Hello everyone, I am posting from Berlin! Amazing as it my sound, but getting here was no “walk in the park” if you permit me a small pun. Because this is my story lets walk through my day-to-day-to-day events. It started at a lovely 8:00 of restless sleeping (e.g., I finally fell asleep at 4:00), followed by a trek to the bank. Mind you I can get ready in 15 minutes or less, pending on the condition of my hair (yikes). After two attempts of finding an open bank I decided snack food for the plane would be a brilliant idea (thanks Bflat), which was just as much of a pain in the butt meaning I ended up going to the gas station. After that I spent the better part of that morning just trying to double, triple, quadruple check everything I was brining to make sure I didn’t forget anything.
For Reference to what I packed:
2 books—Lucifer Effect; Godel, Escher, Bach
1 Nikon D40X, Nikkor 18-135mm telephoto lens
2 Nikon 1.19 aWh batteries
1 Powerbook G4, power, mouse, iPod etc,
3 pants
3 short pants
3 dress shirts
3 ties
3 polo shirts
4 tee-shirts
1 toiletry set (thanks Bflat)
Ok, I can’t remember it all, but in any case it was a very selected bit of my “important” items.
At this point I ended up waiting around for Dr. Doris and Hugh Van Auken while sitting around at Holy Cross. It was kind of interesting to watch all of the summer students roam the halls oblivious to my presence unlike the professors who knew I was a psychology student or have heard about the trip from others. They on the other hand would come up to me and ask if I was excited, gave kudos, and expressed a great deal of pride that we were sending students to this conference. I guess it's more amusing than it is interesting.
About 12:00 the Van Auken’s showed up, we loaded up the cars then headed off to the wonderful Chicago O’Hare Airport; or as I have dubbed it: (extemporaneously deleted) on Earth. Needless to say I have never felt so stupid, smart, dirty, clean, and a plethora of other oxymoron’s at the exact same time. On one hand I would smell some dirty foreigners walk by rank of vodka and cigarettes (making me feel quite clean) but the instant I had to take my shoes off at the security check I felt so god-awfully disgusting! I have noticed that I’m quite anxious around airport folk. I seem to be hyper-vigilant and a terrified worried I’m going to appear as a tourist in spite of the fact I am one! All of those complex emotions aside, it was pretty smooth touring through there, in spite of the aforementioned things.
While boarding the plane I had a sudden rush of fear for my first flight but once I was seated next to Sammi and Greg it was a grand relief. During take-off that fear went into a complete opposite direction toward that of exhilaration. But the flight itself outside of those things was terribly boring. The corner stone flight movies followed by the reported typical airline foods. I guess I should mention that I only dozed off a bit because the seats were quite uncomfortable and very close to the person to the right or left (even though I was isle-seated).
When we landed in Heathrow it was a totally different experience. Needless to say I was more rushed and confused than I have been in quite some time. Doing the check in process at Heathrow was kind of like going to a dentist you know is about to pull out your teeth, but when you get there he trips you and you end up busting half of your teeth out. This parralles my experience there quite nicely actually. I knew I was going to get checked and assumed SOMETHING I own would set off an alarm. Actually, nothing did although I did end up dropping my bag which cracked the case. So now I'm typing on a very ugly looking computer :-(. Next came my luggage in general.
Getting my luggage to move from London to Berlin was quite the event. The folks at Virgin Air tore the luggage numbers off and so the concierge at British Air had to track down my luggage by name which is apparently a feat. Then the security was just so rushed and almost haphazard that it barely seemed worth it until I passed that and looked to the left. This was something I’ve wanted to see for a long time in person. A Ferrari F430. Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful. What a great welcome to London England! As I toured the Heathrow “mall” which is as it sounds a mall complete with cafés, duty free shops, a bar, some designer clothing shops, oh and an apple store. Well not a full sized apple store like the one in Chicago or Indy but it did happen to have all of the typical mac stuff on display so it was fun all the same.
After we boarded our planes to finally fly to Berlin via British Airways, I actually happen to sit next to this English couple that are professional photographers. What a fun couple of hours. Needless to say, that particular flight was pretty straightforward: jump on plane, get off plane. Outside of that the flight to Berlin was a breeze compared to the 7.10 hour flight from Chicago to London (well the seats were quite a bit nicer). That is until we landed. It wouldn’t be traveling if someone didn’t loose luggage.
Once they finally found her luggage (still in London) they were going to have it delivered to her, but our day was just beginning. Oh yes. This is around the 15th hour that I’ve been up and active. I would have considered sleeping on British Airways but the people next to me were just so interesting. Would have slept on Virgin Atlantic, if it was not for the aforementioned reasons). And now we have to trek across town to the Hotel and then the Bier Garden at 7:00 at night! Holy Hell. After that it put me well into the 26th or 27th hour of no sleep.
OK. I think it’s a good idea to talk about this whole “no sleep” deal. Why? Well I think its quite amusing to see a metro full of Americans who are having the most ridiculous time trying to get tickets to board this damn thing, then trying to stay awake. Pfft. No way. I slept on the u-bahn—standing. Not very comfortable but it at least gave me the umph to keep moving for the next couple hours.
The Bier Garden. My definition: a reason to come to Germany for incredible beer and the incredible food. Braughtwurst never tasted so good, as was the kolslaw, potatoes, and red cabbage. I honestly could write an entire blog on merely the food experience. The beer was unbelievable. At first I took a drink and thought, “well this isn’t any—HOLY COW!! This is amazing.” It was actually good enough for me to want to savor the beer with the meal as it was some sort of symbiotic and recursively amplifying relationship. In any fashion, Germany was absolutely validated by that meal alone.
When we finally finished at the Bier garden a small group of us decided to go head on down to the mall since it was right off the train station at Potsdamer Platz near our hotel. (Yeah, we’re young, we can handle ourselves in the mall not to mention we are all exhausted) For once I am not with out some smart ass comment about how we totally fell on our face. Ha Ha, we conquered the mall! We didn’t buy anything but we actually went to all 3 stories in less than under 30 minutes. There I finally found them. Birkenstocks! If I may liken this to the moment in Wayne’s World where he describes the white Fender Stratocaster, “it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.” Mission 1 accomplished 50% accomplished. Now I just have to wait a day to buy them because we will be doing a tour of the countryside tomorrow.
Finally returning to our hotel after way to many hours out and about (getting back at roughly 9) a number of us decide to go swimming. One would think we’d all be dead in our shoes with all of this stuff, but apparently we needed to swim to get to sleep even though I fell asleep on the train ride to (Kiserstrasse). Obviously we enjoyed the many comforts of our luxery hotel, (e.g., sona, pool, and bath robes.) After all of this we finally called it a night, and went to bed.
Gute nacht Berlin, und gute nacht Nate.
(Sorry for the lack of pictures, I will have to post those up later :-(
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