Moving in

I had pretty good flights with Virgin Atlantic and British Airways yesterday. I departed LAX at 6:50 PM with some tearful goodbyes and flew for about 10 hours with 300 or so travelers, primarily Brits heading home after a blissful vacation in 80 degree SoCal winter. Since I was traveling alone, they assigned me to one of the seats on the side where only two people sit next to one another, and the woman next to me was quite interesting to chat with.

London Heathrow is a friggin' damn massive airport. After arriving at Terminal 3, I had to wait in line to get crammed into a bus that drove 10 minutes to reach Terminal 5. It really was lovely, but I was so exhausted as I don't sleep well on planes - basically not at all, and the seats on Virgin did not help - and I kinda just sat there. I perused duty free for a bit, but the prices really weren't fantastic enough to tempt me... that's a good thing. There were so many people (so overwhelming!), and at that point I honestly just wanted to be alone and eat my sandwich!

My flight to Berlin-Tegel was delayed a bit. On the plane, I sat next to a German family that was coming home to Berlin after a vacation in Las Vegas. This was my first time trying to begin some small talk with German strangers, but I had completely forgotten all the people who told me Germans are not very chatty with someone they just randomly met - awkward! Upon arrival, I was greeted by my lovely host mom Silvia and host sister Alicia - and I mean lovely!! Beautiful in every way and they've been extremely hospitable since my arrival :)

A short drive on the Autobahn and voila! My home for the next few weeks...

A large map of Berlin is exactly what I needed! The U-Bahn map alone blows my mind compared to the four lines of BART.

A garden shared by people who live in this little community

Alicia took me out last night to meet her friends. Silvia drove us, and we stopped for gas at a familiar place...

 

And finally, some random fliers I took from Drama, the bar we went to. The one on the left is a postcard printed by the German national health service and the one on the right is an advert for some classes.

Drama is a gay smoking bar, which explains the salacious photos of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean hanging on the walls. It's got quite a bit of character (fake roses dangling from the ceiling, burlesque and belly dancing performances on a small stage), and the drinks were pretty good and way cheaper compared to the U.S.  Alicia let me try some of her Pimm's, which is a drink made from Pimm's and ginger ale - delicious!  I left smelling of stale cigarettes though; practically everyone except me was smoking, including the girls I was with, and I've noticed it's pretty common here despite all the boldfaced notices on packets of tobacco and cigarettes warning Rauchers sterben früher - smokers die earlier.

It was odd staying out until 1 AM and seeing the streets still full of young people drinking and smoking and generally not asleep yet. Definitely a different culture here.