Surprise!

I brought my laptop with to Morocco primarily so that I could unload pictures from my camera during the 5 nights that I am here. I didn't want to be limited to the 500 8 megapixel pictures that can fit on my 1 GB memory card. In the first three nights, I've already accumulated 414 and counting.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Riad we're staying in has wireless internet, so on two occasions, I've already checked email and facebook from my bed or the rooftop terrace.

After finally figuring out that بحث المدونة الإلكترونية means "sign in" in Arabic, I'm able to login to my blog.

I won't take the time right now to go into too many details; I'll save that for my return. But
There have been many highlights so far. So of which include the 30 cent fresh squeezed orange juice one can purchase at one of the 30+ stalls and the camel ride on the way to a waterfall outside of Marrakech, at the beginnings of the Atlas mountains.


Another side note: my title is Adam's World Tour: Eurotrip
I think I need a new title.
I'm not in Europe anymore

Rome [revisited]

At the beginning of my settlement in Germany, I won €20 for a trip to Erfurt for two girls and myself. Well, actually Roman won it for me the day before my showing me all around Giessen, unknowingly giving me half of the answers to the scavenger hunt the Auslandsamt was sending us on in our first day of class.

I skipped out on those €20 to play tour guide for Krista in Rome. The two cities she had her heart set on seeing in her three weeks in Europe were Paris and Rome. And why not? They’re two of my most favorite cities in the world. At first, I was hesitant buying tickets and spending one of my valuable weekends in Europe to go some place I’ve already been. But immediately after buying tickets, I got more and more excited by the day.

Coincidentally, I found out Chase and Izzy had tickets to go to Rome that weekend as well. We were staying in separate places, but we were on the exact same flight each way. It made for good in-flight company. But upon arrival in Rome, we accidentally got separated in the metro station. Krista and I made it down the escalator to the platforms. Chase and Izzy went missing. …or maybe to them, we went missing. They waited near the top of the escalator for us while we, noticing they were missing once we hit the platforms, waited near the bottom. We skipped the first subway that ran passed, but when they still weren’t down the escalator when the second train arrived, I said screw it and hopped on. Without either Chase’s or Izzy’s number, Krista and I didn’t see either until the bus back to the airport three days later.

We stayed in a B&B in a courtyard off the main street that runs east of the Coliseum. This put us about 5 minutes (walking) from the Metro A line to the east, and the same distance from the Coliseum stop on the Metro B line to the west. It meant that regardless of where we were heading in the city, even if we turned right coming out of the courtyard towards the Metro A line, we always glanced left first to catch a glimpse of the amazing arena sitting at the end of the street.

On day one, I took Krista on a whirlwind tour through Rome. Obviously, the Coliseum was the first sight in our day. Even if we hadn’t wanted it to be, we couldn’t help it. It was right there. Unavoidable. We actually just gazed at it from the outside. My inside knowledge led us passed the Coliseum to the Palatino. The same ticket covers the Coliseum, Palatino, and Roman Forum. And many less people head into the Palatino. It means shorter lines. Less time spent waiting impatiently in lines.

After the Palatino, we walked through the Forum, and then our hunger mission led us away from the Coliseum. After a bite to eat at a Pizzeria near Area Sacra (one JD led me to just one week before I left Rome last semester), and after letting the animal lover play with the cats in the cat sanctuary, Krista and I continued on to Campo de Fiori, Piazza Navona, and a fantastic gelateria on our way to the Pantheon. The gelateria served up a bowl of fresh strawberries which we topped with lemon gelato. Heavenly. From there, we threw our coins into the Trevi to guarantee ourselves a return to Rome, and we stumbled across the Roma city police marching band on our way back to the B&B to catch our collective breath.

For a reasonably priced dinner, we headed to a familiar restaurant in Trestevere, Carlo Menta (where I first ate Ox tail), coincidentally passing a rose garden near Circo Massimo which I had just learned about the day before thanks to Roman exchange student Silvia. After dinner, I dragged Krista to Mr. Brown’s – My apartment's happy hour bar from last semester – for a drink and to be able to rub it in to all my Roman roommates back in the states. Talk about Karma. Mr. Browns wasn’t quite the same. I didn’t recognize any of the people working, and all I did was miss my roommates. We left after my one beer.

Our walk back to our place provided the opportunity for some night pictures.

Day Two was filled with the main sights. The Vatican Museums filled the entire morning. Lunch was at a café right across the street from the Coliseum, after which we went inside using the tickets we’d purchased the day before (which just so happen to be valid for two days). A spur of the moment “What’s Next?” decision led us south, out of the old city walls to St. Paul’s Basilica, a sight I didn’t see in my entire three and a half months last semester in Rome but I did see in my first visit there with my family. For comparison’s sake, we made our way all the way back to St. Peter’s. But the line was too long, so we waited until Monday to enter. Nighttime brought about the Spanish Steps, and Piazza della Repubblica.

Sunday was a day at the beach, after spending the morning at Piazza del Popolo and the Pincio. We made our way once again back to the Vatican for night photos. We hadn’t taken any night shots of the Vatican yet, and it was our last night in Roma.

Monday we checked out. We hit the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica, got rejected at by the Baths of Caracalla (they closed at 2pm on Mondays. We showed up at 2:40pm). I tried to lead us out to scenic Appian Way for our last hours in Rome, but I must have picked the wrong bus, because what looked familiar at the beginning became unfamiliar after 15 minutes. We wound up in the fascist built EUR area, grabbed a bite to eat, snapped a picture, and headed back to the center of the city.

We returned to the heart of Rome on the 175 bus. The street names started looking familiar. Then the shops on the street started looking familiar. We passed the store where Justin wowed the sales clerks 9 months previously, scrambling and then solving a Rubik’s cube in the two and a half minutes it took the clerk to process Justin’s information in order to buy and register a cell phone. It would have only taken the clerk two minutes had he not been looking up in amazement every 10 seconds.

As we passed that store, I knew exactly where the bus was taking us. We ran right by Stazion Trastevere, down Viale di Trastevere and passed Pizza Boom and my second floor apartment I lived in for three and a half marvelous months. I wanted to yell “Stop the bus!” but I knew none of the roommates were within 4,000 miles and we didn’t live there anymore. …not that the Roman bus driver would have understood “stop the bus” anyway…

After a successful hunt for souvenirs and unexpectedly passing the same anti-war graffiti I had snapped a picture of three years ago, Krista and I capped off my return to Rome with that delicious gelato near the Pantheon.

We ran into Chase and Izzy at the bus stop to go back to the airport for our 10pm flight, and made it back to Giessen watching the sunrise from the train.

Krista flew home just a few hours later.

Traveler's Review:

I was definitely spoiled by Budapest.

Both cities, Budapest and Prague, have two hills on the west bank of a river with much of the city lying on the east bank. Castles sit atop both main hills in each city. Prague castle itself clobbers Buda castle as far as things to see (Buda castle only houses two museums inside, but is still enjoyable from the outside [see Budapest photos]). With that said, Prague’s castle made me feel like I was in Disneyland or on a Hollywood set. It still held my interest, but I have the feeling Prague castle rivals Cinderella’s as far as annual summer visitors. The tourists were already swarming, and it was only the beginning of May.

Buda castle plus Fishermen’s Bastion on Buda Hill are enough to edge by Prague castle on my book. The views of Budapest from the Citadel atop its second hill easily beat Prague’s second hill, which is mostly green with either wooded trails or an open park. I’m sure it would be an excellent place to relax if I was a Prague resident, but the views from the top, while pretty, can’t compare with Budapest. And while I would say the average building is prettier in Prague than in Budapest, Budapest is beautiful still.

Prague is Budapest with many, many, many more annoying tourists while lacking Budapest’s Turkish baths.

Work in Progress

For anyone desperately waiting for an update, I finished my Norway story and hid it down by "April 19th" to keep things roughly in chronological order.

Much more will becoming very soon, but it's 2:15am my time, so I won't be getting around to it for another 10 hours.

Prague

Here's for all of you who won't be able to wait for me to get back from Morocco. I leave tonight to catch my early morning flight tomorrow. Then I'll be in Marrakesh for 4 nights and Ouarzazate for a night in between. A total of 5 nights on a new continent.

Pictures from Prague are posted. I won't have time to get around to captions before I leave. I added a few of Krista's pictures as well. Hers are the ones stamped with the yellow date in the corners. You'll notice some appear to be taken from a bus. This isn't an illusion. After our two car Czech train stopped, we were informed we had to go the rest of the way by bus to the next station - a complete surprise because it didn't happen on the way to Prague, just the return. It was also an amazing example of communicating without a common language, as the Czechs on the train spoke neither English nor German. Following her pictures are the 9 train stations we went thru on our way back (Minus Giessen, forgot to take that picture).

My idea of fun is riding on a train for twelve hours. I would have taken a bus for eight hours, but when I heard the extra four hour alternative, I just couldn’t pass it up.

OK, actually, the bus schedule with Eurolines was such that a bus left Frankfurt late Thursday night and got into Prague at about 6am Friday. Return was either Sunday evening at 5pm getting back at midnight, or leaving Prague Sunday at 10pm and getting back at 5am Monday. As it turns out, the only seats that were left three days in advance were Friday night getting in Saturday morning, and then leaving Sunday at 5pm. Prague for one night didn’t seem worth the €80 round trip bus fare.

Instead, Karl, Krista and I split a Bayern-Böhmen group pass and tacked on a €12 ticket each from Plzen to Prague. Total was €52 for Karl and me to get to Prague and back. Slightly more for Krista because she’s just visiting. Just visiting means she doesn’t have the Hessen ticket on her student ID that was included in the €182,95 student fees that she didn’t pay.

All in all, €52 isn’t a bad price to pay to get to Prague. The downside is group tickets mean no fast trains, only regional ones. Regional trains only go so far before they turn around and go right back to where they came from. So we were required to jump on train after train, generally for about an hour each. No longer than an hour twenty on any train, with one exception. The exception was 1 hour 50 minutes.

The train schedules on the way there worked out well, relatively speaking. Well means we averaged no more than 20 minutes waiting at any particular train station. Usually it was between eight and thirteen minutes. The exception was 53 minutes in Nürnberg, which outside of Frankfurt was the biggest train station we stopped at, so there was plenty to keep us occupied.

The return trip wasn’t so lucky. Monday was a Feiertag in Germany, so there weren’t the usual number of trains running. On four occasions, we waited just over an hour sitting at various train stations. Total time for the return trip: 16 hours.

Prague itself was nice. The lack of extraordinary superlative reflects the lack of inspiration Prague gave me to seek one. But it was still nice.

Saturday the three of us blazed through the city, seeing most of the ‘must-sees’ on our way to/from Prague castle. Sunday, we struggled to come up with a list of more things to see. The list was complete after the Jewish quarter (Cemetery plus a couple of synagogues) and Wenceslas Square. When we realized we walked through Wenceslas Square the day before while exploring after fighting through the hordes of tourists on Charles Bridge, we scratched that off the list and were left with just the Jewish quarter. So we explored some more.

We stopped at two souvenir/beer/liquor stores: one before heading to the Jewish quarter, one after climbing down Prague’s second hill; each in a separate part of town. The separation is why we were stunned when the guy sitting behind the register at the second store was the exact same guy who was trying to sell us a 2000 Crown ($80) bottle of Absinth at the first store. The “free beer and wine samples” sign painted on the second store window drew three college students in like the blue glow of a bug zapper does to flies, mosquitoes, and the occasional squirrel. The persistent salesman poured us each a sample shot of absinth instead. For Karl and me, the creepy Italian poured an absinth called Beetle. For Krista, he poured the other brand of absinth he carried, because she seemed a bit freaked out by the 5 inch beetle floating near the bottom of each bottle of absinth which wears the name.

We carried on, hunting down a Tex-Mex restaurant, Buffalo Bill, which Karl found on a list next to the list of recommended pubs, bars, and brewing houses. Krista and I shared a Chicken Quesadilla and a plate of Nachos Grande. Karl enjoyed his own plate of regular nachos 'n cheese and a chimichanga. We were all impressed and delighted by the authenticity of a Tex-Mex restaurant in an 'eastern' European city.

Karl and I were also delighted by the Budweiser listed on the menu. And the price. 48 Crown ($3) for half a liter. That’s roughly the price for the price of a 20 oz bottle of Budweiser in a bar back home. But that’s not what we were especially pleased with; this stuff wasn’t the crap from St. Louis. This was the original Budvar from the Czech Republic, which we had had a taste of in Hungary. With nothing left on our Prague list except night pictures, we talked for about an hour after eating while Karl and I enjoyed three half liters of the good Budweiser.

(Side note: the first night was spent at an Irish pub, where Urquell Pilsner was the bar’s beer of choice. Urquell coming from Plzen, from which the term Pilsner is derived).

(Second side note: while Urquell is good, Budvar wins the contest hands down).

Three half liters, a decent half-hour walk back to our room, a call home for mother’s day, letting Krista use my phone to call home for mother’s day because she couldn’t get her phone card to work from the Czech Republic, a nighttime Prague photo shoot, and six hours of sleep later, we started our 16 hour journey home.

Late Assignments

Oh Boy.

There was a time when I wrote a blog in the form of a letter.

The letter informed everyone that time was moving at lightning speed and that I would be unable to blog as often as I had hoped. Since then, time had slowed down a bit, allowing me to blog every once in a while to update everyone on my travels. On a few occasions, time slowed so much I was even able to blog "from my blackberry."

Times change.

Time is no longer at normal anymore.
It's not even at lightning speed.

Somehow, time jumped past lightning and went all the way to warp speed.

In the last several weeks, I've been to:

Norway (April 11-14)
Köln (April 19-20)
Budapest (April 25-28)
Berlin (May 1-4)
Heidelberg (May 5)

Regarding Norway and Köln, I've already posted the travel planning and/or the adventure of the hinfahrt. Much of Köln sits completed on my computer on MS Word, but it still awaits final touches. Budapest exists in pictures only at this point. Berlin, and Heidelberg are yet to exist.

When I have time to breathe, you'll hear more. Sadly, I might not be breathing in May.

I give a presentation Thursday on the Berlin Wall, which I still have to finish (and start on). Friday (or even Thursday night) thru Sunday night or Monday early morning looks like a trip to Prague. After Prague, I might come up for air, shortly, but then I hope to make a trip to Munich, and even possibly play tour guide in Rome, in the same weekend. ...I did spend a whole semester there, but I would love the opportunity to buy a cheap Ryanair ticket and go back. ..and impress everyone I know with my Roman insight. After whatever happens that weekend, I breathe shortly, probably preparing another presentation for a different class, because I then leave for Morocco for 5 days, with a presentation due the day after I get back.

...What idiot thought the end of May would be a perfect time to give a presentation? Who thought "I can get it out of the way fairly early, but still have plenty of time to get it done"? ...This idiot did.

Berlin Berlin

I think my pictures in the attached album are fairly self-explanatory, but I’ll divulge the details anyway.

By the time we rode the S-Bahn back into the heart of the city, it was roughly 9pm and pretty much dark. We set off in a group of 11 (one of the Polish girls was meeting a friend in Berlin) passed the Reichstag to the Brandenburger Tor. After snapping pictures, we accomplished a feat once impossible for thirty years. We walked through it. Harry and I were the only ones that noticed the significance initially. We were among the very few who probably cared, too.

The group walked down Unter den Linden looking for a place to eat. Somewhere, we turned off to find a reasonably priced place to eat. We succeeded. The place we found was called Nolle. It had good food at good prices in a good atmosphere, situated under a train bridge leading out of one of the many stations in Berlin. Every 10 minutes or so, the ceiling would roar as another train rolled over. We thought it was cool, but I bet the staff at the restaurant has other opinions.

After dinner, we snagged one of the last S-Bahns back to our hostel and headed to our respective rooms. In the morning, we checked out.

Yup. That’s right. We checked out. Our fearless trip leader waited to book a hostel until the night before, even though the number of people going with was set a week and a half prior. At one point (three days prior), I took it upon myself to look for rooms, which I found, but was told to wait. And I waited, because I wasn’t about to book a place for that many people, only to find out some have issues with it and I get stuck with the price of 11 beds for three nights. So I waited. And they did too. And eventually we were left without a place to sleep for Friday night. We had Thursday and Saturday. No Friday.

The hostel was kind enough to let us leave our bags there since we were coming back for Saturday, but we could only get to them until 10pm. After then, the doors were locked and nobody was manning the desk. We ate our included breakfast, left our bags and set out to finally see Berlin during the day. Same thing as the night before. Passed the Reichstag (which had a massive line, so we opted not to wait to go up to the glass dome) to the Brandenburg Gate. It was there that I found out our fearless leader was set on following a walking tour listed in her guide book. I persuaded her to make a minor detour to see the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe sitting 300 meters (literally one block) south of the gate. Reluctantly, fearless leader followed.

Then it was back to the path, down Unter den Linden again, where we stopped to watch a group of break dancers perform, and on to Checkpoint Charlie. It was there that Monika and Tautvydas split from the group, sick of how slow we were blazing our trail. I would have joined them, but Checkpoint Charlie and one of the last stretches of the wall still standing nearby were on my list to see, so I figured I’d follow at least for a bit.

We checked out the Checkpoint Charlie museum which detailed the construction of the wall and the escape plans, attempts, successes and failures. Then there was a refusal to detour a block and a half to see the wall. “We’re going this way.” Which was passed the Germanischer Dom and Französicher Dom. Crossed the square where the Nazis burnt books by or about Jews, Democrats, Communists, and …well, basically anything that wasn’t Fascist. A clear, covered opening on the ground looks down into a room of empty bookshelves there. Then we eventually passed the Berliner Dom as well, on our way to Alexander Platz and the Fernsehturm.

We bailed on the line at the Fernsehturm after waiting half an hour. It was moving too slowly and we had to get back to no-longer-our hostel to grab our bags. The others planned on staying out all night at a club. After a day of walking the city, I was too tired for that; no way in hell was I about to subject someone dealing with jetlag to that torture. So Krista and I went our own way, walked thru the Tiergarten at about midnight and found two beds in a six bed room with four other sleeping strangers already there.

We were up and out by 10 the next morning and back to the original hostel to see if by chance our double room was ready. We were lucky. It was. We showered and set out well rested and refreshed. I texted the others to see what they were up to and how their night had gone. I received a reply that read:

"Wir sind Tot müde. Wir gehen zurück zu schlafen. Wir treffen uns vielleicht um 9 Uhr Abends."

So much for seeing as much of the city as possible (not that I’m still bitter about the train pass ordeal, or anything)…

Krista and I were happy not to have nine people slowing us down anyway. Day two started with a stop at the second of the three main stretches of remaining wall, further north where the former French zone was. It was primarily a stop for me so I could gather a picture of the reconstructed “death strip” display that stands there (for my presentation on the Wall i was giving on the Thursday of the upcoming week). Then we headed to Potsdamer Platz and ate lunch at a restaurant in the Sony Center. From there, we walked passed the first stretch of remaining wall that we had skipped the day before near Checkpoint Charlie. On our way there, we spotted an old watch tower that was left standing at the end of a dead end street. We walked passed graffiti artists at work on our way to the Jewish museum.

The Jewish museum was powerful to begin with. The basement floor (the first place you enter) was filled with individual stories of exile, survival, and tragic endings. At the end of the “axis of exile” was a door to the outside. It led to a sort of courtyard with a slanted floor and equally slanted vertical concrete columns. It didn’t seem like anything special at first, but the combination of tilts is enough to throw off your senses and make you walk like a two year old learning all over again. It was supposed to symbolize the surviving refugees’ task of adjusting to a completely new country, culture, and environment, wherever they ended up.

The rest of the exhibits were fairly boring but very throughout, starting with the beginning of Judaism and walking through 3 more floors of their history. But the museum is as much about the building itself as it was about the exhibits. The architecture creates eerie “voids” in the building that give a lot to think about.

When we had enough of the exhibits, Krista and I headed over the river to the Eastside Gallery, the third remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall. The eastside gallery is full of artistic displays, often political (mostly referencing freedom, peace, and unity), but not necessarily so. On our way back, I snapped a picture of Gleis 17, which I’d passed each day at the S-Bahn station nearest our original hostel. We called it an early night at 10:30.

Sunday morning we checked out. We threw our backpacks in a locker at the Friedrichstrasse station. Not the main station because the main one doesn’t have lockers. Just a left luggage desk with a massive line of people waiting to drop off/pick up luggage. Friedrichstrasse didn’t have any available big lockers, so I towed around Krista’s suitcase that she still had because she came straight off the plane to Berlin.

We made our way back to the Checkpoint Charlie area so Krista could purchase a souvenir she’d thought about buying and couldn’t get out of her mind after she initially decided not to buy it on the first day. Then we spent our last hour and a half walking through the Tiergarten by day, eventually following the river back to the Hauptbahnhof to meet the others for our 2:15pm departure.

The return trip cost just €7 each because it was a beautiful weekend. That’s actually the reason. In Germany, there’s a Schönes Wochenende Ticket for up to 5 people for just €35 and it covers the whole country for a Saturday or Sunday. So no need to buy the individual state tickets like they did on Thursday.
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At one time, one of my relatives posed for a picture like this:

Planning Drama II

Krista is smart.

I told all of my friends they should come to Europe and visit while I have a free roof (and tour guide) to offer here in Germany. Krista was my only friend smart enough to take me up on my offer.

Krista came on a Thursday. Thursday is when I have most of my classes. But this particular Thursday was a Feiertag. So I told her to come on this day because I would be able to pick her up at the airport regardless of her arrival time. Her plane was scheduled to land just after 10am. I don't have to get up too early to get to Frankfurt International and we still have a full day. Perfect.

Not perfect. Thursday was a Feiertag. The group we planned on heading to Berlin with also wanted to use this day for travel. I had told one of the two girls planning the trip (nameless, because it doesn't matter) a week and a half prior that Krista arriving on that Thursday. I don't know what nameless was thinking, but for whatever reason didn't see the issue with leaving at 8am Thursday morning then. I didn't find out that was the plan until the Monday before the trip, at which point I immediately informed her that Krista's plane lands at 10am, so that's a problem. Apparently nameless failed to inform the other planner (who I rarely see) about the problem until Wednesday morning - the day before the trip. The day before was apparently too uncomfortable to delay a departure time by a whole 3 hours.

Fine. With the addition of Krista and me, the travel group was 10 people. Perfect. Two groups of 5 (the group tickets cover a max of 5 people each). I don't need to delay the whole group. Nor would I want to. I just need to find three kind, unselfish people willing to hang back an extra couple of hours. Heck, the unselfish ones would even get to sleep in. No luck.

The group tickets mean regional trains only. Regional trains from Gießen to Berlin is an 8 hour trip with three or four train changes. Everybody wanted to get as early of a start as possible so they'd be able to use part of Thursday still to see Berlin. I found only one person willing to hang back - but even that was only if I could find two more people to hang back to fill the ticket. Wanted to help, but didn't want to help at the price of paying extra to get to Berlin. ..I didn't want to pay extra either, which is why I wanted to find people to wait in the first place. But I understand.

People have a harder time saying no to your face. Over the internet, it's easy. The phone is almost the same. So I went next door and explained the situation to Monika, who reluctantly offered to wait back as well, again if I found a fifth person to fill the ticket. The price difference between 4 people and 5 people for the group ticket isn't a whole lot. Which is why the group didn't have an issue leaving Krista and me behind in the first place. But Monika didn't want to piss off the rest of the group, who would then only be 6 people. Six is too many for one group ticket, which means it would be three people splitting each. Annoy two people or annoy six. ...again, I understand.

What I don't understand is why I couldn't find one more selfless person to wait a whole three hours. I guess some people I thought were Freunden are eigentlich nur selbstsüchtig Bekannte. Three others who I know would have waited had been planning a trip to Prague (a trip that fell through last minute). So we were stuck. Just the two of us. Nameless explained that we could still "save money" by splitting a group ticket between the two of us. It would "only" be €45 (compared to the whopping €18 it would have been with 5 people per ticket, or the €22 they wound up paying as a result of a missing Krista and Adam).

Krista isn't studying in Giessen, or Germany at all. Just visiting. So she is also without the Hessen ticket which allows everyone else (me included) to ride regional trains in Hessen for free. So she would have to pay the roughly €20 ticket to get from Frankfurt to Kassel on top of the €45 for the tickets to Berlin, jacking her total up to €65 for an 8 hour ride on regional trains having come right off 10 hours on a plane from Chicago. She said she'd worked her tail off for the last several months saving specifically for her trip to Europe, so she didn't have a huge money concern. After knowing that, I made the executive decision for her to pay a whole €15 more for a ticket on the ICE train instead. The ICE's are the faster trains. From Frankfurt to Berlin, it is only 4 hours instead of 8. So after picking Krista up at the airport buying tickets and eating lunch (or whatever meal it really felt like for her), we arrived in Berlin just half an hour after the first group had. They were actually still in the train station, just sitting down for something to eat.

What happened in the next several hours is probably what bothered me the most. We watched the others eat. We were still full from lunch and Krista's left over snack food for the plane ride here. Then we took forever to make our way to the hostel we were staying at on the southwest edge of the city. Sure, the buses were on strike (I seem to have pretty good luck with European capital cities), but how hard is it to decide to hop on an S-Bahn to the station nearest our hostel and take a (couple) taxi(s) from there? Or take a taxi from right where we were (which is what we eventually wound up doing)?

After having spent just over two hours in the city doing nothing, the ambitious group decided to rest for a bit after settling in at the hostel. 20 minutes actually sounded good to me too. But that twenty minutes quickly turned into 40, and then another half hour was tacked on when the girls (including one high maintenance male) finally decided to get ready. Krista's not one of them. It took her less than 5 minutes.

We were finally heading out to see the city as the sun started to go down around 8pm. Which happens to be after when the second group of us would have arrived if there would have been enough generous people to wait behind. ...so much for making the most of Thursday... At least now it's crystal clear to me how nameless makes her decisions.