Quick Update:
Went skiing in Lillehammer. The slopes were slightly more difficult than I expected, but it was still awesome. My thighs hurt. Also bought a shirt that said "Scandinavia Explorer". Kind of suits me, don't it?
27 Dec:
Today, we woke up around nine by luck since my phone had died on Christmas. Ate breakfast, got ready, packed up everything. Ryan wanted to use the luggage room, but I didn't want to do that because we might not have enough time to return to the hostel, get our luggage, and then head for the airport. I wasn't about to miss our flight back to London so we took our backpacks with us.
First stop was the East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall. The largest section of the wall left standing is on the east side, and in the years since the fall of the wall, artists have painting pictures symbolizing its fall and what it means to be a united people. It has since been known as the East Side Gallery and is free to view by the public. Well, there isn't anything to stop people from looking at it, so it kind of has to be. Anyway, Ryan and I walked along it and took pictures of our favoties, like what we did at the Louvre. (Of course, looking at the pictures in the Louvre, I didn't get a picture of Diana in the sculptures section. Darn.) But I'm sure I got all my favorites on the wall. At the end of it, there was a small section behind the wall still full of grafitti. We and a couple other tourists took pictures of us by said wall. Some of us posed like we wanted to cross, others were nice poses. But we got our pictures of the Berlin Wall, baby.
The next thing we wanted to do was check out the giant park on the other side of the Parisia Platss gate. Mirijam mentioned a column with a golden angel in the middle of the park that you can climb and get a view of the city. We wnated to do that so that's where we went. The park was gorgeous in freshly fallen snow. Or, maybe it's not freshly fallen, but it didn't look touched by people, and that's what made it pretty. There were some tracks in the snow from people, but the majority of the park was still gorgeous and full of snow. We walked along the road and complained about our backs. Five days while backpacking makes for heavy packs.
Finally, we got to the column only to find that half of it was under construction rendering going on top of it a notion of dreams. So we couldn't climb it. It bummed us out, but not as much as the Eiffel Tower. We were like "We have such bad luck with this view of the city thing." Indeed we did.
So we walked along some more to the other side of the park. On the way, we saw a bunch of trucks clearing a road of snow for a big Sylvester party. Sylvester is the German way of saying New Year's Eve. It's a giant party night just like everywhere else. Anyway, there were loads of beer trailers and quite a few dump trucks picking up plowed snow. I thought those trucks were nifty because I haven't seen them before. You can totally take all the snow on the side of the roads and dump it at a specific location to make a giant snow hill for sledding. Wouldn't that be awesome?
We couldn't walk through the big gate at the Parisia Platss, so we walked around instead. We wandered into a souvenir shop to warm up, and I bought a piece of the Berlin Wall because I wanted a piece and I couldn't get one for free. It was easier just to pay 8 EUR for it. So then we wandered around some more. Ryan wasnted to get to Freidrickstrass so we could go into that giant and famous chocolate shop from the tour. We got to the street via metro (we had a day pass. Why not?) and wandered around for it. Took some pictures and it started to snow. Finally found the shop and immediately walked in.
There was so much chocolate. There's a giant tower in Alexander Platss (forgot to mention it the other day) but there was a giant chocolate figure of that in the back of the store, which is about the only place it could fit. Yeah. We walked around for a good while and shopped for chocolate. We both wanted to buy chocolate because it's German chocolate which is almost as good as Belgium chocolate. Seriously, Europeans know and love their chocolate. Ryan decided on a plastic case of small chcolate bars, while I got a wooden box of bigger chocolate bars but with varying percentages of chocolate. I think mine is better albeit slightly more pricey.
From there we were hungry so we went to find a place to eat. I was game for a German something but since restuarants were scarce in the area in which we were walking, and we were hungry, and our shoulders hurt so much from our backpacks, that we stole into the nearest cheap Italian place. Which was right under a hotel, so we walked through the hotel lobby to get to the restuarant. As it turns out, as tired as we were, Ryan and I both ordered the same thing. Which I was kind of against but I wasn't about to change my order. So we got the same thing. When we went to pay, the place didn't accept international cards, so I ran out to withdraw some cash from the corner ATMs to pay the bill. All the while, I grumbled that I had to be the one to pay since the whole time I was hoping Ryan would pay most meals. Oh well. Or did I volunteer to go out? I can't remember. We were trying to alternate paying for meals, so I most likely volunteered (thought I didn't like it).
Before we left the restaurant, I attempted to fit the apples from Paris into my backpack because maybe I have some extra room. And wouldn't you know, they did fit. I was very amazed when it happened because I didn't think I could fit anything else in there. Ryan said my backpack is bigger on the inside, and I immediately thought of Doctor Who because his ship the TARDIS really is bigger on the inside. So if I refer to my backpack as the TARDIS-bag, you'll understand the reference.
After that, we planned to wander around Patsdamer Platss since we've only seen that very late at night and we've heard it was a main hub of the city, so let's go. We walked even though Ryan wanted the metro. I pointed out that it was only 900 meters, which is a little less than a kilometer, which is roughly half a mile, which isn't so bad. Mwahaha . . . guess what we had on our backs? They were sore when we walked that almost-kilometer and then we saw the Christmas Market.
The Christmas Market had an artificial sledding hill that I thought was kind of cool but Ryan said, "No, we're not doing that." It was a tone that said "I don't see any adult tubes anyway." Sadness. We walked around the market and they sold the same stuff as the other markets, so it wasn't all that interesting. It's like walking around art fairs in the United States -- a lot of them showcase the same stuff over and over again and a lot of them have the same kind of prices. It's like indie art fairs are commericialized but they're not really commericialized, they just seem like they are because they share so many similar qualities.
From there, we found the Potsdamer Platss shopping center. We walked in there, Ryan used the rest room, we rested every fifteen minutes because of our backpacks. While Ryan was in the loo, I found the bookstore and sound the sci-fi/fantasy section in German. One cover caught my eye and I made a note to myself to remember the name Gavin Smith for when I'm at a computer next. I wanted to check this guy out solely because he has an interesting cover. Yes, judge me all you want; I do indeed judge the books I read by the cover. Some I don't, others I do. We also found the English books section, which wasn't much to look at. Then we found movies. I saw the Extended Cut Collector's Edition DVD of Avatar and I showed it to Ryan and said "This is what I want on DVD." He tried to get me to say "I want it on Blu-ray" because we just got a Blu-ray player at home, but I promptly infomred him that I was going to take it with me to school. Neener neener and all that jazz.
Walked upstairs just to see it. There was a big Best Buy-like store we walked into but didn't linger. Ryan got bored of it but I was willing to check out German electronics. But we left anyway. Walked to the basement to see what that was like. I was fascinated by all the German shops and stores. I wanted to walk in and look around and see what life would be like in Germany, but alas, Ryan didn't want to. He'd get sick of me clothes shopping and I'd have to check in a bag at Ryanair that just wouldn't be cheap. While sitting in the mall, we decided that we might as well go to the airport and wait since there's nothing we can start that won't end when we want it.
So that's what we did. It took about an hour to get to the last stop on the train. I remember noticing a woman with a backpack that I thought was unusual because it had a solid shape and a hard shell. But it looked like a comfy backpack and it looked pretty cool. The woman pulled out a book and read it for half her joueny and got off later than I thought she would. Anyway, at the last stop, quite a few people were rushing out to the exit, and I thought it was to catch a bus. But this wasn't just any bus, this was our bus to the airport. We made it, no worries. Didn't have to buy an extra bus ticket, either. Our day passes works for all transportation, not just trains. And the bus took about twenty minutes to get us to where we were going (but we were on the Shonenfield Express bus, so that's why. Otherwise, the length would have doubled).
At the airport, we were very early. We found a place to sit with chairs where we could see the check-in call board. After a while, we figured out that the board was behind what was really going on, so about two hours before our flight was scheduled to leave, Ryan went down to check the counter. It was time to check in so we did and went through security. No security qualms this time. We remembered watches and belts and I didn't have to remove my boots. On the other side, Ryan watched our stuff and the screens for our gate. Meanwhile, I went to check out all the shops nearby.
While doing this, I had the strongest urge for gummy bears. Maybe it's because bears were a big deal in Berlin, or maybe it was the vast quanities of gummy bears I've seen lately, or maybe it's because I've been craving something gummy for a while now. Anyway, I wanted some but I didn't buy any because I was short in the cash department. I wasn't about to charge a measy bag of gummy bears.
Our gate was called, we walked all the way down the terminal to get to it. We passed through passport checks immediately before the gate. We sat and waited for our plane to arrive. Then we saw how much it had been snowing throughout the day. Of course, I thought this was nothing so I figured the airport could handle it. Besides, Germany usually got that much snow, I think. But then the plane didn't arrive. And it didn't arrive again. And it finally arrived at the time it would have taken off. We boarded, and we waited some more.
And we waited. We did some more waiting. Ryan and I, we're amazing at this waiting thing. I hate it, but I'm good at it. We sat on that plane for about 4 hours waiting for the go ahead to take off. It had sufficiently stopped snowing at around midnight, but planes were still taking off at a slow rate, apparently. Finally, at 2am, our pilot gets on the PA and says that our flight was rescheduled for the 28th at 2pm.
We're not the only ones really angry about this. I wanted to show Ryan London. There was a woman behind us to had to be at work at 7am, but she called her boss right away and told him the news. I'm pretty sure there were other people who had important things to take care of as well. But it's the standard reaction to a cancelled or delayed flight. People are counting on the flight to be on time, and when it's not, heads roll. Ryanair apologized for the inconvenience and told us all to find hotels at the airport information counter. Meanwhile, we can use our boarding passes to pick up new boarding passes at check in, so be sure to do that the next day.
We waited in line at the information counter. I checked out a hotel vending machine meanwhile. And it's not really a hotel vending machine, though it would be pretty sweet. Insert 50EUR here, pull out two-bed private-bath room here. Anyway, I found one that was a kilometer away that was about 50EUR a night and might even have a shuttle to the airport. I kept it in mind but didn't do anything with it. When we got to the information desk, we asked about any open hotels, and the woman said the InterCity Hotel is right outside and is a five minute walk from the airport. We didn't ask how much. On the way, Ryan asked if we could stay at the Grand Hostel Berlin again, but I said that I didn't want to ride an hour and a half back, barely get any sleep, and ride another hour and a half back to the airport. So the InterCity Hotel it was.
I don't think the woman at the InterCity liked us very much. When we got there, Ryan asked for a room for two, and she immediately snapped "99 Euros." Alright, lady, I know a lot of flights were rescheduled and it probably ruined your night, but don't take it out on us. It's your job to stay friendly even when someone else's anger is being thrown onto you. Anyway, Ryan rolled his eyes and said "Okay, I'll take it." I reached for my credit card which was to be used in emergencies like this, but Ryan got it instead. But really, he didn't see me pull out my card, and I didn't say anything (mean person that I am). Now I have more money for emergencies (like skiing, but that's about seven posts later).
The room was nice, but I was willing to steal anything we could just to get back at the woman at the front desk. However, I can't steal the free shampoo because I can't fit anything else into my liquids bag. Can't steal a light bulb because that'll be crushed; TARDIS-bag is not as big as the actual TARDIS. (I wish it were, though.) In fact, anything would be crushed, so the stealing thing just didn't happen to my chagrin. Instead, I fell asleep as soon as I could because, well, it was 3 in the morning and we were waking up around 9 to check in early. Man was I tired.
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