What up, Berlin?

The adventure that we began yesterday morning finally came to a very much celebrated end today. After getting a good 3 hours nights’ rest on the plane from Newark, we arrived in Berlin, Germany at 11AM this morning (Monday). In case you missed it, that’s a total of 13 hours flying time. NOT including layovers and sitting on tarmacs. I feel no desire to step foot on a plane anytime soon. Anyways… as we learned very early, the Germans do things a bit differently. Customs, apparently, is not a big deal to them. I have traveled to Mexico plenty of times and am used to the thorough customs inspection leaving and entering the country. Since I am so used to America being very interested in every single item you are bringing back into the country, I assumed Germany would be just as interested in what 80 college students were bringing into their lovely home. I was wrong. The entire process consisted of: 1. Getting off the plane and 2. Showing them our passport (which they barely glanced at before stamping it with the seal welcoming us to the country). All of us were a little thrown back by this lacksidaisical approach to security, but hey- less hassle for us too.

A few of us (myself not included) had gotten our backpacks checked back in Denver because there wasn’t enough room in the overhead compartments. This seemed like a good deal, until we were in Germany and none of their bags were coming at baggage claim. I got lucky with my bags being some of the first in our group to come up. If no one else got their bags, we had all decided we were sharing my 6 shirts, 2 pairs of jeans, 1 pair of basketball shorts, 1 jacket and 1 sweatshirt for the 10 day trip. After what seemed like an hour of waiting for bags, while getting stared at by the locals for the amount of noise we were all making, all the bags were accounted for and we headed out of the airport in search of large taxi’s to take us to our home of 3 days.

Getting a taxi in Germany is not the same as getting a taxi in New York. There is no line, no one is directing the incoming taxis, and most of them look as if they wouldn’t fit one suitcase in them let alone a person and a suitcase. A nice taxi driver took pity on us and waved down a large enough taxi van to fit all 5 of us; we didn’t think we looked that pathetic, but it’s no big secret that we probably wouldn’t have gotten a taxi without his help. The one thing German taxi drivers do have in common with the lovely drivers of New York City is their crazy, borderline dangerous, driving styles. We made it to the hotel alive, and thanks to the amount of us, was only 5 euro each.

The hotel was already buzzing with Gonzaga students when we got there. The staff of Hotel Hamburg have got to be extremely patient, or accommodating, people to put up with all of us. I feel bad for anyone who decided they wanted to stay here the next 3 days with us taking over the place. It’s a good thing now that our flight wasn’t on time, getting in at 11 was early enough. The rooms weren’t going to be ready until 2PM so a group of us decided to wander around to find “beer and brawts” as the guys would repeatedly yell too loudly on the street. Much to their disappointment, we got lost instead of finding the coveted “beer and brawts” so we settled on a Greek restaurant that had enough room outside to seat all of us. The food was pretty good, and pretty cheap for the amount we were given.

Basically the rest of the day consisted of sleeping. Dinner wasn’t until 8:15PM so most of us slept until around 6 and then went in search of free internet to send out a few emails to let all of you back home know we were still alive and not in jail. It’s almost 10PM here now and while we should be out getting crazy, we have decided it would be best to sleep tonight- party tomorrow. 

Monday, September 5th