Guten Tag Berlin

The flight from Cairo to Berlin seemed twice as long courtesy of a baby and its eccentric mother sitting next to me.  Children under the age of two shouldn't be allowed on international flights... it's not like they appreciate where they're going in the first place.  To avoid any frivolous lawsuits, perhaps the airlines should just schedule certain "baby friendly" flights every week or so; if it's so important for Baby Balinda to see Disneyland in Tokyo then her family can arrange their schedule accordingly.  I'm well aware of the inconvience this would cause  the baby's family, but think of all the flights that would suddenly be so peaceful.  It's called taking one for the team people.

Souless diatribe aside, I meandered down the airport corridors to immigration and was pleasantly surprised to receive a German stamp in my ragged passport.  I attempted to decipher the transportation routes into the city as I waited for my abused baggage to arrive on the carousel.  I collected my bags, converted what was left of my Egyptian Pounds into Euro and set out to find the S-Bahn.  I would discover later that S-bahn was essentially the above ground train and U-Bahn was the subway.  This was all lost on me at the moment however, and I awkwardly stood dumbfounded at the ticket machine hoping it would all be okay. A really cute German girl, sympathetic to stupid foreigners, walked up and gave me a quick rundown of the public transportation system along with her ticket which still has 2 hours of validity left.  Yay for German girls!!!

Maybe it was my exhaustion, the girl's attractiveness, or just the inherant complexity of the public transportation system, but I didn't remember a single thing about the train I was on or where I was supposed to go.  My Ipod has an application with hotels and hostels listed so at the very least I had an address.  I asked a few other people on the train for help with no avail; they were mostly tourists and in the same unfortunate situation I found myself in.  Sitting across from me was this old German lady who knew just enough English for me to know she was crazy and wouldn't be of any worthwhile assistance. 

I hopelessly hopped off the train and began a guesthouse scavenger hunt walking through the cobblestone streets of Berlin.  The trees were on fire with the glow of an autumn sun.  After three years of eternal summer, it was nice to know that it was still possible for leaves to ripen into shades of burnt orange and apple red.  This made being lost tolerable... almost enjoyable.  And it would have been enjoyable had I been appropriately dressed for such weather, but Thailand and Egypt had left me suited for nothing but the sand and sea.

Guesthouse #1 in Berlin, Germany.
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I found the guesthouse as night fell.  It was on the bottom floor of an old historic building nestled on the corner of a quiet intersection.  After some initial confusion over whether they had room for me or not, I was led back into a dorm and flopped onto the bed like jello... it was rather hard though, and this hurt.  A friendly (and hot)  German girl a few beds over offered me some chocolate.   After refusing a few times, she began tossing them at me.   We talked for a bit about my travels and she explained to me  that she had just finished high school and was in Berlin with her friend to look at universities. She invited me to go out with them that night and enjoy the city.   Berlin is known for its nightlife, and while I'm not big into the club scene -at all-, I very much wanted to experience the city's highlights.  Having a cute semi-local girl as a friend and tourguide was most certainly a win-win situation, but I felt like death, and my weakening eyelids forced me to decline the invitation.  I regretted this decision greatly in the minute or so it took me to fall asleep.  The blame for this regret falls squarely on that stupid baby from the plane. Had the parents shut it up, I would have been full of energy and ready to go . . . maybe on the next trip to Berlin.