A 3 AM Bus Adventure in Berlin

By the good graces of no rent situations and high hourly wage rates, I was able to throw together a nice lump of constantly devaluing dollars and haul myself over to Europe for a quick two-week vacation filled with junk food and friends. Of course as soon as a trip to Berlin even vaguely presented itself, I jumped on the chance. After successfully booking the wrong EasyJet flight from Brussels to Berlin, I unsuccessfully haggled with the Indian call center woman and ended up having to book another flight earlier that same day. More out of principle than anything else, I was absolutely determined not to miss my 6 AM return flight to Brussels. Damn you, EasyJet, and your ridiculous exchange policies!

My three days in Berlin were marked with grey, gross, and dreary weather, but if there is one city in the world where that atmosphere works, it's Berlin. Having caught up with old friends and made a few new ones, I forced myself to go to sleep at 8 PM on Wednesday night so I could awake at least semi-coherent and with refreshed contacts in the obnoxiously early AM hours to leave for the Schönefeld airport.

The first four hours of sleep went by with little disruption. Around midnight, however, I went into paranoid mode and woke up once every five minutes to make sure I hadn't missed my previously determined awake time of 3 AM. Instead of turning around and checking the clock like a normal person, my body decided to use jerking wannabe acrobatic movements. Fifteen sideways somersaults, four leg kicks, and seven epileptic-like seizure movements later, I decided that 2 AM is close enough to 3 AM and got up using a cannonball motion to hoist myself off the mattress.

With veeeery few exceptions in Manhattan, I hate the bus in every city, in every country, in every situation. Having been born with the directional sense of a pencil and the attention span of a 6-month old baby, I will inevitably get lost after being on said apparatus for 30 seconds. As such, finding a decent route to the airport at 3 AM on a weekday in Berlin literally took an hour and a half. The first five routes would get me to the airport in less than 40 minutes, but required knowing where the hell I am going...on the bus. The next three routes listed S-Bahn rides that would take me 2+ hours to go less than 4 miles. Finally, after a series of silent prayers to Subway God, a route popped up that entailed an idiot-proof bus ride and two trains and would get me to the airport in an hour. Totally doable.

There were two reasons the bus ride portion of the trip was idiot-proof: the pickup point was less than 500 feet from the apartment and I would have to ride the bus all the way to the end of the line, so unless I managed to wedge a portion of my body in the bus such that only a blowtorch and an angry construction worker could free me, there would be no way to miss my stop. Unfortunately, this plan was German idiot-proof. American...no, Mala idiot-proof is much harder to attain.

After waiting out in the cold for 20 minutes with a burly looking Turkish woman and her 10 bags of dog food (who the hell gets dog food at 3 AM?), I boarded the bus. I knew in my head that all I needed to do was get on and wait for the livid bus driver to curse at me in German to disembark, but for some reason, I also made note of the final bus stop: Hermannstrasse.

The German Hopstop equivalent told me I would be on the bus for about 25 minutes. Around minute 13, I heard the driver announce "Hermannplatz." Now for those of you who can hear, read, write, or see Roman letters, you can understand that Hermannstrasse does not equal Hermannplatz. You can also see that 13 minutes does not equal 25. Finally, you could have seen that there were still a lot of people on the bus at Hermannplatz. I could do all of these things too. So what did I do at Hermannplatz?

I got off the f*cking bus.

As soon as I stepped off, I knew what I had done was beyond the limitations of idiot-proof. As soon as I stepped off, I knew I should step back on. As soon as I stepped off, I debated a few seconds too long whether it was worth looking like an idiot to the bus driver who would certainly recognize the Indian girl who can't speak German. Guess what, it was totally worth looking like an idiot. So what did I do?

I did not get back on the f*cking bus.

Watching the bus drive away, I made the harrowing discovery that the next one would not come for another 20 minutes, which meant I would miss the S-Bahn, which meant I would be stuck somewhere in south Berlin nowhere near the airport. Unlike the bus stop by my friend's apartment, this bus stop did not come complete with a taxi every 15 seconds. Completely at a loss for what to do, I did a two-step dance number (seriously...I don't know why) and crossed the street. Then I crossed back, and then I danced again (seriously...I still don't know why). Finally, I decided to look up and inspect my surroundings.

As though it was sitting in a gilded frame, I made eye contact with the most brilliant sign in the world. "Schönefeld." It appeared I landed along the bus route to the airport. To celebrate, a German guy came up to me and proceeded to have this stupid conversation:

"Do you speak German?"
      "Why would you ask me that in English in Germany?"
"Are you going to Schönefeld?"
     "Yes."
"You have to cross the street. Come, I will show you."
      "You'll show me how to cross the street?"
"Don't step in front of that moving car."

Anyway, after being 'escorted,' I whipped out the iPod touch I sort of stole from my mother and pulled up the U/S-Bahn metro map I downloaded. Somehow, someway, I just happened to get off at a U-Bahn stop of one of the few trains that run that early in the morning. And where does this line, the U7, go? Straight to a bus with a very strategic final stop: the Schönefeld airport.

Five minutes later, I was on the next U7. Fifteen minutes after that, I was on the bus to the airport. This time I made sure I was literally the last person to get down. And no, I did not get a body part wedged inside. By 5:20, I was at the gate. And yes, I did indeed make the flight. Also yes, the next day in Brussels was one of the best days all vacation. The end. Genau!

Berlin, Meet Virginia

By February of 2008, my living situation in France had gotten a bit out of control, as two of my French roommates, officially known as the "Couple from Hell," had made it a point in their lives to drive me insane. A woman I had been tutoring for a few months told me that the French police don't get involved in a crime until someone is killed, so lease or no lease, I should get the hell out of that apartment.

Since I had one of my five, two week vacations (Hallelujah French work schedule!) coming up, I decided to reconnect with Luis, whom I had met in the epitome of geek land: a Model UN Conference. Luis was doing some kind of Masters that involved speaking every romance language and living all over Western Europe. At the time, he was in Berlin, a city I always wanted to visit, so I figured a quick trip to finish off my last days in the apartment of crazy was in order. (After I got back from Berlin, I literally ran out of the apartment holding all of my stuff, not telling my roommates where I was going or that I wouldn't be coming back. But that's another story.)

Despite my ability to utter random German words out of context, such as Schwein, I possess little to no ability to speak the German language, and was thus very relieved to find out that every single one of Luis's friends I met in Berlin could speak perfect English. In fact, I thought about asking them a few lingering English grammar questions I had, like where, to use commas and, stuff.

One of the nights I was there, Luis had a party to go to, so I tagged along. Unfortunately, it involved karaoke, which is both a word I can never remember how to spell (thank you Google dictionary) and an activity I will forever suck at doing. Nevertheless, I grabbed a beer and made the sad discovery that despite being the only person in the room who was born and raised in America, I have the American song repertoire of a Tibetan monk. And no, I'm not talking about your Uncle Joe who ran off to join the cause because New Jersey "just wasn't doing it." I'm talking about an actual Tibetan monk.

One of Luis's friends, however, had a seemingly thorough knowledge of bad American pop songs...so good, in fact, that she seemed oddly familiar. On top of her knowledge of bad American pop songs, she had that vaguely goth style of dress about her. Strangely, it's this vaguely goth style of dress that seems to be the only style of clothing I have seen everywhere from Hicksville Virginia, to big city Europe, to scared tourist in Indian airport terminal. She was somewhere in between this and this. That's not very useful, is it?

Anyway, the point is that I was thoroughly confused about where this girl was from. At this point in my life, I had already been through the wine tasting fiasco, so I stayed easy on the alcohol, and approached with caution. As I was carefully inching up to her karoake karaoke area, another girl came up to me and asked where I'm from. I started in on explaining the patterns of Indian immigration and the evils of imperialism, when when the other other girl put up her hand and said, "No no, not your ethnic origin," (Go German girl! Perfectly phrased!), "I meant where in the States did you grow up?" Want to know my amazingly articulate response? It went like this: "Oh. Virginia."

Thankfully, that was enough. The vaguely goth girl turned around and said to me, "Oh! I went to Virginia once." Still not useful. Maybe she was from Connecticut and was making a swipe at Virginia. To signal I needed more information, I proceeded to awkwardly stare at the TV for 30 seconds. Finally, the vaguely goth girl elaborated, "I had a boyfriend from the States a few years ago, when he studied abroad here in Berlin. He went to William and Mary. I visited him once there...only place I've seen in the States."

Then I spit out my drink. Seriously. Do not give me liquid substances in public. For those of you who do not know, and I imagine that's 99% of you, William and Mary is a small liberal arts college in Williamsburg, VA. Jon Stewart went there to explore what he called "The Jewish mecca of Eastern Virginia." Suddenly, the poor choice of pop songs, vaguely goth dress, and impeccable mid-Atlantic US accent became clear: this girl was part German, part college freshman.

William and Mary isn't your typical state school. If this girl had visited my Alma mater, Virginia Tech, I would have told you this is exactly what she saw, and be done with it. But I guess even the social misfits of William and Mary are capable of saying stupid crap, so here is a selection of quotes she told me she heard during her two week stay:

1. "Like ooooh my Gooood...an 11 AM class! Who gets UP that early?"
2. "Where's the party? Who's the party!? Can anyone find me the paaaarty!?" ::Boy collapses::
3. Boy 1: "Come on, let's go watch the soccer game." Boy 2: "Is that the one with sticks?"
4. "So I was like, I know I'm like hot, but like I don't know why I keep gaining weight!" ::Turns to cashier:: "Yeah, I'd like double whopper with a large order of fries and a chocolate milkshake. No wait, Diet Coke."

In conclusion: higher education, lowered expectations.