Last night seemingly continued into this morning, as we both woke up promptly at 7:30 AM - not in our CouchSurfing host's kitchen, where we belonged. We said goodbye to Miguel and Toni, asked where the heck the metro was and where the heck in the city we actually were, and left. We have not been up this early in so long. I was surprised to see so many people out!
I got some bread at a bakery but then we were close to the Museum Square and we decided, at 8:30 AM, that street sausages were really the best breakfast imaginable. That was more or less true; my street sausage the other day was better. But after that, we kept pretending to our stomachs that it wasn't before 9 AM and topped it all off with some ice cream as we waited for our tram.
Back at Leah's, we packed up our stuff and I found that sadly, my Eastern European adapter piece was NOT in the wall where I left it. Really sad about this for a number of reasons. 1) I didn't do it, 2) I hate losing things, 3) It's part of a set, which somehow makes it worse, and 4) There's nothing I could have or would have done differently. I figured it must be close by, so I searched and searched but to no avail. :(
Leah woke up while we were packing because I needed to ask her if she knew where my adapter piece was. She didn't, and her roommate was in a meeting at work unable to answer his phone. But once she was up, she went off about economics for probably 20 minutes (that's what she's studying). I think she had some big things going on at school this week, but it was really funny packing and sipping tea super early in the morning (OK, it was 1030 by now) listening to a whole spiel about economics! My brain was not ready for that...
We left for our train and I felt sure we were on the right train this time, which is a great feeling. The train ride was easy, I napped and did my end of country accounting, listened to some music I'd been meaning to listen to, etc. We were surrounded by people that spoke English though - seriously, tourist season has started. We are not alone over here anymore :/
Finding our new host Steph's place was pretty easy. She lives in the Turkish district and there are tons of gyro places around her neighborhood. I'm very excited about this! I LOVE a good gyro! Meeting Steph and seeing her flat was wonderful! She lives at the top of 5 floors of stairs with no elevator, and I actually forgot her last name so it was a bit awkward finding her apartment (we got some help from the janitor and a neighbor). Her room has lots of girly pink things in it, there are purses on the wall, an entire wall of shoes outside her door! She also is letting us sleep in her queen size bed - ahhhhh! AND there was a towel with a candy on each of our pillows! TOO CUTE! She is a little new to CouchSurfing, we're her 2nd and 3rd surfers, so I told her, "you know, you don't have to give up your bed and feed us candies like a 5 star hotel!" But it was adorable. So nice to have some space and know that we were going to sleep in a REAL bed!
She has Monday dinner night with guys from the neighboring flats, which really reminded me of our old Sunday dinner nights back home! We went to one of her friends' flats and there were at least 8 other guys there. We spent the entire evening waiting for pizzas to come out of the oven, one by one. It forced us to have a delicious, leisurely, typically European meal. For dessert we had brought ice cream and frozen fruit - which some genius turned into a warm fruit sauce - and chocolate sauce. Everybody spoke in English for us the whole night and some of them hardly had accents. That would definitely never happen in the State (a group of people our age just speaking perfect German for a whole evening). It was great fun talking with everybody and a nice welcome to the city! The only bad thing was that these people CHAIIIIIN SMOKE and I could not handle it, I felt like I was suffocating. By the end of the night (around 1230), my throat hurt and it hurt to inhale all the way. Yucky.
Then we came home to sleep on a gorgeous, comfortable queen size bed :) What a treat!
Quotes:
"Please let me be in the same city, or at least the same country!" - Guy at dinner, on waking up after a long night
(Another) Guy at Dinner: "I have a Saxon accent."
Me: "What? A sexy accent?"
Accomplishments:
Got into a political conversation within mere hours of being in Berlin.
Travel Tip:
Write down your host's last name...so that it's easier to find them once you finally reach their flat.
Nice People Alert:
Man on Stairs and Janitor that helped us figure out just which flat belonged to Steph!
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