Berlin, Berlin

My internal clock is weeping right now.

Yesterday was lovely. Absolutely lovely. I walked through Park Sanssouci to downtown Potsdam, taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful, sunny, warm fall day. At Luisenplatz, they were setting up the Weihnachtsmarkt--the christmas market--and I'm kind of excited about that. I've never been in Germany for Christmastime before, but I've heard all the hype. I know they go all out. I've already been given a chocolate-filled advents calendar. The supermarkets have been stocked with stollen and gingerbreads and marzipans and baking goods and you name it for weeks. And Jack's been telling me how a real German Weinachtsmarkt might be his favorite thing ever. Seriously, seeing this normally stone serious "tough guy" frat boy go giddy over a christmas market is really getting me excited too. I called him Saturday afternoon to let him know they were setting things up, and he literally squealed with excitement. I nearly dropped the phone.

Anyhow, after my nice walk, I was preparing for a nice quiet evening staying in with my laptop in front of me, ready to have espn.com open, and hitting refresh every 30 seconds in an effort to "watch" the U of M OSU game. Sounds like a fun night, no? Instead I got a call from Jared (Not my ex, rather a British bloke that I have a few classes with here) and he asked if I wanted to come to Berlin with him and a few of his buddies, bar hopping. I said yes, on the grounds that we visited every sports bar with satallite tv, in hopes that some kind bartender would put the game on.

So, yeah, I met up with Jared and his british friends David, James, and Michael, and we hit the town. We were unsuccessful at convincing anyone to put the game on--oh, but we DID get to watch Handball, Boxing, and freakin PING PONG coverage. Also, a bartender at one of the bars treated me for all of my drinks--I tried to pay and he responded with "Schon gut!"--this became the joke of the night for the guys...they all wanted to know where their free drinks were. It was actually a really fun night, despite missing the whole game (dissapointing results, but I hear it was awesome). There was one point, when we stopped at one of Jared's friend's apartments, where we were all sitting around and the door bell rang. The guy who lived there, Christian, got up and buzzed the person in, leaving the apartment door open so that whoever it was could just come in. We're all just sitting around then for a few minutes, when suddenly this dog wanders into the room. It looks around at everyone for a few minutes, then wanders back out of the apartment. Michael then says "Wait, did that dog just ring the doorbell?" He must have had the wrong address. Because according to Jared, no one living there owns a dog, for sure. It was hilarious...just because of Michael's reaction to it. He was convinced that the dog rang the bell. And Christian never offered any other explanation, and no one else showed up. So...who knows?

I also introduced the Brit boys to Falafel last night. They made fun of falafel all night--they were talking about Doener Kebab's, and I said I didn't eat doener, but did eat falafel. They didn't know what falafel was, and when I told them "chickpeas with garlic" they all looked disgusted. So at the end of the evening, when we realized we were stranded in berlin for at least an hour (more on that to come) we went to a kebab place and I ordered a falafel. They all tried it and agreed, it truely is a delicious thing. duh.

Anyhow, so here comes the fun part of the story...

I've realized that, at night, you can go into Berlin easily, but you can never get back out. There is always something in your way. It's either night construction on the train tracks, a bus/tram/u-bahn that you just missed that only comes once every hour ( or even better, you just waited for an hour for the tram to the u-bahn, only to realize that the tram get's you to the u-bahn station 1 minute after the u-bahn train left...and the next one is in, you guessed it, an hour), or a Regional Bahn verspaetung (regional train delay)...whatever you can think of that makes public transportation a nightmare--it's going to happen to you while you are trying to get out of Berlin at night. So yes, as with every other time I've tried to get home from Berlin at night, it took about 3 hours...when during the day it would have taken 30 minutes, tops. This of course means that, after walking the 1.5 km from the Park Sanssouci trainstation back to my apartment, I finally crawled into bed at 6:30 am. UGH!!!
I need to make friends in Berlin, so that I can crash at their floors instead of trying to get back to Potsdam after nights out.

So yeah...falling asleep as the sun was getting ready to come up caused me to sleep until about 3pm...which means I was only awake for an hour before it started to get dark, because, yes, it starts getting dark here at 4pm now...which is driving me crazy. I miss sunny afternoons!!!

Anyhow, I have a lot to do and a lot to look forward to this week. I am planning several "thanksgiving" themed lessons, as well as one "Anti-Love song" lesson and one "Feminism vs. Quiverful/Neo-Cons" lesson (those two being for my 13th classes, who are doing a section right now on relationships, gender roles, etc.) . In addition to lesson plans, I also have to prepare for this weekend, since I am hosting a thanksgiving feast for my friends here. Jack, Nathan, Mathias, Yani, Nicky, Alisha, Vivian, Jared, and Bret (not been mentioned in here yet, but he's an American guy in one of my classes, nice guy) are all invited. I'm preparing green beans, roasted carrots, mashed potatoes, stuffing, salad, some sort of fruit sauce, pumpkin soup, and a pie! (apple or pumpkin, depending on whether or not i can find pumpkin pie filling). Jack is making a turkey breast. It should be a good time...and a very multi-culti thanksgiving too--american, canadian, australian, german, british, northern irish...

Anyhow, Jack is planning on coming down Wednesday to help me prepare, and also to help me pick out some sort of couch/futon/guest bedding at ikea. Should be fun times. I'm sure I will have plenty of stories to share about all of this.

Now I need to try to sleep--hopefully my schedule won't be too thrown off. I need to get up early tomorrow to go get a flu shot, and make my mother proud.