The Journey Begins - Berlin, Sep. 13

Ok yeah, technically the journey began a couple weeks ago, but I'm finally in mainland Europe! This was the main objective of this trip, so I'm counting my arrival here as the beginning.

Before talking about that, I've got a couple more things to note from my last day in the UK. I've heard about England having separate hot and cold taps everywhere, but didn't come across any in all the places I visited. They were all single mixer taps like every where else in the world. Although I did discover one other difference in the showers: thermostatic controls. These have separate knobs for controlling water pressure and temperature.

In my experience, I've usually come across either 2 separate knobs for hot and cold valves, or a single knob that controls both by rotating in 2 directions. I've never seen controls like this, so I was very confused the first time I used these thinking they were hot and cold knobs.

Also, I had a Jaffa Cake on my last day in England! It wasn't spectacular, just tasted like orange chocolate really. I was also convinced to try some Marmite, and I actually sort of liked it. I don't think either will be a top choice for me in the future, but it was fun to try them!

My flight out of the UK was just before 9am, so I had to wake up at 5am this morning. Could do with some more sleep, I'm feeling a bit tired right now. But getting through Gatwick was pretty straightforward, didn't have any major problems. Though I did notice a couple differences from what I'm used to while going through the airport.

At the security checkpoint, there are designated places for multiple people to unpack their bags and other items to be sent through the x-ray machine. This allows multiple people to unpack everything in parallel, whereas security checkpoints in the US can be completely held up by a single person. And all the bins are automatically transported between each side, making for a super efficient system. I want more of these!

One other difference at the airport is that my ID wasn't checked at security, but it was checked at the gate. I'm not sure which system is better, but it was certainly an interesting difference.

The flight wasn't anything super special, other than announcements were made in both English and German. I listened to both, and was only able to pick out a few words in the German announcements. Definitely need more practice!

Most of the flight was cloudy so there wasn't much of a view while flying over the channel. But we did fly right over Berlin as the clouds were opening up, and I managed to get a good picture of it.

After landing, I made my way to border control. I was a bit nervous about this part, because I wasn't sure if had done everything right. And it turns out I didn't. There was a paper form I was meant to fill out, but I'd not seen it before. I initially thought this was a print-out of the Digital Entry Application that I filled out online, but I never saw any instructions to print it out. I now think this was a different form, but I'd never heard of it before. Surprisingly, the officer I was talking to just let me through without it! I was definitely not expecting that, but I'm glad I didn't get into trouble because of it!

And now I'm in Germany! My next step was finding a way to the hostel I'd booked for a couple nights, which was another source of confusion. I checked Google Maps for a public transit route into the city, and I was greeted with these options:

That's a lot of letters and numbers I'm not familiar with, I've got no clue what the difference is between RB and RE and FEX and U and S. I can make some educated guesses, but adding to my confusion was the fact that many of the signs around were written in German only. I took the recommended route, which is a train that goes directly from the airport to the center of Berlin. It was labelled RE7, not RB14, maybe they're different trains that take the same route?

Anyways, getting to the right platform for the train was another source of confusion, because the signs only indicated the name of the final destination for each train, which I didn't know. I eventually managed to find the right one and hopped on after buying a ticket. The train ride was fairly pleasant, pretty similar to the train rides in the UK.

From there, it was roughly a 10 minute walk to the hostel I'd booked, called St Christopher's Inn. It turns out there's 2 in Berlin, and I went to the wrong one! So I had to walk another mile or so to the correct one. I probably could have taken a bus or something, but I decided a walk would be easier since I don't have experience with the public transit here yet.

I got checked into my room, which is alright. There's 3 bunkbeds in it, which are reasonably comfortable. Although this room does smell a bit like someone's been working out in it. Shouldn't be too bad since I'll only really be sleeping there, I'm intending to spend most of my time elsewhere anyways.

Once I'd settled in, I was getting desperate for lunch, since I hadn't eaten anything in about 7 hours. While I was walking to the correct hostel, I passed by a shop selling currywurst. I've heard about currywurst before, so I knew I had to go there. I hopped in line, and almost managed to do the entire order in German. I got lost when I was asked if I wanted it spicy or not, but the guy taking my order knew English. He commented that my German was pretty good, which I think is mostly a result of having learned proper pronunciation and grammar in high school. My main issue is that I just don't know enough words.

I went to pay with my card, but apparently they only accepted cash. And in my rush to get food, I hadn't yet put any Euros in my wallet, so I only had British pounds on me. Oops! Fortunately the guy let me have it anyways. And I have to say, it was really good! I'll definitely have to get this again, it had really good flavor combinations.

I've been looking at how people get around here, and there's certainly a wide mix of transportation methods used. I'll probably have more detailed info once I've seen more, but common transit methods I've seen include walking, cycling, driving, busses, trams, and scooters. There appears to be bike and scooter sharing services around here, where you can just pick one up for your commute and go. And the scooters are electric, so it looks pretty easy to get around with them. I'll have to look into these more!

As for the city itself, I've not seen enough to make any firm conclusions yet. I've only seen a bit of the east half so far, I'll look around the west half later today. From what I've seen so far though, this doesn't look like the nicest area to live. Streets are noisy, sidewalks are a bit dirty, and the old soviet architecture isn't very pretty. But like I said, I've not seen a lot yet, so my opinions may change. That's all for now, I'm gonna go explore some more!