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.
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