2 Years Ago: Freiburg, Now: Berlin

In my wildest dreams I would have never expected to be sitting in an apartment in Berlin awaiting to start my second semester of graduate school knowing that I will be here for at least a year. I went to Freiburg, Germany two years ago with a ton of butterflies in my stomach and a feeling of nervousness like I had never felt before. Now, I am sitting in Berlin with a strange feeling of calmness and sense that I can do this and I will be just fine. This is what I am supposed to be doing.

Last week I arrived in Frankfurt to meet Julian and spend about a week at his house with his family. My flight went just fine and I was lucky enough to have the seat next to me empty. Sadly though, I just couldn't fall asleep for a long time and probably only slept for about an hour. I did watch quite a few movies and at least had some form of entertainment to help pass the time. Once I landed I was super excited and just hoping that all of my bags would arrive without any problems. I made it through customs and baggage claim pretty quickly and all of my bags were there too. Julian greeted me and then we drove to his house, which was about 2 hours away. His parents were already at home and were making a hot lunch. For the entire day I was out of it and in a sort of traveler's haze. Julian and I walked around the town a bit and even tried the different natural mineral waters that his town was known for. Little to my surprise they were all pretty gross and not something I ever want to drink again no matter how good they are for you.

After sleeping for 12 hours that night, I felt just fine the next day. For the next few days, Julian and I did some sightseeing around the town and a few of the neighboring cities. We saw all of the local castles and many of the churches. The weather was great and it was surprisingly warm for February in Germany. I actually saw the sun every day! I will say that eating meals with Julian's family was like my German class come to life. In class we always had that one unit on German food and eating. Well, we were taught that it's normal for everyone to go home for lunch and have a nice hot meal. Then for dinner they would just snack on things like bread, cheese, and lunch meats. Whenever I have come to Germany that hasn't really happened, but this time it sure did. Every day, Julian's parents came home from work, had a nice hot lunch, and then at dinner we had a lot of bread and cheese. I actually got used it and started to find the things that I liked. I got pretty excited though the first two days this happened because I was seeing my German class in reality.

Moving to Berlin wasn't too terrible like I had suspected. I did have a great deal of luggage, but thanks to Julian, I was able to maneuver everything and arrive safe and sound to our new apartment. I was delighted to see my new place, have real German windows, a cute German kitchen and a very German toilet (it's not a shelf toilet though, thank goodness). After a day, we have completed putting all of our furniture together that's from IKEA and we are slowly getting things organized. Our trip to IKEA involved having 4 carts of stuff, which was just a pain to move around. I honestly think that was worse than all the luggage. Thankfully, IKEA has immediate delivery, so our stuff was delivered the same day and I didn't have to carry it all up 5 flights of stairs (the elevator is supposed to be done sometime in March, go figure).

So far everything is going well though and I can't really complain. I will do my best to continue to update this blog and write about what I've been up to and random things I notice in Berlin/Germany. I have already decided that one of these posts will be about the German stare :)