First, I'd like to say Happy Thanksgiving to all :) I'm really thankful for all the experiences that I'm having over here and that I'm able to share them all with you guys. And I'd like to say sorry for being the worst (or least the least timely) blogger ever. I dunno how you manage to follow lol. So the following novel is about the second half of my semester break as I traveled through Germany.
GERMANY
Oct. 11 – Monday
So my last day in Moscow started off with one last breakfast in the hotel dining room and finalizing last minute plans with friends concerning the airport, etc. So a small group of us went out into town and found the headquarters of the KGB/FSB which was a pretty cool thing to see even if the building was nothing breathtaking in and of itself. Not really sure what to do next, someone suggested that we go to Pushkin Square and check out the world’s largest (so I was told) McDonald’s. So we did. It doesn’t look like anything huge from the outside but when you go inside it is massive. There are 24 cash registers and a completely separate counter for the McCafe in a different part of the building! And just to top that off, while you wait in line, someone comes by and takes your order on a handheld device then gives you a ticket that you give to the cashier and then you simply pay. Talk about efficiency. After dining at this monstrosity of an establishment, we ventured down to a particularly large shopping street that reminded me more of wandering down the streets of Germany than Russia. While wandering down the street, we saw the only two Starbucks in Moscow! Speaking of which, I have yet to see a Starbucks in Saint Petersburg…. So Starbucks is, in fact, not everywhere. Go figure, eh?
It was then that two of our company and myself had to book it back to the hotel to pick up our backpacks and head to the airport for our flights. Conveniently the boys were also going to the Domodedovo airport for flights to Berlin an hour earlier than me. So it was a pretty massive airport, but probably one of the most confusing and annoying airports that I’ve been to. When we finally found our gates, we discovered that whoever designed the airport did not deem it necessary to install sufficient seating for passengers waiting for their flights. My gate didn’t even have a seat to speak of! It was just a café counter and a door leading out to the plan. Lame. So I sat at the boys’ gate until their flight left then I chilled for an hour next to my sparsely equipped gate. I had a pretty good flight with Air Berlin to Berlin Tegel, and had an extremely German yet tasty sandwich for lunch on the plane. It was also pretty spiffy that the flight attendants didn’t speak English to me, and I was able to respond well enough to not cause any suspicions, haha! And on a side note, Two and a Half Men is quite amusing when aired in German. I arrived in Berlin with no incident and it was super exciting to get there because I missed Germany so much since my last visit! Plus it was also a welcome break to hear everyone speaking German and all the signs to be in German rather than in Russian. Nothing against Russian… I was just ready for the break. It was also really awesome to see Stephie again! (For those of you who don’t know Stephie, she was an exchange student with my family during high school. She is basically my sister =]) So we made our way back to her apartment to just hang out and catch up after not seeing each other for over a year. Boy I miss that girl!
Oct. 12 – Tuesday
Tuesday was a pretty low key day as far as my travels go. Stephie had to attend classes for a good part of the day, so I spent my time journaling, writing postcards, taking a nap and finally getting around to watching Top Gun. Go figure that I never see that movie till I get to Germany. Then again, last time I was in Germany, I finally saw 10 Things I Hate About You and all the American Pie movies. But that’s just a side note… Stephie and I strolled down to the train station when she got home from class and picked up my train ticket for the second half of my German exploits. On our way home we stopped at a local stand and bought döner kabobs for dinner. This is something my parents have been telling me about my whole life since they lived in Berlin for 4 years and they were right. Definitely one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten! It’s basically like a pita stuffed with lamb that has been roasting on a spit all day with tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and a dill/sour cream sauce. Now that’s a meal that hits the spot! And it could only get better because we topped it off a bit of champagne and more catching up and girl talk :)
Oct. 13 – Wednesday
Stephie ended up having class for the majority of the day, so I managed to make plans to meet up and spend the day with Matthew and Kellan, the boys I went to the airport with and who also ended up in Berlin. I found them with little to no problem at Berlin Hbf (massive train station in the middle of the city) and then commenced exploring. Matthew and Kellan had seen most of the city the day before so they showed a cool Soviet war memorial they found and saw the Reichstag along the way. Lunchtime arrived and we got currywurst from a roadside stand because Berlin is supposed to be THE place to get a good currywurst. It was alright, although it just wasn’t for me. I thoroughly enjoyed a Bionade though, which I missed from last time I was in Germany. Then we wandered down a really long street, whose name I cannot recall, and through a gorgeous park which was called the Tierpark according to the map. We tried to hunt down an extremely elusive flea-market that Kellan had heard about, but we were unsuccessful. So we visited the Charlottenburg Schloss (palace) instead. It was really pretty, but it wasn’t dreadfully different than all the other palaces I had been visiting in Russia. Perhaps I’m just suffering a bit from “palace fatigue”. After exploring the palace grounds, I decided it was time to find chocolate! A necessity while in Germany for sure. I showed the boys the good German chocolates and how to properly break into a Ritter Sport bar (find one, ask me and I’ll show you too). I miss German chocolate already… Ritter Sports, Kinder, Schoko-Bons… Anywho. I figured it would be fun to find the Sony Center and show that to the guys cause I remember thinking it was pretty cool last time I was in Berlin. We did eventually find it after a few wrong turns, and the huge Duplo giraffe was still in front of the center! So I got my picture with it… again. Ha! We wandered around the Sony Center for a while then decided to find a good restaurant to get some pizza for dinner. We settled on a nice little restaurant near the center. The pizzas and bruschetta were amazingly tasty. We also ordered a bottle of red Italian wine to go with our meal… however, we received a bottle of red French wine. Which was definitely a good wine, but significantly more expensive. That bottle of wine cost more than our two pizzas and appetizer combined (22 euros vs. 32 euros, ack!)! Oh well, how often do you get to accidentally enjoy an expensive bottle of wine with friends in Berlin? So after dinner we wandered the streets for a while because we discovered that we happened to be in the middle of town during the first night of the Festival of Lights. Watched a few light shows, then had to make our way back to the Berlin Hbf so I didn’t miss my last train back to Stephie’s! I’m glad I was able to spend a “tourist” day with some friends while in Berlin :)
Oct. 14 – Thursday
Luckily, Stephie had Thursday off from classes, so we got to sleep in during the morning and take our time getting ready for the day. We decided to go out to a big shopping center and just enjoy the day hanging out and shopping. We also made our way into the middle of town and went to KaDeWe, which is THE huge shopping center in Berlin. I believe I mentioned Harrold’s from London and GUM in Moscow. Same thing in principle. All I could afford to buy, though, was a marzipan chocolate bar that came highly recommended by Stephie. It was pretty tasty if I do say so myself. We eventually made our way back home for dinner and champagne and just enjoying the evening and chatting since it was my last evening with Stephie. I really miss that girl!
Oct. 15 – Friday
So I spent a good 5-6 hours on a train today traveling from Berlin to Frankfurt to go visit my friend who is stationed with the Air Force at Spangdahlem. I was apparently too ignorant of the German language and train system to figure out where I was able to sit on the train so I spent the entirety of my trip in the dining car. But it was nice because I got to do some prime people watching and made friends with a German business man who reminded me of a cheerful German grandfather. It is so refreshing how friend Germans are after spending so much time in Russia. During my trip, I got to see a VW plant along the train tracks. I really want a VW Jetta, but that’s another story haha. Made it to Frankfurt Hbf with no troubles and found John, the friend I went to visit. His friend drove us back from Frankfurt to Spangdahlem so that I could get registered on base, then drove over to the Bitburg base to hang out at his friend’s apartment. It was a good evening just hanging out with a group of Americans and watching the boys play video games. I was also the only one of the group who wasn’t/hadn’t served in the military, but they told me I looked like an Air Force girl. Haha go figure. It was a good time and a small taste of home to be on what is technically American soil.
Oct. 16 – Saturday
Got to sleep in and just enjoy a relaxed morning wandering around base. When lunchtime rolled around, John and I went to the BX to grab something for lunch. I felt like a kid with free reign in a candy store because the whole store was filled with American brands and prices. Big jars of peanut butter! Cheez-its! Lay’s salt & vinegar potato chips! Campbell’s soup! I was more than ecstatic to have a can of Campbell’s soup for lunch, especially since canned soup is a thing of the imagination in Russia. I also had a Berliner to go with lunch which only made my Germany experience that much more fun because my favorite historical quote is “Ich bin ein Berliner” by JFK, but yeah. It was basically a jelly-filled doughnut with raspberry and red currant jelly and it tasted excellent. It was also crazy because everything was priced in American dollars, which I haven’t seen since I left the states in August. Talk about culture shock. I was more familiar with rubles and Euros at that point! After lunch, we took a trip with the friends we’d spent the previous evening with to Trier for the afternoon. It was a really pretty place and I’d like to go back and explore again on a day with better weather as it was raining. Who knew you could go to Germany and see an ancient Roman bath? Well you can in Trier. It made me feel like I was back in Italy actually, it was pretty nifty. So after much exploring, we found a nice Italian restaurant for dinner, which believe it or not was out of lasagna! So I had cannelloni instead, which was basically the same thing, but with more stuff in it and just as tasty. When we returned to base at Spangdahlem, we all went bowling for a few hours. We managed to get in about 5 games, and I was totally on my game that night. I don’t think I’ve ever bowled so well! But it was lots of fun in general and just a note to those who care to know, military bases have some of the best bowling alleys I’ve ever been to. Just sayin’.
Oct. 17/18 – Sunday/Monday
I date this day twice because it was one of the longest days of my life! It was the conclusion of my semester break, which was sad in and of itself, but the aggravation which was to ensue was more than I could have imagined. Sometimes you just can’t make up better stories than what really happened. So there’s my disclaimer, let the story begin. So John, Griffin (one of John’s friends and our ride) and I leave for Frankfurt so that I can catch my flight back to Saint Petersburg and be back on campus before class the next morning. Wrong. The autobahn was completely backed up due to construction to the point that even though we left base with the allotted amount of extra airport time, we didn’t get to the airport until 20 minutes before take-off. Needless to say, I didn’t get my flight. I was supposed to be flying with Rossiya Russian Airlines, direct flight from Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg. Well after much arguing with the attendants at the desk, which I was really lucky were even there to begin with, I found out (in a nutshell) that they were not flying back to Saint Petersburg until the Wednesday which was unacceptable. My other options were to fly back with Lufthansa for 1,100 Euros or book a flight with Aeroflot, which was the one Russian airline that I was trying to avoid. I exchanged some curt words with the desk attendant and then found a phone to call my director here on campus to let her know that I was stranded in Frankfurt and was most likely to return to Saint Petersburg the following morning. Then the guys and I had to burn a couple of hours of time because there wasn’t going to be anyone at the Aeroflot desk for the next couple of hours anyway. So we got lunch at the big McDonald’s which was located next to a huge satellite play area ball pit type thing. So lunch and a show watching dozens of children running around. When the time passed, we made our way down to the Aeroflot desk where I ended up having to buy 2 brand new airline tickets in order to get back to Saint Petersburg. One to Moscow, then one back to St. Pete’s. This return trip was way more expensive and annoying than it had to be. But oh, it gets better! After finally getting the tickets put into my hand, I find another payphone to call my director back and let her know my plans. I put my coins in… or not. The phone won’t take my money. So I scuffle with the payphone and exchange some choice vocabulary and out of frustration just hit the coin return button. And the coins don’t come out of coin return, oh no that would be too easy. Instead, they shoot back out of the slot I stuffed them into back AT MY FACE. At this point, my level of frustration was beyond measure and all I could do was laugh hysterically at myself just to keep from crying. I’m pretty sure that I live in a cartoon some days. I gave up on the payphone and figured that my director would get the idea. So I said my farewells and thank yous to the fellas and made my way through security. I was the only one going through security which meant they could pay all sorts of attention to me. As soon as my bags came through, the security lady grabbed by back and removed my precious jar of Jif peanut butter and proceeded to tell me in German that I wasn’t allowed to carry it onto the plane with me. I just stared at her and growled at her in German that I don’t speak German, so she repeated herself in English that I wasn’t allowed to have my peanut butter, but if I wanted to check my backpack that I could take it with me that way. Why would I check my backpack?! That would completely defeat the purpose of carry-on. I just told her to keep the peanut butter and walked away. Oh that was the icing on the top of the worst cake ever. So I wait for a few hours for my flight to Moscow, where I landed around midnight. The only good thing about this day was that landing over Moscow at midnight is probably one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen. Then I proceeded to camp out in front of the check-in desk for 6 hours during the night until I could go through security and get on my flight back to Saint Petersburg. Long story short, I averted all the creepy taxi drivers and got the bus to the metro, which I took back to campus, where I arrived at 9:50AM. Class starts at 10:00AM. I handed in my passport, and passed out in bed. Class was a waste of mine and the teacher’s time at this point. And thus concludes my semester break. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, as long as I never have to repeat the return journey O_o
***And since this, I've had my regular classes and then another trip abroad to Finland and Estonia. Hopefully a post of my continuing exploits will be up in the near future. For real. Lots of love friends!
