Adventures in the EU: Germany

Berlin ended up being an accidental and eventful destination. We didn't actually plan on spending two days in Berlin, but our flights just happened to work so that we had a couple days in this historic German city. I, unlike Kat, had never been to Berlin, or any part of Germany, so I was cool with just chilling for those couple of days. The first day in Germany luckily was nice and sunny and warm. It's especially nice because we literally walked the length of the city. I wish I was kidding. But wait, I'm forgetting the highlight of that day. Simply put, Germany was kind of weird to us. As we were riding the train from the airport to the city, for some reason we got to talking about Dunkin Donuts and all the delicious treats it has to offer, which naturally made me want it. So of course we walk into the train station and spot a German Dunkins just waiting for us to purchase it's chai tea and hot chocolate. Oh and it was also German Unity Day so some other bakery was giving away free jelly donuts. Don't mind if I do. Stop giving me the judgey eyes, banana hot chocolate and a free donut, plus a few gummy bears, is a perfectly acceptable breakfast/lunch. YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE.

We wanted to go find the East Side Gallery part of the Berlin wall, but ended up trusting the wrong directions and getting off the train at the historical side of the wall. What is this madness? History? Please, I'm here for the murals. Just kidding, history is kind of cool I guess. Though we had no idea where in the world we were, we decided to just follow the wall, thinking, hey we have to stumble upon it sometime, right? That sometime may have been three hours later, but we did eventually make our way there...even if someone kept telling me with absolutely no real idea, that we were almost maybe, probably there. I'm not going to mention any names. That would be rude. Oh and other weird coincidence as we were searching for a late lunch, we mentioned that all we really wanted was a Subway, and turn the corner and boom, sweet onion chicken teriyaki here I come. 

 

I loved this

super model status? 

The second day in Berlin was a whole other kind of complete disaster. Ok, disaster is a really strong word, but it was one big mess for sure. Unfortunately it was rainy, cold, and windy, three of my least favorite weather conditions, so we decided just to find a cafe to chill out in for a large chunk of the day. Overall, the day was decent. Ate a panini, later a pretzel, wrote a blog post.....but then things took a bad, bad turn. For some reason or another that is unexplainable, the two of us were convinced that our flight back to Copenhagen was really late. We even looked at the boarding pass, like yeah, WE GOT THIS. Yeahhh, we didn't. Military time, it turns out, is really easy to figure out if you've passed the first grade and now how to count. We apparently don't. So after an angry German turned us away from security, we realized we are actually the biggest idiots in the world and missed our flight. Then once we booked tickets for the next flight out the next day we sat in disbelief that we were so stupid. We actually probably spent more time than necessary beating ourselves up over this debacle, but traveling is expensive enough, so another added flight wasn't too pleasing. But people make mistakes I suppose. Just usually not such perfect people such as myself.

Once we realized we were stuck in Berlin for the next fourteenish hours, the time had come to figure out what to do next. We figured we could sleep in the airport, but we weren't really sure what we were going to do with ourselves for the next fourteen hours. A lot of rounds of tic tac toe? But instead we decided to get back on the train to the central train station, find a starbucks with wifi and try to find a hostel. Now, this would have been a stellar plan if Europe didn't close down the continent sharply at 7pm. Starbucks turned out to be closed and we were once again angry at life. Or actually just ourselves, we take full responsibility for this stupid move. Annnnd then when we went to check when the next train left for the airport, we were pleased to find the trains seemed to have stopped running for the night to that particular airport. PANIC. It's one thing to be stranded at an airport, it's a whole other to be stranded at the train station. I wasn't having that one. Panicked we ran up to the information desk and asked if there was any train going to the airport, yup, there was, in two minutes. At this point the whole evening started to turn into a bad, but comical, movie scene. I'm sure we were quite the site running through the train station, especially when I fell running up the stairs and Kat grabbed me by the backpack yelling "We are making this train! You're ok!!" Lol. by far the greatest moment of the night. At this point we didn't actually have time to buy tickets so we had to make the split second decision of whether to get stuck at the train station or hope for the best and get on the train without tickets. Neither option sounded great, but we had to do something. So on the German train we went...ticketless. I'm kind of surprised we are still alive to tell this story and didn't die of heart attacks..or at least whiplash from staring around for a conductor every time there was a noise. Turns out someone was on board checking tickets. yay. Then we spent the night in a German prison. Just kidding, the woman was so nice, and probably just wanted to be rid of us since we were trying to explain in English our complicated story. She actually just took a look at our boarding passes for the plane and let us go. I LOVE HER. Seriously though, thanks nice German woman, I hope Karma was good to you.