Category: Various and Sundry
Current tunes: Moonlight Serenade – Glenn Miller (not by my choosing this time, it’s on the cafe’s radio)
Current location: Cafe Katulki
German word of the day: Kuchen – cake
“Ich möchte ein Stück Kuchen bitte.”
Dearest Readers,
It’s been too long, far too long! At least that’s what a select few of you have been, very pointedly, telling me. I apologize, but I’ve been a bit busy of late, and school takes precedence over you I’m afraid (even those of you who are funding my education).
To start: I have arrived safely and have been in Berlin for 3 weeks now. My time has been filled with fun, confusion, stress, merriment, and homework. Primarily homework. Pretty much what one expects to encounter on a study abroad. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world. My Spain trip? Eh… that was primarily memorable for the people and some interesting experiences; this trip, this trip will stick with me for the rest of my days.
Because I am so late in writing this up, I will be breaking my “Previously on Turnip’s Travels” into a couple of posts. If you are only here for pictures and don’t want to read about my exciting life and journeys, the check out the “Pics or it didn’t happen (it happened)” tab. That is where you’ll find the visual aids to the journey. I’ll be including some photos in posts as well, for ‘emphasis,’ but not a lot.
I left the States on the 30th of March. I arrived to a drastically different feeling Philadelphia International Airport, not only because I was excitednervousanxioushappysadthings!, but because it was DEAD. I have never seen that empty an airport, save for Honolulu at 5am and Frankfurt on a particularly odd day. I got through check-in and security in record time, we are talking 15 minutes TOPS, and arrived at my gate 1 minute after that. My Lufthansa flight, which I expected to be packed to the gills, was completely empty. Well, at least the entire rear of the plane was. 46K was an island unto itself. The vast sea of seats that are normally filled on international flights held nothing but my preconceived idea of the people who would usually be there. My little oasis in the very rear of the plane was only bordered by a woman in 46A and a man, who for some reason I couldn’t figure out, moved from 30K to 35K.
My wonderful flight attended heard that I spoke German from the woman who I originally asked for a seatbelt extender, and then proceeded to ask me where I came from. Me, with my terrible, probably tinnitus having hearing and my tsunami of emotions, thought he asked me if I had a long night. This confusion was quickly resolved and we proceed to carry on the rest of my flight using only German. And I got to spend the rest of the flight with the seat arm up (well, partly up, the last row’s arms don’t fully fold up), and a row- nay! A section all to myself.
Upon arrival to Frankfurt on the 31st, I was going to wait an hour for a classmate to arrive, and travel on from Frankfurt to Berlin with him. A “simple” thing to do. Suffice to say, nothing is ever “simple” when traveling, and my poor traveling companion was almost left to his own devices in Frankfurt. I was on the train, having run into another classmate, who was actually in the same train car, and received a call from Kev.
“Has your train left yet?” he asked, slightly short of breath.
“No? Why? Where are you?” My confusion was high.
“Because I’m the hauptbahnhof and I think I’m at the right train…”
“Track –?”
“Yeah.”
Then came the one sentence that could have crushed the happy moment: “Last call.”
“Get on the train!”
“Which car are you?”
I told him as the last of the passengers are were beginning to board.
“It doesn’t matter, just get on the train, you can walk through to find us.”
“Hold on! I think I saw you, stick your head out!”
I stuck my head out of the door closest to me, we saw each other, I waved frantically, and he started running. Imagine, if you would dear Readers, that OJ Simpson airport commercial from the 90s, but in a train station. Kev made the train by the skin of his teeth, our first travel trial was over; we both sat down and watched the scenery go by.
(Our surprise traveling companion/classmate later told us in the dining car that the conductor had broadcast that Kev was running and to let him get on the train. I laughed.)
Upon arrival to Berlin Hbhf, Kev and I bid “good day” to our classmate and proceed to meet up with our lovely friend and classmate, Renata. The rest of the day didn’t really have anything noteworthy to report. We met Renata, who was going to share my hotel room for the night, put our things down, walked around the neighborhood, found our school, ate, and then I went to bed.
On Friday, April 1st the fun really started.
Current tunes: Holocene -Bon Iver
I’m on my flight, somewhere over the Atlantic, caught between clocks that read 22:50 and 4:50, unable to sleep and so happy that I am.
I like to use some word loosely, like most of my peers, and the word that probably gets the most abuse from me is “awesome.” Most of the time I don’t care, but every once in a great while I’ll get the chance to have my inner Inigo Montoya go “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This is one of those times.
At 37,291ft (11369m) in the air, having taken my usual 2 hour nap, with my usual travel go to music flowing into my ear, thank you Bon Iver, and with nothing else to entertain I had the chance to look out my window at the sky. No longer above, parallel. Well, not technically but you get the idea. And what a sight it is to behold.
The sky has never been an inky black to me, and even now that holds true. With the plane’s rapid advance East the colors are getting infinitesimally lighter, and that is beautiful in and of itself, however the real show stealers are the stars.
At home the polluted sky gives splashes of warm color whenever the sun sets, but the stars are mostly impossible to see from light pollution unless you get very lucky. In Olympia, the sky is visible, and it always gives me a bit of joy. This summer’s meteor shower that my friends and I watched on the library roof is evidence of that. That was pleasant, maybe I said that it was “awesome,” but again, I missed used a word, took away it’s true potential. No, no- I’m talking about true, unadulted awe.
That is what these stars are giving me now. Hundred upon hundreds of speck of light, blinking through a veil of almost black-midnight blue. The likes of which I haven’t seen in YEARS, not since standing at the base of the Grand Tetons, soft grass underfoot, family around me, and a child’s easy wonderment; the Milky Way bright and winding above, stretching far as my eyes could see, past the tips of the mountains in the foreground, into the great unknown.
That humans have come this far, to fly in the sky, between the Earth and the Heavens like it is nothing-to be this much much closer to the unknown world above! It’s mind boggling to think about sometimes.
I’ll readily admit that there is probably an excitement factor coming into play here and a little of that childlike wonderment that I don’t think I’ll ever let go of. That’s okay. And even if you, dearest reader, don’t agree that this is awesome, that’s fine too. For now, I’m going to leave you, and lean back into seat 46K and enjoy the view and stew in my excitement for my upcoming adventure.
Til then,
Turnip
(Sleep deprived posts are sleep deprived posts.)