Hello, Berlin!

How do I begin a post about me walking on a dream? Everything came by so fast. I remembered that time weeks ago when I was still stressing about senior finals week. Two weeks later, I am already a bachelor degree holder and an official graduate of the Ateneo. Now, at a glimpse, I am finally here in Berlin and I am chasing the dream.

I am just filled with thrill and amazement with everything that is happening in my life and I still slap myself in the face to check if everything is real, although I don’t feel a thing because my face feels numb due to the cold winter-like April wind blowing.

Just to give you an idea of the faces you will regularly see in my blogposts for the next four weeks, here are my newest tour buddies!

That is me on the left and on the right is my housemate, Meg.

On the left is (Daddy) Lance, our study tour leader, and on the right is Bee.

In this picture are coursemates and batchmates, Athena and Gio.

These are roomies, Matt and Mon. Matt and I will be on the same class for German B1 on Tuesday.

These are Tepi and Yana. We call them the bestfriends.

This is a picture of us in NAIA Terminal 1 waiting for everyone to arrive. Second to the left is Frau Velasco, our German professor. On the rightmost side is Jay. I think he is the most quiet study tour buddy we have. Others who are missing in the pictures are Nico and the 3 Pandas: Kyle, Keisha, and Mommy Lia.

“It is the coldest April in a hundred years.” That is what Frau Velasco told me in the NAIA Terminal 1 airport when we were checking our luggages in. She said that in all the years of organizing the study tour, this is the only time that she will be going to Germany in April covered in snow. She thought maybe she had to change much of our itinerary because a lot of them suited spring weather, like dining al fresco or watching flowers bloom. I was so terrified, because I had this fear of the cold. More than that, I never experienced winter weather before, so experiencing Berlin in snow is a first.

It may be because of me expecting the worst, but when we arrived in Berlin at -1 degree celcius (I was already wearing my thick and heavy coat on), it turns out that I loved the cold more than I feared it. It’s like my body felt ready. I was just so ecstatic cause I saw snow everywhere! You bet I was damn excited!

Wilkommen bei Deutschland! This was shot in the airport of TXL in Berlin.

This is how snowy it was outside. It was beautiful, but really cold.

Waiting to cross the street

What nice weather to walk the dog outside!

We were assigned to stay with the Schulz family, with Stefi and Karl. They live in a flat on the 5th floor in a building in Levetzowstrasse. By the way, there was no elevator, so we felt bad that Karl had to carry our luggages up until the 5th floor. It was a pain and a struggle!

Anyway, Stefi is a sociologist and Karl is an architect. Thay have kids, Yana and Oler, and they also have a grandkid, Luisa, Oler’s daughter. They are a nice couple, very warm and accommodating. They are also fairly good in English, so it was not hard trying to start a conversation. It’s really not hard to engage them in conversation, because they were cultured and open-minded. We know we are going to have a fun stay at their house.

It was Easter morning when we arrived, so after we settled down, they told us that their family is coming over to have lunch and meet with us.

The one on the right is Yana, the younger child, and the one on the left is Luisa’s mother. This is how the lunch table looked after everyone was done eating. The food was really great and Stefi prepared all of it. There was Easter bread, yummy ham and salami, pig, obst and gemuse (fruits and vegetables), and coffee and tea. I would say it’s a nice lunch to have on a ver-winter-like day.

Look! It’s Luisa! On the left is her grandfather and our foster dad, Karl. Luisa is just so cute! She has these beautiful bright blue eyes which I think she got from his father and grandfather.

This is Stefi, our Mutti. She was trying to take a picture of Luisa eating her Milchreis, or rice with milk.

After lunch, Matt called us and asked if we wanted to roam around the city. Well, if there was something I super loved about Berlin, it’s their transportation system. With their U-bahns (underground trains) and S-bahns, one can easily go all around Berlin. It is my dream to see the Philippines have this kind of efficient and citizen-friendly public transportation system.

We were set to meet in Alexanderplatz, which was four train stations away from where we’re coming.

Some funny stories while we were on our way:

• We didn’t know how the trains would open. Of course, knowing that it’s Germany, we assumed that it was automatic! But since it was not, and in the spirit of finding out how it opened, I thought that my ticket had this code which the train door with a sensor could detect. Haha! So stupid! We didn’t know that you just have to push this button in front of the train to go in and get out.
• We didn’t know that the month-long ticket that we have would apply on April 1, so we rode a train on March 31 without a ticket! We were so clueless. Good thing there was no control or security to check around. It turns out that the train system here in Berlin is a tiwala system (as Gio would call it). There are no turnstiles or machines to check if one has a ticket, so they trust that people who ride the train have tickets. They just let a security person roam around and check on people randomly. Once they find out that you don’t have a ticket, they will charge you for 40 euros. It would be really awful if we got caught, but our foster parents taught us that if it did happen again, we should just pretend like we don’t understand what they are talking about. Clever enough!
• We didn’t have a contact of Matt aside from Viber, so we didn’t know where to meet him. We just know where the place would be, but Alexanderplatz is really big! So we looked for a place with wi-fi. We decided to stay in Al Teatro for a while (it’s an ice cream place!) to get wi-fi, but after I decided I’d eat Pistazie (pistachio) ice cream in the frickin cold weather, it turns out that the cashier didn’t know its password and only the boss which is not around knows about it… Impossible! Oh well, the ice cream tasted that good I didn’t give a damn. But after the waiting and all, we were still able to meet Matt. We met Matt and Mon and Matt’s cousin and her German husband.

After meeting up, we decided to find a church where we can hear mass or just visit since it’s Easter Sunday. There was one near our place but it was closed, too bad. At least for the next week, we already know where to go to hear mass.

All in all, it was a really good day! A safe flight, snow, Easter eggs, and BERLIN!!! All went well and better than expected.

But it is really cold.