A New Foreign Land

Guten tag!  I write to you from a smokey little grill across the street from my apartment.  The owner is this kind old Turkish man and is letting me borrow his Internet while I wait for mine to be installed in my apartment.  I live on a little street close to the Charlottenburg palace with lots of beautiful trails to walk on and plenty of little shops and cafes.  My apartment is way more than I could ever have asked for with high ceilings, wooden floors, and big windows and is situated in a hundred year old building.  

Let's see... I arrived in Berlin on Sunday.  A woman who works for the school came and picked me up.  As I jumped in the taxi to escape the blistering 40 Celsius weather and head to my flat, Hot in Here by Nelly  was playing on the radio.  How appropriate I thought!! Here is a remake of that song... Hot in here by jenny owen young.  If you do some YouTube stalking, you may find a version of my old band singing it!  Pardon that rabbit trail.  When I got to my apartment, the lady from the relocation service, her husband, and my landlord were there to greet me.  Once I signed all the rental agreements, found some lunch at a bakery down the street, I crashed in my new bed for a good solid fifteen hours.

The last few days have been quite busy getting myself settled in Berlin.  Each day has had an adventure of its own such as getting a bank account, Internet and a phone, navigating through the U bahn stations or clearing my shipment through customs.  I am very thankful that I have had people to go with me to accomplish these tasks and most importantly, translate for me!  I have found it funny and challenging at the same time to have people start speaking to me in German all the time with my polite apology of "I'm so sorry.  I don't speak German" and my deer-in-the-head-lights expression.  In Uganda this wasn't a problem.  I clearly looked like a foreigner and people assumed correctly that I couldn't speak Luganda but here, I look like I could speak German.  It doesn't help that my surname is German either.

On another note of trying to survive in a foreign land, going for groceries has been quite the ordeal!  Thankfully there are two supermarkets in my neighbourhood that I can walk to. The first day I brought my backpack, a huge cloth bag, and a long list of food items fully prepared to stalk up my kitchen cupboard.  Unfortunately, I failed to think that maybe all of the labels of the food would be in German too!  Needless to say, I didn't get everything on my shopping list that day.  I stuck with the things that I knew I was buying.  I wasn't going to attempt buying spices that I couldn't identify for that could end badly.  Unluckily, I bought a jar of sweet pickles thinking they were dill.  GROSS!

Well that has pretty much been it besides having dinner with the assistant head teacher at the primary school and going for countless walks to get myself orientated.  Anyway, lots of new things!  I feel very grateful for how easy the transition has been so far and all the assistance I have had.  I'll keep you posted with my latest adventures, awkward moments, and ramblings.

Peace and love