Ich bin in Berlin!!

So part one of my first Berlin blog is written for you all in New York’s JFK airport and while American Airlines may offer pretty cheap prices, they do not by any means provide the best service…in fact I would say it is fairly bad and their flights are often canceled or delayed.  My flight to London is delayed 2 hours and 15 minutes and when I tried to talk to the lady at the desk to explain to her that I had a connecting flight in London and didn’t want to miss it, she flat out told me that it was likely that I was going to miss my flight to Berlin, but she wasn’t going to change me to a flight that was leaving earlier, because there was a slight chance that I could make my flight and if I didn’t then I could get a flight at 1:00pm, which will make it nearly impossible for me to get to the program by 5pm. I explained this to her and she does not seem to care.  Perhaps this distaste is stemming from my frustration with AA for canceling my flight to Panama last spring bring, putting me on standby for another flight, calling my name for that flight, and then giving someone else my spot on that flight right in front of my face and having me on record as being on the plane, making it a right pain to get a new ticket. So if you fly, don’t fly American Airlines :) .  

Par t two of my first Berlin blog comes to you 2 days later from my comfy cozy German home. The plane didn’t end up leaving New York until 9:30ish, which meant I didn’t get into London until about 9:30am….and my flight was supposed to leave for Berlin at 9:55am, so I had to wait until 1pm to fly out of London. I originally planned on sitting in the London airport listening to the Beatles and reading Harry Potter while I waited for my flight, but I was just so stressed out, I ran around like a chicken with it’s head cut off trying to find a way to contact someone from the program (which, by the way, I didn’t really need to do) and trying to exchange dollars for pounds and spilling my delicious Chai tea latte all over the floor of Heathrow International Airport.

I arrived safely in Berlin at around 4pm, had my passport stamped…didn’t have to go through customs, which I thought was weird. In fact, I found it so strange that I walked around asking what I should do and everyone just ignored me. Then I was taxied to the lovely Brentanostrasse, checked in, and Elke picked me up.  We came home and I have my own room! It’s a great flat and all of the rooms are fairly large and the ceilings are crazy tall. After waiting for Anna, my host-sister, to come, we ate dinner…. I barely made it through dinner I was so tired. By 8pm I was out of it and all by passed out. And I have officially beaten my sleeping record, which had previously stood at 16 hours. I slept from 8pm until 1:30pm the next day. Yes , folks, that is a total of 17 ½ hours. I was personally shocked and impressed with myself.  Afterward we walked around the neighborhood and tried to figure out which buses and S-bahns and U-bahns and regional bahns I need to take to get to school, which was a project in and of itself.  If I do not get lost at least 5 times in Berlin this semester, then all of you who have ever driven with me or suffered me through me being a “co-pilot” will attest that God works miracles.

Today I had the first day of the program, so there was a lot of information being thrown at me and I was meeting a lot of new people so it was kind of overwhelming, but in a good way. I am proud that I made it there using the buses, but tomorrow should be a bigger challenge, as I have to take the S-Bahn. Anyway, I met a lot of cool people, whom I look forward to getting to know better over the next several months and my host family continues to be awesome. My host mother, Elke, walked me through the Bahnhof (train station) a good 3 times, so hopefully I will be ok tomorrow and we had a nice little walk to the grocery store.  We had rice and veggies for dinner, which sounds normal, but top it off with a glass of wine and it’s perfect :) This is why Germany is fantastic.

I’ll keep you updated say, once a week?

Viele Liebe!

Jenn