Quarter Life Crisis

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May Day Excursion¶

449 words on Travel

• It’s going to be a fun May Day weekend in Berlin with friends having a party and meeting many others.
• Despite booking really early I could only get an affordable train ticket very early in the morning. Those ‘savings’ prices they have at Deutsche Bahn are friggin’ ridiculous and no fun at all. I used to mock pricing in the British Rail system (or airlines). But Deutsche Bahn has caught up. Suckers.
• Getting up at six in the morning is not my kind of thing, but it worked surprisingly well - luckily I was tired and with a headache the night before which made early sleeping easier. At least there’s already light outside that early at this time of the year.
• Really really need to call our flat’s caretaker again so he’ll fix the transformer of the bathroom lighting. It turns itself off after ten minutes.
• They must have fucked up the reservation indicators on the train. All seats showed ‘GGF. RESERVIERT’ - potentially booked. Which is a bad joke.
• And of course I had initially picked one of the few seats that were booked.
• In typical German style the bitch (vocabulary borrowed from Dave2) who had booked the seat didn’t either take one of the many other free seats or politely tell me that she had booked it but just blurted about these being ‘our seats’ into the empty, assuming that people listen to her and start vanishing. Germans suck.
• Sweet and friendly conductor, though.
• Really nice photo of tram rails and a Trabant shortly after reunification in Die Zeit’s Dossier about Germany - on the occasion on the sixtieth birthday of the constitution.
• Called mum after she landed in Munich. Apparently South African check-in counters have become horrible with excess luggage. They made her pay for 23kg which is not the relaxed spirit one is used to. Our family have a long and proud history of carrying ridiculous amounts of luggage without paying…
• The wonderful thing about most train routed to Berlin is that they still follow the good old GDR ‘transit route’ model. They stop in old West Germany and then go through the ‘East German’ parts, stopping the next time in Berlin only. Admittedly it’s quite empty in between, but still.
• Last stop was Wolfsburg. With its many VW buildings lining the rails and me trying to get a peek at the highly lauded Phaeno building by Zaha Hadid on the other side. It’s right next to the rails but the view is mostly blocked. The building is smaller than I had imagined.
• Arriving in Berlin… will have to pick up some breakfast to have with my friend. It’s about the right time for that now.

May 1, 2009, 9:33

Tagged as berlin, travel.