eliza goes to germany

Just a short post before my jeg-lagged delirium seizes complete control. After 4 flights, 7 servings of airplane food and around 30 hours in transit I have arrived at my temporary home in Kreuzberg, Berlin. The journey was pretty good, as these things go. My plan of learning a hefty chunk of Deutsch in transit was quickly abandoned and I spent most of the my time asleep, hence managing to avoid both a hangover from my going-away party and too much conversation with the blonde beauty therapist that sat next to me on the Sydney-Abu Dhabi stretch. The premonitions of my own death that usually accompany take-off and landing were forgotten by the time we arrived in Munich. 

I also had plans of speaking German with everyone once I arrived in Germany. I managed to have an entire conversation with a middle-aged couple on the plane, although admittedly it mostly revolved around me telling them that I don't speak much German in 4 different ways. I also slipped back into English at the Lufthansa counter when I realised I was being ripped off. Apparently the checked-in baggage limit was 20kgs and I was just over at 22kg. The lady at the check-in desk said that the fee would be 10 euros, which I decided to grin and bear. But when I got to the excess baggage counter it became 30 euros because this was the minimum transaction the computer would register. I started muttering things about conditions of sale and contractual obligations and that Air Caledonie case but quickly decided to let it go, being as I was at this stage very hungry and very tired and probably very close to either violence or crying, both actions that are powerless in the face of airline bureaucracy. 

My room is five stories above Marienstrasse in Kreuzberg, the "Brunswick of Berlin" as it is known to myself.  The room is massive, with two windows that overlook the street and let in heaps of light and a cage with two lovebirds in it that I am caring for. I am renting from a woman called Helena, who came home from work at a discotheque at 10.30am this morning exhausted and spent two hours tidying up my room. 

While I waited I made conversation with the main owner, a prematurely-greying and unemployed philosophy student who gave me cup after cup of filter coffee which propped me up just enough. Most walls in the apartment are covered by creaking bookshelves, stacked high with his philosophy books. I have sadly forgotten his name - it's something crazy - but the other two flatmates are called Pablo and Flavia and they're from Spain and Brazil and they're both studying German too. Tomorrow I go to university and start the language course, so it's probably time I head to bed. Gute Nacht.