Picture Synopsis

For those of you not on Facebook, here is a link to an album with the best pictures from the trip. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=42419&l=8318c&id=731281502

Day 31: Oh. That looks delicious.

Corinne:

It’s been one of those days where you aren’t quite sure where one stops and the next begins.

I feel like Rosie kind of down-played the fact that we missed our flight and were stuck in an airport for nearly 24 hours. About 14 of which took place today.

We had decided to take shifts being awake, and Sarah and I fell asleep at 2 (after running around the airport for an hour making post 30.5). We were on linoleum, and it was hard and cold. Rosie woke me up at 4:30 for my shift and I never got comfortable enough to go back to sleep. And here I am still going (chalk one up for living on little sleep during freshman year).

We dilly-dallied in our little bit of wall, having a nutritious breakfast of rolls, possibly with some Nutella and pretzels. I had a delicious sandwich of Nutella and Honey Nut Cheerios (not quite as good as the peanuts, but still worth a try). Sarah, on her lack of sleep, reacted with a little disjointed but empathic ‘Oh. That looks delicious.’ She was running on as little as I was.

At noon, we checked in for our flight (on time this time).

At 2, we took off.

At 3, we went down through some turbulance that got us all jittery, (including some less annoying gaspers behind us), but an extremely smooth landing.

At 3:15, we were walking through the huge airport making up a story problem about the speed of luggage reaching the conveyor versus the time it takes a passenger to get there.

At 4, we had our luggage and started looking at the cars for an Audi and our host for the weekend, Karen.

At 4:25, we used a payphone to call her.

At 4:45, we finally connected.

Then we spent a pleasant evening with her and her friends and her town. More info later, but we are safe and tired in Belgium. Finally. And have been harassed at every turn not to miss our flight back to the US.

Day 30 : Fun at the Airport

So Sarah refused to include this in the blog yesterday, but at dinner she ate a lot of the sugar from the shaker. When we had to leave, she then proceeded to fill her napkin with sugar to save it for later. As we were walking around, she tried to funnel it into her mouth but the napkin started to rip and she spilled it all over herself. Like her face had sugar all over it, it spilled down her shirt, and somehow even got under her money belt.

Okay, so yesterday Sarah mentioned that a group of people came into the lounge while we were hanging out and there was this really annoying Canadian guy. So anyway, along with the Canadian guy and the girl from Carnegie Mellon was this group of guys from New Jersey. We didn’t talk to them at all while we were up there, but later when Sarah and I were going to take a shower we ran into them again. We were in the bathroom and Sarah was already in the first shower and I was about half a step away from walking into the second one, when one of them was like “hey, where are you from.” I’m pretty sure he was not completely sober, but we had a short polite conversation until his third friend came in and he had to switch into show-off-y guy mode. He decided to finish the conversation by saying something along the lines of “if you are going to get naked don’t let me get in the way” and then “I am in bunk 40 by the way.” After they left the room Sarah laughed, but through the whole thing she was completely silent and of no help.

When we woke up this morning, the guys from New Jersey were just getting up too and we had another short conversation with them, but this time they were sober. It turns out that after the Canadian guy had left us alone, he went and attacked one of them with questions. He wouldn’t stop talking to him for at least 45 minutes and asked him the same stupid questions about how old the world was and whether he liked George Bush. I guess we were lucky to get out so soon.

After actually leaving the hostel, we went to the East Side Gallery, which is the largest section of the Berlin Wall still standing. After seeing the second largest section, I was expecting this one to be way smaller, but it was probably about six blocks long, if not longer. There was graffiti all over it, and most of the graffiti was pretty cool. We kept walking until the next subway station and then went to a museum type thing about the wall. On the way there we passed an area where there were poster boards and a few people walking around. We looked in and it turned out to be a memorial. Apparently the Berlin Wall especially affected people on this street because it ran right through it and blocked off a major church. A while afterwards, the church was demolished.

Across the street was the place that we were actually trying to go. The major point of the museum was the replica of the Berlin Wall and the death zone in between the two walls. On our tour a few days ago, we learned that the Berlin Wall was actually two walls that ran parallel to each other, and the walls were mostly there to slow people down so that guards could shoot them while they were in between. Anyway, after climbing about four flights of stairs you could look down and across the street and see the replica. Inside there were also film clips taken by American and British people.

We decided to take the tram after the museum to get back to the train station where we had stored our bags earlier. After turning the corner though there was a ton of traffic and the tram was averaging about 5 minutes per block so we got off and took the subway. After a few transfers, a 15 minute wait, and an unexpectedly long subway ride, we ended up at the airport about 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart. When we got to the right counter, the woman told us that it was too late and boarding stopped 40 minutes before scheduled departure. After looking up prices and times for every single possible type of transportation, we discovered that the cheapest thing to do would be to switch our flight to the next flight offered by our original airline with the 50 euro penalty. The problem was that the next flight was at 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. Soooo here we are, in the airport 11 hours later with about 11 hours left to go. There is no way that we are missing the next one. Corinne and Sarah went out to get food a while ago and then we watched a third of the new Indiana Jones and three episodes of Greek. All in all, it hasn’t been too bad so far. Almost like a relaxing Carnegie Mellon day. We even made a friend with a two year old boy who seemed to find us very intriguing.

Day 29 : Sarah, Put Down the Hedgehog

Sarah:

Wake up> Breakfast> Make lunch>
Corinne got really excited after we went shopping for groceries the other day since she has been wanting mayo on her sandwich since we started making them. A few seconds later she realized that we would be having tuna sandwiches for the next few days. Flash forward to today: Corinne puts mayo on top of her tuna.

Charlottenburg Palace. We went there, wandered the grounds, and hopped back on the bus within 2 hours. At first we were all a little underwhelmed, but the gardens turned out to be really beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that we took a picture in front of the palace, a picture in front of the fountain in front of the palace, and a picture on a bridge in front of the fountain in front of the palace.

We were going to get a picture in front of the bridge in front of the fountain in front of the palace, but the person we asked for help didn’t actually know how to use a camera and thus we lost the fourth layer of our photos. Oh well, at least we found an obelisk. Finally. We’ve been looking for that thing since Warsaw.

After the palace we wandered along Tiergarten, and checked out Potsdamer Platz. We played on some outdoor spinny chairs (I won the spinning contest) and then went into Matthaus Church and wandered around a bit, eventually finding our way to….a tower!!! So of course we climbed it. The view from the top was pretty good. We stayed up there for a while and decided to head down. I opened the door, and just before we all left, I pointed to a building and said something about how I liked it because it was special looking. Just then, the bell rang, catching us all of guard. I immediately shut the door, Corinne started to hyperventilate, and none of us could breathe because of the fits of laughter that completely consumed us. While Corinne and I were in shock, Rosie was apparently not afraid at all…sure.

Afterwards, we went into a few museums but didn’t see any exhibits since they were not free for a few more hours. To kill time until 6pm we went to look for a restaurant. This is usually the hardest thing to find, not matter where we are, and today proved no different. After settling on a place, we each got meals consisting of some combination of sausage, potatoes, and in my case, eggs. It was really good and both Rosie’s dinner and my dinner came in little frying pans on plates. So cute.

I also make friends with a bird.

By the time we finished, it was past 6pm so we headed over to museum island to check out the free exhibits. Our first stop was the museum that had an exhibit on the 7 wonders of the world. Unfortunately, this “special exhibit” was not free. Not wanting to miss the other museums, we moved on. We saw an exhibit in another Museum about Egypt. It was pretty cool. We saw the bust of Nefertiti and Rosie decided that is was nothing special. We browsed the gift shop afterwards and I found lots of items with a cute little hippo sculpture pictured on them. Then I saw a postcard with an adorable hedgehog sculpture on it, which Rosie told me to put down (yay, title explanation). Afterwards we moved on to a museum that had german art in it. It was nothing special, but it did have a few pieces by Cezanne, Monet, Manet, and some other famous artists. By the time we left that museum it was 9pm. Instead of visiting one more museum, we killed time on the grass doing bad cartwheels and awkward somersaults. We also split another cucumber and practiced our secret handshake/3 way high five.

Walk to find a subway station> Stop to watch the Euro cup (Spain beats Russia 3-0)> get back to the hostel > hang out > the end 🙂

Nope, just kidding. After I finished this, a bunch of people came out into the lounge. One guy from Britain said “hola” to me. Not the first person I’ve met who assumed I could speak Spanish. I feel stereotyped and all that. The next person we met was some guy from Canada who, according to Rosie, was “on something.” Here are the awesome conversation starters he had in his small talk arsenal:

1) Do you like George Bush?
2) Are you religious? (Follow up to Corinne’s yes: Do you think people were around at the same time as dinosaurs?)
3) Do you think the US is the greatest country in the world?
4) Can I use you computer for 30 minutes for a Euro?

Needless to say, least favorite person of the trip. Luckily, he went to go bother the people from New Jersy.

Finally, we met someone from….CMU!! How cool, right? She graduated from the drama program and we’re convinced that she is Mimi in the future. Her are the facts:

1. She went to CMU
2. She speaks exactly like Mimi
3. She looks kind of like her
4. She is from LA

the real end.

Day 28 : People Who Live in Glass Houses…

Corinne:

So Rick Steves didn’t have a section on Berlin (which is understandable since he was only about Eastern Europe). And even if he did, he is currently cheating on me with Maria. Which leaves me without an all-in-one reference source. Which can be slightly traumatic for me.

This morning started with me and some other girl in the nearly full 32-bed room coughing a call and repeat. (I’ve been sick but thankfully nearly recovered.) It took longer than normal to get up and out, and I’m not quite sure why. Trying to be quiet? Anyway, we had planned to meet for a tips-based bike tour at 11, but got on the first U at 10:50. My plan for the day was to go on the tour, then circle back afterward to any sites we wanted to re-see or go into. So I was stranded, and Sarah and Rosie could probably tell by the desperate way I was pleading with one of the 4 tourist maps I picked up to offer answers.

We went back to the hostel so Rosie could get proper footwear on for the bike tour (that also took place at 3, so all was not lost). But now the problem was what to do for 4 hours. We took the U-bahn into the city center and wandered toward the DDR museum (sadly not what you think) but ended up leaving because it didn’t look attractive. We ended up in the Lustgarten outside the Berliner Dom and ate our lunch. (And watched little children play with balloons and accuse each other while playing Red Light Green Light.) We had nothing left to do but walk toward the place where the bike tours met.

We got to the corner an hour before it was supposed to start, and began a long, slow wander through the neighborhood. We got to a large building, and on the side was a face with a quote: “How long is now?” It looked to me like a squatter’s place, with graffiti all over this half bombed out building. When Rosie and Sarah wandered in, I was forced to follow. And we found the coolest little urban art gallery with metal scupltures and fish tanks and textile art… That is when the day started looking up.

We circled the block and got back to the tour just before the sprinkles started. But everyone on the tour was ok with getting wet, so the 3 of us and 10 others got our bikes and set off to see the list of typical sites in downtown Berlin. We each had a brush with death, as Sarah decided not to stop for an ambulance and was in a fender bender, and I couldn’t make it up a curb and nearly slid off and got left behind at a stoplight. And Rosie…survived as well.

Among the things we saw were (giant list that I am really only listing so I can look back on it later) Museum Island and the Berliner Dom; Pariser Platz by the Tiergarten, the Reichstag, and the Brandenburger Gate; Bebelplatz with the Book Burning Memorial, the State Opera and Humbolt University; the Holocaust Memorial and Hitler’s final bunkers; and a lot of angry drivers. Our tour guide was very animated (and from Maine, so ani-Maine-ted, har har) and had some very enlightening tidbits. Such as the fact that Hilter was addicted to cocaine (but we already knew that from “High Hilter” on the History channel). While we were at the Memorial, Rosie, Sarah, and I got a crepe (“banana pancake”, Frank) with banana and Nutella, a slushie, and a “zucker and zimt” crepe respectively. And, despite the fact that Sarah warned her, Rosie still got Nutella on herself. (“That is a bad idea. I think it started when you didn’t take the fork.”)

All in all a good orientation (probably would have been better if I was paying attention to where the sites actually were). And the rain practically stopped after 5 minutes (and did stop after 30).

In the middle of the tour, we were attempting to bike through the Tiergarten but were stopped by the large barricades surrounding the giant screen and the already hundreds of fans jockeying for a spot for the Germany-Turkey quarterfinals tonight. So after the tour, when the three of us went up in the Riechstag, we tried to see the huge crowd, but the trees were blocking it. But what we could hear were the chants.

While we were up in the Reichstag, Sarah needed to go to the bathroom. We were too busy relaxing on this giant, stopper-shaped bench in the middle of the round, glass dome, so we kept delaying the inevitable. Eventually, it reached a peak, and this conversation resulted:

Sarah: “I would go in a corner, but this thing is round and made of glass.”

Rosie: “Well, you know what they say about people who live in glass houses.”

Sarah: “They shouldn’t take off their pants?”

I”m so glad we’ve matured so much on this trip.

When we left the Reichstag at about 8:30, they were turning people away from the FanZone. We tried counting abandoned liquor bottles, but were soon overwhelmed. There was a very smart lady with a cart full of them to turn in for money.

We check a couple U-bahn stations before we found one that was open, then made our way back to the hostel. (We just forgot to pay attention for part and had to take it a stop backward.) Maybe our lack of attention was due to the fact that I was convinced that Rosie’s tap “flap” was toe-heel-toe instead of toe-toe. We took a video of it and slo-moed it to check. I was wrong, but I kept hearing three hits! And then the rest: Dinner of salad and chicken. Watching the end of the game. Now just prepping for tomorrow. Cross your fingers that there might be a plan and it will work.

Day 27 : Where is Sarah?

Rosie:

This morning started out with a big surprise. Maria had arranged it so that one of her friends from Klagenfurt would give us a ride to the airport. Her friend had changed the time that we were supposed to meet outside three or four different times, but the final time that we were told was 9:15. After running out of the dorm at about 9:17, we waited…and waited…and waited. Some amount of time after 9:30 we decided that if we were going to use public transportation to get to the airport, we should probably leave. The bus came about five minutes after we got to the bus stop and two transfers later we were at the airport with time to spare. Apparently nobody in Klagenfurt gets to the airport early because it was almost completely empty. On the plus side, no lines. The airport had this smart setup though where you had to walk through their store in order to get to the gates.

The airplane was nice enough; it was our first since the flight from London to Warsaw. They gave out free magazines as people boarded, but we later realized that there was no free water. The three of us basically passed out for the entire flight though so I don’t know how much the entertainment or the water mattered. Even though we clearly did not find the flight very exciting, there were a group of girls onboard who must have been flying for the first time and definitely disagreed. As soon as the plane started to move on the runway they let out a series of streaks which reoccurred at a few points during the flight.

After we got off of the plane, we had to get on a bus and then a subway to our hostel. There were a ton of different machines by the buses that were selling tickets and we knew that we were supposed to get a 2 euro ticket from somewhere. We settled on a nearby machine that was selling some sort of ticket. After we bought them, we started walking to the bus, but on the way we noticed bright yellow machines that said “public transportation” on them. We were pretty much positive (Corinne especially) that we had bought the wrong kind of ticket. After having a minor freak-out we went and asked the bus driver and he just waved us onto the bus. If there was a problem, it didn’t matter. When we got to the subway station the sign said that another was not supposed to come for three more minutes. We all pulled out our sandwiches and began to eat because we were starving (it was already past 3:00). Just after I had taken the first bite of it, the subway came…figures. Luckily there were a ton of seats, so eating wasn’t really a problem.

The hostel was right across the street from the subway station after we got off. There were two guys right behind us with big backpacks and they walked across the street, through the arch, and up the two flights of stairs to the front desk. They were lucky, they were staying in the main part of the hostel. We, on the other hand, had to walk back down the stairs, outside, past a few doors, into a really sketchy door, and then down into the basement to get to our room. I guess it makes sense that the cheap 32 person room would be in a basement though.

We basically spent no time in our room and went straight to the grocery store. We decided that tonight we were going to have burgers for dinner but they had multiple types of ground meat, and we didn’t know what meant beef. After staring at the meat for a while, we decided that one of the words definitely meant ground. It took a couple more minutes to see that one of the packages had the word for ground plus something like ‘schwine’ which we assumed was pork, like swine. Just to be sure, we ended up going to the counter and asking for ground beef. It seemed like a better idea even though it might have been slightly more expensive. We didn’t really have enough bag space to fit everything that we had bought, so Sarah “Commandeered” a cardboard tray for the meat.

When we got back and put everything away, we started looking in books and brochures for something to do both this afternoon and in the upcoming days. We settled on a free bike tour for tomorrow and a nice English man recommended the Jewish museum for today. When we got into the museum, we could almost immediately see why he had recommended it. Architecturally, the building was one of the coolest that I have ever seen. They way that everything was set up was so interesting. I can’t really explain it, but to give an example, the architect built this garden outside filled with an 8 by 5 (approximately) grid of large, standing, cement, rectangles. They were all slanted as were the ground and the walls. It was supposed to make you feel kind of dizzy and overwhelmed like the Jews felt when they were uprooted from their homes. It was pretty cool. Everything else was similar. It was set up in a cool way, but with a specific purpose.

When we got back to the hostel, we made our burgers a broccoli, which were pretty good. Corinne then proceeded to clean the entire kitchen, including the big mess that the rude people before us had left. We decided to hang out in the main part of the building instead of the sketchy part. And that is where we are now.