berlin beginnings

Today, is Sunday October 18th, 2009. I have officially been in Berlin for 31 days, and though I can't really consider myself a true Berliner (apparently, I can't even say, "one euro, please" in German), I can safely say that the past month has been one of the greatest. Honestly, so many ridiculous things have happened since we got here, both amazing and catastrophic, I wish I could tell you about every one of them. I could write a novel detailing the events of every day, my afternoon activities which include sipping cider in a lounge chair in Berlin's version of central park and going to a million museums, let me get you oriented to Deutschland by outlining a few important cultural differences between Berlin and any United States city:

1) Despite all of the rain, water is apparently a precious commodity in Europe. As a result of this, A. restaurants WILL NOT serve you free water (nor will anything you order have ice), and B. you will drink more alcohol than regular beverages simply because its the economical choice. If in fact you miss free water to the point you'll do anything to get it, open up a bank account. The Deutche Bank branch is thus far the ONLY place in all of Europe that has complimentary H20.

2) On a highly related note, bathrooms. Though dehydration is the name of the game, somehow I always need to pee. Especially when I'm 45 minutes from home, and don't want to buy something at a restaurant in order to gain access to Berlin's most exclusive hot-spot besides Berghain: public bathrooms. Don't have 50 euro cent's on you? Hold it in! The only way to get passed the pissed off, and generally overweight German woman or the metal barrier is to pay your cover charge.

3) You can drink. Anywhere. Literally, anywhere. S-Bahn powerhour, here we come.

4) If you're going out at night, you're definitely not coming home until the next day. Nancy Howe would probably crap her pants knowing that it's completely unnacceptable to show up to a club before 1:00 (12:30 pushing it), and everyone knows the good spins only start past 2. Luckily, you can hop into bed around 7 and wake up by 2, and STILL get a phatty brunch until around 3 or 4. Thank heavens.

5) Germans have really weird showers. And they don't sleep with top sheets. And they have toilets that plateau at first, which has a few important implications. First, from what I've heard, this makes it almost impossible for the male population to pee standing up. Diagrams such as these exhibit the appropriate technique.

Even more fun is that everything that happens in the toilet, gets put on a lovely display for you. If I suddenly went blind, the one thing I would have no problem doing is going to the bathroom in Berlin, seeing as though that's how I do it anyways.

MOVING ON: highlights from the first week in Germany. These days are pretty much a blur, and looking back on them is kind of hilarious at this point. Day 1 was entirely spent at the Stanford center doing normal things like getting our keys, setting up our laptops and being told we have a 10 euro safety deposit on plastic name tags that we will only wear on the first day. Normal. We also spent a whopping 27 hours sans cellphones, and went to the Berlin marathon, of which the finish line is right past the Brandenburg gate (Berlin's most famous landmark).

Since I'm related to a star half-marathon runner (CONGRATULATIONS!!), maybe we'll be back again in a few years for the festivities. Besides watching the race, the best part about this or any other Berlin festival is the food stands. It's crepe/waffle/bratwurst/pommes/bier HEAVEN.

That Monday, we started what is my sorry excuse for school this quarter. It's been confirmed, I'm taking the least amount of units of everyone in the program (sorry mom, dad, and professor gross), but it's enabled me to go on afternoon excursions all over the city. I'm taking 8 units of accelerated beginning german, which means 2 hours of Deutsch every day! I will be sure to let you know when I finally muster up the courage to say more than one phrase in German on the streets ("sprechen Sie Englisch?-do you speak english? is where it stops right now). I'm also taking a theater class where we see various plays around Berlin and talk about them. Our professor is a super-baller old man who was a director and an actor and everything in between in Germany and the US. Finally, I'm taking the strenuous "Berlin vor Ort" field trip module where you go on a field trip once a week. But don't be jealous or anything. Because after all, MLIA.

auf Wiedersehen, Viet Nam.

Today, let's get out of Vietnam, foreal. The last day and half of the trip consisted of a lot of shopping, eating and savoring our last moments in Nam. Highlights include managing to communicate with the laundry place down the street without using any words, drinking at a bar called 1/2 Man, 1/2 Noodle in the complete darkness due to a blackout of the entire street, and getting season 3 of 30ROCK and seasons 1-5 of The Office for a grand total of $11 USD. Luckily our drive to Noi Bai airport was only an hour and 45 minutes long, and even MORE luckily, hoards of Vietnamese teenagers whipped out their cell phones to take pictures of me in line. Clearly, I was not the only caucasian in the airport, so I attribute the paparazzi treatment to my Wayfarer glasses. Clearly, they thought I was Harry Potter. Clearly, I miss this country like WOAH.

Transit from Hanoi to Berlin was relatively uneventful save the run in with the entire eastern European delegation to the Deaf Olympics (no, I'm not joking) and OH-the fact that I missed my connection in Frankfurt. Upon arriving at the reticketing center for Lufthansa, I was told there was no flight open until 10pm that night. It was 7:30 in the morning. Thus, I became a standby passenger for every flight that left from that point on. Fortunately, I got on a flight an hour and half later AND I got to see the first three letters of my last name on the screen. Which totally made up for arriving in Berlin to find my bags were still in Bangkok...NOT. I remained strong, held back my tears, graciously accepted the overnight care package, somehow managed the bus and train system, and FINALLY rang the buzzer at Kufsteinestraße 16, my home for the next 10 weeks. There, I met my host mom Sabine (she's GREAT, more on her later), drank some tea, took a fatty nap, and then met up with some kids for dinner/drinks, then back to bed to sleep off the jetlag. But things can't be that easy, I'm abroad, right? Right.

Before leaving to go get dinner, I was equipped with a set of 5 different keys to use to enter the building and eventually my room. One for the front door of the building, one for the elevator (HELL YEAH) and 3 for the door to Sabine's apartment. I arrived back at Kufesteinestrasse 16 at 12:45. Two hours later, after ringing the doorbell 5oo plus times and trying the keys even more times, holding in my blatter like my life depended on it, I finally woke up not Sabine, but the downstairs neighbors who thought I was breaking into the apartment. The Frau from the floor below came upstairs, I explained the sitch, and then she proceeded to do in 5 seconds which I could not even accomplish in an hour. She opened the door with the turn of ONE key. Needless to say, I got a lesson on how to open the door as soon as I woke up the next morning. MLIA.

GUTEN TAG

Today, well...first let me tell you how mad I am that I haven't been keeping up with this. I refuse to be one of those I'm-going-abroad-I'm-gonna-make-this-awesome-blog-but-only-write-4-entries-before-I-get-too-lazy kind of people, so fear not. I'm officially back.

It seems weird to go all the way back to Vietnam when I'm writing this almost THREE weeks into Berlin (holy balls), but as I said before, the last few days of that trip were absolutely mind blowing. Last I wrote, the typhoon came along pushing our trip to Ha Long Bay back a day, much to the dismay of the group and our especially our hangovers from Mao's. But the delay was WELL worth it. I can safely say that Ha Long Bay is one of the best places in the entire world (besides Oktoberfest, but oh maaaaaan we will get to that later). For those of you who don't know Ha Long Bay (which I had no idea existed until I got there), my words and pictures will never do it justice. If you ever stumble into North Vietnam, this should be at the top of your list. Let me explain...

After a 3.5 hour bus ride, including a craft shop of disabled workers and "fast food" combination where a "bread and cheese" is melted cheese on bread and butter, we deliriously arrived at the port, gave our passports to the captain of our traditional Junk Boat (ironic, because junk is exactly the opposite of what we were about to experience), and were immediately transported into fantasy land a la DD's Woodstock party. Our boat (see pictures below) was a three story palace of dark wood, cute little sleeping quarters, a common room/bar area equipped with none other than SCRABBLE, two decks at the back of the boat and a top floor paradise with tables, umbrellas and lounge chairs for soaking up the hot Nam sun and incredible views. Speaking of views, the reason Ha Long Bay is such a unique natural wonder is that it is made of over 3,000 little caves and islands of limestone erosion, making each massive structure unique and incredible. The only boats that go through the bay are the Junk boats and women on row boats selling you a convenient store on water (so typical), but it really makes you feel like your not in real life. Kind of like our 8 course seafood lunch, napping on the deck, the trip through the limestone caves, swimming at the beach and climbing to the top of Cat Ba island, night squid fishing and cheap Vodka drinking on the back of the boat, culminating with epic jumps/dives off of the top floor of the boat into the bay. For those of you that underestimate my swimming abilities (which you obviously should), you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that after one 45 minute freak out, I jumped off...TWICE.

Coming back to the mainland, I knew I would have some serious withdrawal. Luckily, a few days before all of pooled some extra money together to buy pens/rulers/scissors and other school supplies for some schoolkids outside of the main Ha Noi city. Cong woke us up, yelling to quickly get off the bus, pointed at the direction of a random alley, shoved a box of colored pens in our hands and said GO HURRY THIS WAY. Okay...I thought, and blindly followed his directions like I always do. "Um, Mr. Cong? Do they know we are coming?" "ehhhh!! just GO!". And so we did. What we discovered behind the gate was about 500 Vietnamese elementary schoolers, SCREAMING with joy, yelling (in Vietnamese) "THE WESTERNERS ARE HERE! THE WESTERNERS ARE HERE!". The most tragic part about our entire trip was that no one had a camera at that moment, because this was literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. I was crying from laughing so hard and being so in love with little Asian kids. Needless to say, it was exactly what could have made the journey home from Ha Long paradise possible for everyone. MLIA.