Until the Sun Comes Up

Be patient with me on this one, I'm typing it on a German keyboard.

The Berlin mass-tranist system is a well-oiled, efficient machine, or at least that is what I have heard. My actual experience is that someone chucked a load of rusty forks into the inner workings of this machine, as that's the only thing that can explain the hole in service covering the northeastern portion of the city, where I happen to live. Thursday night, when this public transit vacuum first materialized, a girl named Laura was kind enough to stop and help me find my way home. Last night, I called Laura to see if she wanted to go out that night. I grabbed a buddy and met Laura and a handful of her friends in Kreuzberg for the kickoff of the Kultur Karneval (apparently sponsored by Krusty the Klown). We ended up bar-hopping far into the morning. I will say this: few things are prettier than an old European city in the cold, gray peaceful, light of dawn. But when my alcohol, caffiene, and nicotine-addled body has to find its way home through the shitstorm of railway outages and truncuated bus service, with language skills somewhere around the level of an autistic kindergartner, some of the magic is admittedly lost, especially when I've made it to what I thought was the home stretch only to find that the tram service to my street ended four hours ago at midnight, and I'd have to walk the last few miles. Some sources claim that the aforementioned cold, gray peace was shattered with a resounding and distinctly American-accented ''EEFFFFFFFF!!''

When I finally arrived at home, I noticed that Werner and Irene, whom I have continued affectionately calling my ''GatsGroßeltern'' (host-grandparents), left the porch light on for me. Trained as I am by my own parents to turn it off when I come home, I attempted to do the same here and cringed when I realized I had set off the doorbell, not the lightswitch. I quickly unlocked the door to find Irene, in her pajamas, hurrying down the stairs to see what had happened or let me in if I was locked out. I stammered an apology in both German and English and attempted to explain what had happened, and she smiled and patted me on the head, so I guess all was forgiven. When I finally awoke to the smell of the delicious pasta they had made me for lunch, I gave a more coherent explanation and apology, and they had a good laugh at my expense before telling me not to worry. I got lucky with these two.

Viel Bier

Know this: German beer does not fuck around. This is a combination of the slightly elevated alcohol content, but mostly because they give you half a liter at a time. Since this is slightly more than a pint, an American lightweight such as myself can find himself pretty buzzed after a single mug. A single German beer is worth about three Coors Light (but the Americans always bring four).

Yesterday was our first day at school. I first had to take a placement test, on which I unloaded my German knowledge in a random, shotgun-esque pattern, then I had to do an interview with one of the instructors. This guy told me I speak German far better than I write it, which is a bit like saying that I hum through the National Anthem far better than I burp through it. After all of the results were in, each person in our group was divided into one of nine levels. Because I couldn't quite understand what level the organizer said I was in (this should be a clear indication of what we're dealing with here), she showed me a sheet of paper with a room number written on it. I couldn't quite tell if it said 131 or 137, so I followed three other guys to room 131 and then spent the next 3 hours struggling through prepositions and commands. Today I discovered that 137 was actually the room I was supposed to go to, which is the absolute bottom level of proficiency. We once again practiced prepositions and commands, but on a whole new level of incompetence.

Though we fit the stereotype of loud and tactless Americans, I will say this: we bring the fucking party. Our group alone utterly saved the almost-aborted social function planned for that night, and picked up two more English speakers along the way: Anna, from New York, and Sophie, a charming Brit. I was actually a bit surprised that our group is so outgoing. We attempted to hit the town last night, only to find that the Germans don't really like to booze at 10:30 on a Monday. Who would have thought? The busiest place we could find was actually a supermarket across from the bar. 

The school hosts students from all over the world, so Brits, Spaniards, Aussies, Koreans, Swedes, Swiss, Brazilians, and French (among others) have all had the pleasure of hanging with a group of rowdy Americans. It is very cool, however, to actually use German to communicate through necessity and not just for practice. Using it as a common language for the school adds an element of camaraderie as we all struggle through a second language together.

Another day, another 77 cents. Damn Euro exchange rate.

Berlin, Tag Ein

SUNDAY, MAY 24, 2009

Today was my first full day (if the stream of only slightly broken consciousness unseperated in my mind by any considerable time can be interpreted as a day) in Germany. It started immediately following Ring Dance, that hallowed occasion where the USAFA junior class gets royally blitzed after receiving the first (though hopefully not the only) piece of jewelry in life that actually matters, the class ring, then stumble off the mountains to continue drinking and to start the fornicating. Sadly, my travel plans made the mountain-stumble impossible, so too shortly after retrieving my lovely ring from the mouth of my lovely date per Academy tradition, I flopped into bed for a few hours of sleep.

 

At 4:34 AM, I rolled out of bed, releasing then that there’s a point of tiredness and hungoverness where I’m not even pissed at being woken up, I’m simply sadly resolved to my fate. That morning my fate was retrieving my car from the dance hall parking lot, driving it to my stairwell, jamming it full of the remnants of my room, driving it down to a distant parking lot of questionable legality, covering it with a car cover of questionable utility, and then sprinting back to the awaiting bus filled with my fellow travelers and, conveniently, my luggage. All that, and with a headache that felt like my sinuses were being played like a bass drum.

 

The flights were unremarkable, I guess. We flew from Colorado Springs to Houston to Newark on what I imagine is Continental Airlines’ standard violent criminal transport route (to best prepare them for prison surroundings), and climbed onto a 757 for the puddle-hop. I will tip my hat to Continental, though- once their creepy CEO gets done with his safety lecture video, that sweet little video screen in the back of the headrest is yours and yours alone, for FREE. This led primarily to my lack of sleep on the flight, and also my re-addiction to “House.”

 

Once we landed at 8 AM local time, we were shepherded into the pickup area of the Berlin airport, a mercifully short walk. It did make me wonder about customs, though. They didn’t look in my bag, ask me any questions, or even make me lie on a form. I could have brought anything the underpaid, overworked TSA drone at Colorado Springs let slip past the x-ray. Think of the possibilities- knowing how fucking crazy the Germans are for David Hasselhoff, we could have been rid of him forever. The total travel time, including driving and layovers, was just under 19 hours.

 

We took a van ride to our sponsor families’ houses. I’m doubled up with a guy named John in a house on the northeast side of Berlin. It turns out the house is far from the cramped inner city and are instead nestled in a what used to be a quiet little standalone village until Berlin had the nerve to expand and swallow it up, making it somewhat of a green-rowed suburb. It’s still pretty cramped by American standards- each fenced-in yard has about the total area of the soccer fields that 5-year-olds use.

 

We met our sponsor parents, Werner and Irene (pronounced “air-reen-ah” with an accent that made me think her name was Elena for a few minutes until exhaustion and a still-persistent hangover made me forget it entirely). More accurately, they’re sponsor grandparents, each of them about 65 years old with grandkids just a few years younger than John and me. There was a bit of a struggle when Werner, who was trying to be a gracious host, tried to wrest my huge 60-pound suitcase from me, who was trying to be both a gracious guest and to remember 911’s German equivalent in case he did try to get it upstairs himself. Eventually I got him to take my other, much lighter bag and he seemed happy enough about this. They gave us a quick tour of their house, which is simple but very nice, and invited us onto the patio to have breakfast in their garden.

 

I had heard that German breakfasts are different than the cold cereal, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, yogurt, etc. that we eat in the States. From firsthand experience, I can now say that it looks like a miniature high school graduation party. Irene brought out a ceramic tray with cheese slices, ham cold-cuts, salami wedges, and basket of biscuits with three different kinds of marmalade. But fuck it, at that point I would have eaten the tray if she had brought it out empty. At this point, it was about 2:00 AM in Colorado, and I was crashing. She kept me topped off with coffee, one of the few German words my brain could dig up at this point to request, and I wolfed it down as John and I stumbled through a conversation with Werner. Irene then hauled out a tray holding four perfectly square, perfectly aligned pieces of chocolate cake. This, along with about eight gallons of coffee, meant the day was saved. After I ate, I felt one hundred percent better.

 

Werner remarked that, in language ability, I was clearly the beginner of the two of us. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I just finished my fourth semester of German, but what I lacked in quality I intended to make up in quantity. I figured a good way to start was plowing right over any rules of grammar I knew and just getting my general point across, even if I needed hand motions, pictures, pointing, semaphore, or secret GI-Joe decoder rings. This plan was postponed almost as fast as it was conceived, as Werner, apparently never having received a mandatory USAFA etiquette briefing, went straight for the politics and religion. Turns out the majority of Europe loves Obama with a passion rivaling his own daughters (even assuming they get the right puppy). Regardless of your political leanings, if you’re 20 minutes into a conversation with a guy you’ll be spending four weeks as a guest of, it’s best to shut up, act like you agree, and say “ja” a lot. Works well in any language. Actually explains a fair number of dates I’ve been on.

 

If it seems like I’m displeased with Werner and Irene, I’m really not. They seem like great, hospitable people who will treat us very well. The four of us have very animated conversations in a mix of our terrible German and their fairly decent English, and it all comes out mostly comprehensible. Werner and Irene lived on the eastern side of the wall for most of their lives, while Werner was an officer in the Marine (German navy), eventually retiring after captaining a minesweeper. The FBI apparently had a file on him, and the photo of him and his wife from that file is hanging on his wall. He says it’s one of the best shots of the two of them, and he is very proud of it.

 

We set off for the city to meet the rest of the group at the language school for lunch. They served us some kind of meat, some kind of hybrid between a baked potato and Jell-O, and some cabbage that appeared to have been grown on the set of The Labyrinth. Oh, and warm tap water. After that, we headed out to see the sights of Berlin. Two things happened almost immediately. The first was that we took advantage of the city’s lack of an open container law, and we were interviewed for a German TV show. One guy in our group explained that it’s like American Idol, but instead of singing, it’s politics. So instead of singing, or judging singing, I signed a petition. It was something involving Canada, but that’s all I know about it, since I don’t read German all that well. So Canada, if you get fucked by Germany in there near future, my bad. Or not, depending on what the petition actually said.

 

We decided to go knock out some touristy-type stuff along the way, so we checked out the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie and bought a beer at each. Along the way we passed, of all things, a Bugatti dealer that had a Veyron sitting inside. I had to get a picture with a car with 1000 horsepower that costs $1000 for each one. We made our way back to Alexandersplatz and had a “döner,” which is a bit like a gyro except triangle-shaped, and another beer, of course. We stumbled home, without buying tickets for the train, and showed our pictures to Werner and Irene before turning in for the night. For some reason, it stays light outside for a very long time here, not finally getting dark until almost ten. I blame this on the lack of mountains to help the sunset along. Regrettably, this last bit wasn’t that interesting, but I need to commit it to record before I forget it from another day of Ugly Americana in the Vaterland.