Gummy Bears and Goodbyes

I had everything packed up the night before and my clothes set out for today and I felt ready to go to travel back to Berlin. We took our bags to the van outside that would take our bags to the train station, then we started walking towards the train station to meet with Julie. That’s when it hit me that I had left my northface jacket hanging back in the hostel. I yelled something the lines along, ‘oh s***, I forgot my Northface!’, and I started running back towards the hostel. In my haste and anxiety over missing the train I took the wrong turns and was literally running down the streets. I made it back into the hostel and got my jacket and ran back outside only to realize I didn’t remember how to get to the train station, so I ran down the street and asked a lady walking along the sidewalk which direction the train station was. I did this about three times before I actually caught up to our group. However they had all waited for me for a few minutes, and Julie had gone back towards the hostel to find me, so we were all running behind schedule now. I felt terrible for holding everyone up, but we all did manage to make it on to the train back to Berlin.

On the train I read my book for the entirety of the trip, and I rekindled my love of reading. I’m constantly thinking about what is going to happen next, but I know it is more important to enjoy the time I have in Europe than to be reading a book. Once we got back to Berlin we were so hungry that we actually stopped at a Schnitzel restraunt with all of our gear on the way back to the hostel. After we had eaten and were feeling more human, we went back to the hostel and locked our bags in the storage closet since it was too early to check in, but we wanted to head out and do some more adventuring in Berlin. Our first stop was to the Berlin Historical Museum that just opened an exhibit called HoMo, which featured the history of homosexuality and art. It was a very well designed exhibit and I learned a lot about the history of homosexuality. After the museum we went to a gummy bear store and got a few souvenirs to take back home. The store was much smaller than I had expected, but there was enough selection that we were satisfied with our purchases. After the gummy bear store we wandered around the mall a bit before we decided we had to go back to our hostel to meet up with our group for the group dinner.

The dinner was at an Arabic restaurant and I thought it was quite nice to have a family style dinner for our last meal together. The food was very tasty and although we had to share it between five people, where most people only had to share between four, I was quite happy with the evening. I will see most of the people again in autumn quarter, but I was so sad to have to say goodbye to Manuela. She was a wonderful co-coordinator to our program and I had a great time getting to know her and work with her during the duration of my project. After dinner we headed back to the hostel and we relaxed for a bit before we decided to go out and get one last beer with Natalie before she left Berlin. Over my time in Germany I have discovered that I really don’t like light beers, but I greatly enjoy dark beers, so I ordered a black beer with Russian origins and I was not disappointed. After getting a drink we all headed back to the hostel and said goodnight and goodbye to Natalie, wishing her luck on her adventures in Prague and her flight back home. I stayed up for a bit longer trying to plan our trip in Cinque Terre that we will be leaving for on Monday, but after a while I got very tired and decided it was time to sleep.