walking down a dark street to her friend's apartment. Her friend, Freida (I hope I am spelling this correctly!) was waiting for us to arrive. Her apartment was a nice little place with all the necissary stuff. She went through the effort of turning the chair and ottoman into a makeshift bed for me to sleep on. It might have even been better than my mattress in London, or perhaps I was just thankful for any surface on which I could sleep. We talked very briefly, Freida offered me tea, I had some water, and we were all off to bed.

Friday morning was just great. Breakfast consisted of fresh bread rolls from Freida's parents' bakery (mmmm) complete with fruit jams, butter, honey, salami, ham, and most importantly, Nutella. This combined with some decent bancha from Freida's tea collection was a brilliant start to the day. Afterwards, Tina and I were off to the center of town to catch a hop-on, hop-off bilingual bus tour of Berlin. The tour was pretty good although the tour guide on the first bus we were on had such a strong accent, I could barely tell when he switched from speaking in German to English. We saw all the major sights including the Brandenburg Gate (the video I took here is mysteriously not working at all) and parts of the Berlin wall that still remain. After we completed the circuit of the city, Tina took me to try currywurst. This magical treat was a sausage that was covered with ketchup, and curry sauce. I have before and after pictures that prove I ate the whole thing. While it wasn't my favorite dish, I can say I tried one of Berlin's specialties. After this, Freida met up with us when she was done with school and we walked around the city a little more. We checked out another part of the Berlin wall and had Ben and Jerry's. Later that night, we met up with Tina's other friend, Dörthe. The four of us went out to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and I will have some video and photos to go with this part of the story. My meal was pretty good and I had some green tea with ginger. Afterwards, we went to some bar/lounge to get cocktails. Everyone was surprised and confused when I asked for Ginger Ale with cranberry juice. They didn't believe me that it was a real thing. It tasted fine and they all tried it and confirmed. But it was nice to hang out and make new friends. That night, Tina and Freida played some German music for me and looked stuff up on Wikipedia while I rested on my chair-bed. I must have been tired because I fell asleep while they were talking to me about who the popular German musicians are.

Saturday. This morning, we were to meet my friend Leonie in Berlin. We missed out train stop but were only 7 minutes late or something. The four of us met up and walked around some of the trendy Berlin streets. We went to the Ka De We and walked around for a while in there. I checked out the tea section and candy section specifically. Leonie bought 6 cans of American Mountain Dew (the German kind is made slightly differently). We then found lunch at an Italian place right off the main drag. I got a 4-cheese pizza and a tasty drink called Apfelschorle which is apple juice and sparkling mineral water. We were then off the "The Story of Berlin" a so-called adventure museum. It was pretty exciting I guess. Lots of German history from the very beginnings of Berlin to the present day. I don't really know why it was an adventure, but it definitely felt like a museum. The most exciting part was that they have a fall-out shelter that you can go in and look around while they talk about how the living conditions would have been for the two weeks people could have lived there. Actually, afterwards I read that you can rent the whole place for parties and gatherings. Weird.
So after the Adventure Museum, we met up with Dörthe again and we somehow ended up getting ice cream again, this time from Häagen Dazs. Afterwards we went to visit the Reichstag building. We had to wait in line for a good 30 minutes or so to get in, and Leo had to catch her train back home- but once we got in, it was neat to see the city from up inside the dome. The video will have more of this...
Saturday night, Tina and co. took me to get a chicken döner from their favorite döner place. It was pretty good, even though mine was rather plain with no sauce or tomatoes but if you know me at all, that shouldn't be a big surprise... That night we went back to Freida's, had tea, and then Tina moved to Dörthe's apartment for the remainder of my visit.

Sunday was a fun, albeit, cold day. The sun was shining when I woke up after a dream involving swimming in the ocean after ducks that mysteriously turned into fish that turned into flying lizards. It looked like it would be a nice day. Dörthe had arranged for me and Tina to take her bicycles for the day. She lives in a town outside Berlin called Potsdam. So all day, Tina and I just rode around on the bikes exploring parks that had old castles, towers, creepy old buildings, windmills, etc. Once we were outside, the sun went away for the remainder of the day and it was quite cold. We walked around a nice pedestrian street in town and got some banana chips and chewy ginger candies. There were some old churches too. Eventually, we made our way to a large park with lakes and towers and lots of folks out walking (with/without dogs) which you will surely see in the video. By the time we circled around and headed back to Dörthe's, it was getting dark. Having a distinct lack of groceries, we ended up having pizza and pasta delivered for dinner, but it all worked out quite well. We were up chatting about Germany, America, travel, the world, languages, you name it. We were all asleep by midnight and Tina and I had our plan for the madness that would be...

Monday Morning. Berlin- 4:15 AM.
I woke up when Tina's alarm went off but went back to sleep because I knew I wouldn't need all this time to get ready. I think I got up at 4:20 or 4:25, I'm not sure. Once I showered, I put all of my things back in my book-bag, and was ready to go. We planned to leave for the bus stop by 4:55. Success. We waited for several minutes and the bus did show up. The bus trip to the train station wasn't too bad, I'm glad we knew where to get off. Ten points to Tina for successfully planning and executing a lot of the travel and itinerary during my time in Berlin. It all went very smoothly. I was worried that I would be late to the plane because the best case scenario only provided 20 minutes to get from the train stop at the airport to the plane terminal. The other option for Sunday morning was to wake up two and a half hours earlier and wait around at the train station a bit- but would have afforded more time at the airport itself. Dörthe said we would be able to make it, and she was right! So 10 points for Dörthe as well. Anyways, I said goodbye to Tina and went through security and rushed off to my gate. Again, I had a seat in the 3rd row of the jet. You see, with EasyJet, the seats are not designated on the tickets, it is first-come first-serve but people will still sit with gaps in-between them, just like on buses or the tube. If you sit near the front of the plane, you get off quicker though and can beat the rush at border patrol. Anyways, I found a seat between two nice people and almost immediately fell asleep for the whole of the trip. Now for the exciting conclusion!

So Monday at 10:30, I teach at one of my primary schools in London. My goal was to get there on time even though I was coming from, oh you know, Berlin. Anyways, keep that in mind. So the plane landed a little after 8AM London time (Berlin was an hour ahead) and I bustled off quickly through the passport control and found myself in the train station. Now the train LED boards are harder to read than the ones for the underground- there is a lot more information on them. So I thought I had to head to platform 1 for my express train back to central London so I headed there. However, when I got there, I found that the train that was there was calling at lots of stations in between. I didn't pay another £16.90 for non-express! The other platform indicated that the next express train wouldn't arrive for 20 minutes. This had me down and worried. Luck would have it, exactly at that moment I over heard the end of a conversation that went like this "...platform 6. If you hurry. Run, go!"
I thought "Oh silly people running around in train stations like they have somewhere important to be". And then I thought that while I had to wait 20 minutes for this train anyways, I might as well go check out Platform 6 and see what they were talking about. Sure enough, when I rounded the corner to platform 6, the Victoria Express train was about the depart. The whistle was blown and the doors were closing. I barreled full speed down the stairs like a reckless Burnese mountain dog and hurled my body towards the crack that meant the difference of a good 30+ minutes to my journey... I just barely made it in and my book bag was pinched by the door. But I made it in. That was all that mattered. I felt like I won a million bucks. Everything happened to work out perfectly for those last 5 minutes. By some magical twist of fate, I ended up on the right train 20 minutes earlier than I should have- just on a whim.

The rest of the story is hardly exciting... I will tell you that the Victoria tube station was a madhouse and that because of that, I was 15 minutes late to my first school, but it ended up being alright. The Berlin trip was a success, I had a great time, caught up with old friends, made some new ones, saw some cool historic places, and tried some weird foods. I recommend Berlin if you want to check out a city that is a bit more spread out and less crowded than a London or NYC but still has a Starbucks on every corner. Don't go to Starbucks. There are tons of alternatives.

As for the mystery photo, I'll leave that go a day or two more just to give everyone a shot at it. I hope to have to pictures and video up tomorrow or Thursday at the latest.