my bloggerprofil is somehow in german now

Guten Tag!

It has been, and still will be I'm sure, a tumultuous week! Let me give you a rundown of the first few days...

31.02.10 (learning to write dates eurostyle means reversing order of day/month. must practice).

• I arrive in Berlin around noon, am greeted by the wonderful Susi and by the realization of lost baggage. Remained strong in face of considerable fear of snuggie loss (see previous post about extreme Berlin cold).
• Go see two apartments. The first one is beautiful but is sadly also inhabited by a 50-some woman. She wants to me to live there but I decline offer, hoping instead to live with people who might actually be fun. Second apartment is failure because i am not a boy, as requested, but which i did not read on the ad; it was awkward.
• Drink considerable coffee and eat chocolate croissant with Susi; enjoy hilarious skype conversation with my parents from Susi's computer wherein i can see and hear them but they cannot see or hear me and i must type responses. Almost died laughing; then was subsequently exhausted and thus fell deeply asleep.

01.02.10 (DAY OF EXTREME ACCOMPLISHMENT)

• wake up at noon; dress in considerable confusion because of jetlag and immediately go outside to eat a pretzel. it was delicious (a post about the food here is to follow. actually, there will probably be many posts about the food here because it's the only thing i've taken pictures of so far).
• i navigate subway system and then attempt to approach the dresdner bank (the ideal location my scholarship program has hinted at for quick money transfer). i get lost twice and then pull myself together by purchasing a map.
• make bank account; boring boring boring.
• kept having this problem where i would be distracted by minute tasks. for example: i needed to fax my bank account information to my scholarship office and finally found a place to fax. then i bought postcards because it was a stationary shop. then i decided to find a post office so that took me another half an hour... relatively distracting, you see.
• finally went to see the third apartment on my list; i hung out with the people for a few hours, as well as the other contenders for the apartment. when i got back to where i'm staying, though, i found an email offering me the place! i was pretty stoked about it and immediately accepted. i'll tell more about the flat/post pictures when i move in on 13.02.

To not go into too many more details of the rest of the week, let's just say that all is well so far. On Tuesday night I went out with Susi and Bjorn and a few of their friends to this fantastic bar on their street--they call it "der Rus" (the Russian) because...it is a Russian bar. We all took a few (or more) wodka shots together and, apparently Russian drinking tradition dictates that a shot is followed by a sweet pickle chaser. This is actually surprisingly delicious; it really cuts the sharpness of the vodka. I tried to explain that in the US, us little girls drink sugary sips of sodas or juices post-vodka, and I was greeted by blank stares. I also discovered that everyone here is tough enough to sip their vodka slowly, whereas I, being slightly baby, had to down mine in one gulp (can't stand the taste). It was, needless to say, a lovely evening; it snowed beautifully the whole time and it was so nice to watch those big white flakes coming down from inside a cozy bar.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was mildly lame because I slept horribly the night before and just wasn't functioning well (although I got to see Becca, a fellow Berkeley student who's been here since September, in the evening and that was very fun/nice).

This was longer and perhaps more boring than intended; I will try to be hipper and cooler and learn to be concise in the future.

Til next time