Airports Suck

So until now I have had pretty good luck with airtravel. No canceled flights,  no big problems, all good stuff.
Now however, I am getting bitch slapped around by the airport that I feel like I didn't shake it well enough (and i always shake it well enough).  Yesterday I was supposed to fly out to Luxembourg from Berlin (transfer in Amsterdam). Pretty easy right? It should only take 4 hours tops. WRONG. So yesterday all of Europe decided to have snow, and all the pilots in europe decided to be whiny babies.  Paris, Amsterdam and London were completely shut down. So my flight to Amsterdam was canceled right, well maybe. The person at the baggage drop off told me she would take my bags and to go wait in the ticket line and re-book a new flight... this would be so bad if there weren't 200 people already in the line. So I wait, and Wait , and 3 hours and two feet of movement later I hear a call for my flight to board.  WHAT!?!?!  I run back to the check in counter and ask the woman what is up.
Counter woman"Oh well the plane is taking off"...
Me "What?! you told me to wait and re-book"
Counter woman "well you should have listened to the announcements"

Just so everyone knows, I wasn't being oblivious to the announcements I just couldn't hear 90% of them because of the mob of people all pissed about their canceled flights. So I wait again.  2 hours later I am taking about my flight and a guy next to me asks
"which flight to amsterdam?"
Me: "1822"
Guy " It didn't go, we were all boarded and then they told us to get off"

And that was the biggest relief of the day. Knowing that my flight was only canceled and  I didn't miss it . I finally became fed up with the line and bought an hour of internet so I could cal KLM. 10 minutes later they booked me on a flight for the next day. I was still in line and everyone around me asked if I had a flight booked. when i told them yes,  they all furiously asked for the number.

So now I am waiting and hoping to get on my flight today. Europe really needs to learn how to deal with snow.

Also I know compared to stories of some of your out there that are more seasoned in flying this one is nothing, but I now appreciate all the horror stories a little bit better.

so to summarize

Canadians met in airpot (not mentioned) = 5
Total Hours of waiting in line = 5.5
Mexicans met = also 5

UPDATE
I was supposed to leave for Luxembourg again today and while waiting at the check in we are told that our flight is delayed 3 hours. Making it so that our flight to paris would be landing 30 minutes after my connection from Paris to Luxembourg departs.  LAME.

So I stand in a line again (this time only 2.5 hours). During this line time I made some friends with the people around me. Somehow we became the line police kicking people out who try to cut in front.
Anyway so I get to the ticket counter and they set me up with a flight tomorrow for 7am. BUT they are out of hotel vouchers. So I am paying for a hotel and I have to send the bill to the customer care at Air france to be reimbursed.  All in all this sucks and I really hope I my flight tomorrow goes off without any problems.


NEW UPDATES.
So my 7am flight on sunday was canceled... well not canceled but they wouldn't take anyone on it that was on a connecting flight (ie me) because Amsterdam airport was full. So 4 more hours in line.  I finally got to the head of the line and this random woman came out of no where and tried to get in front of me.

me : "um sorry but the line starts way back there"
woman: "no, no it's ok that's my friend working I just need to ask here a question" *continues to walk forward*
me: " ma'am, we have all been waiting a long time, some of us for days. If you want to talk to your friend then wait in line"
Woman: "I just have one question, I will just be a minute it is my friend"
Me: " well, your friend is working"
woman: " Just one question"
*a window opens and the woman walks forward toward it*
me "  I DON"T CARE IF IT IS JUST A QUESTION! I only have one question too, and it is how can I get to Luxembourg, so wait in line"

The woman then walked over to a couple of other people all holding luggage and walked towards the back of the line.
SO i get the the ticket counter and the attendant tells me to catch the 11:05 departure to amsterdam (at the time it was 10:50). I ran to the check in and got there just in time. Apparently Amsterdam was taking people again. So I get there and everything is great. The are cots everywhere from the night before when hundreds of people had to sleep in the airport (crazy).

So I am relaxed and relieved. I got to my gate and grab a beer. until about 4:30 when I receive a message telling me that my flight is canceled. But not to fear, the airline is trading boarding passes for train tickets to luxembourg. Fortunately the wait for train tickets was not too long, unfortunately when I look at my itinerary the trip will take over 7 hours and I had to change trains 5 times.

Also, The Dutch train system is total crap. There is no one around to tell you where to go, the trains are not marked so you know where they are going. Fortunately I met a couple people going the same direction as me. One was Arnold a Luxembourg native that was going to Manchester for Chemical engineering. And some old guy from Belgium.

So the old guy knew the trains well and I showed him my itinerary. He told me that it would be a lot longer because on Sundays they do work on the train tracks. This wouldn't be so bad, but that meant Arnold and I would be missing our connecting train in Brussels to go to Luxembourg.  The man assured us that there would be a later train to get us there that night, right before he started talking about how he goes to Amsterdam every two weeks for all of the girls.... and discussing the various places in Europe and how they few prostitution... oooook.

The creepy guy leaves us somewhere in Belgium and Arnold and I head to Brussels. We get there around 11pm and find out that the next train to Luxembourg is at 6am.... Shit.

So we left the train station (where there were a lot of creepy guys asking us if we needed a taxi and eyeing our bags). And went outside in search of  a cheap hotel to spend the night (outside there were a lot of scary guys just eyeing our bags).

I am sure that parts of Brussels are very nice, but the part I was in was terrifying. The cheapest hotel we found was 80euros (the room was about 5 square meters), had only one bed.  Both starving we headed across the street to fry place. The guy called Arnold a little bitch because he only had Birtish pounds and couldn't find a cash machine. NICE.

We headed back to the hotel and slept. Knowing each other for a total of 6 hours now Arnold slept on the floor and gave me the bed. Four hours later we were up and getting ready to catch the train.

We got the train and 3 hours later got into Luxembourg, Arnolds drive was waiting for him and he left, but I had to call my aunt still.
None of the pay phones took coins though, you have to pay 6.50 to get a phone card and use that in the pay phones. Only problem is that none of the receivers on the phones worked. When I called, I could hear my aunt, but she couldn't hear me... at all.

"Is that you Chris? if your at the train station just stay there, and I'll try to find you"
Good thing it was me.

So I'm good now right? Wrong. My luggage from Berlin was still somewhere. It was pretty easy though, in the morning flights were heading into luxembourg again so I was able to grab my Luggage in the afternoon. And that was teh worst travel experience I have ever had. I am at my aunts now and it is great. I hope my return trip is much better.

Merry Christmas all.

Police, and protests and Santa? Oh my

Ok, So not sure if you heard about this, but a couple of weeks ago there was a bit of a terrorism scare in Berlin that put a lot of things on high alert. Mostly people were warned to be carful around all of the touristy places (weinnachtsmarkt and the like). So I did not know this and I went wandering around these places. most looked pretty normal, but Brandenburger Tor was littered with police.

Super long queue of Police vehicles, and yes they are all VW and Mercedes

"No Biggie, just blocking off this very public area you can go that way"

Actually the Police were really friendly despite their intimidating feel. They were just directing people away, letting them know what was up.  The Assault rifles that some of them had were a bit much, but hey, they have them in the airports as well. So yeah. 

As I meandered that day i also saw the periodic person with a sign. One one the subway, one on the street. It seemed like I just missed a protest or something. Although I did catch the tail end of it. Or at least one  of them. These folks are from Die Linke, or "The Left" a political group that is very critical of the current Merkel Government. It seemed pretty messy though, and a lot of trash was left on the ground. I was not pleased with these activists. So I passive aggressively picked up some trash while glaring at them (thats right, I am that hard-core).

Although I also ran into random's with signs and flags, heres one guy just wondering around the park. 

I have no idea what this guy is protesting (or if he actually is protesting), but there he is full of vim and vigor and ready to... walk some more. 

So i made m way to Ptsdamer platz where I saw something I had forgotten. A fake building. I saw this earlier but I did not have my camera and then I forgot about it. So yeah, they put a giant tarp over a building that they are... building, of what it will look like (maybe I think), complete with Ipad ads. 

The reason I came to Potsdamer Platz is for the Weinnachtsmarkt that is there.  This is one of many little Christmas markets that open up around this time of year and it is pretty sweet. They have food, sweets, Gluhwein (it like a warm fruity spiced red wine they drink this time of year). Plus these places just look delightful. I'll have some more pictures later of a bigger one at night with all the lights on, but for now just have a taste of this. 

And because I needed some pants I went into the mall and no mall would be complete this time of year without Santa. 

Oh hi Santa

Except this Santa wasn't inviting children to his lap, but he was cracking jokes and working the crowd. When I started to leave he sang a few songs. HE was really more of a lounge act and less of a Santa, but still awesome

Potsdam CITY OF KINGS!!!

Sooooo Potsdam. It is a very pretty place and I would definitely like to see it in Summer, but it wasn't summer when I went so tough luck me. Potsdam is a smaller city about 40km away from Berlin. It is when the Kaisers and all the Royal people lived, far away from those rabble rousing peasants. It has some... not castles, but palaces I guess? and other stuff. I didn't get to see much of it because when we left it was like 1pm and the sun sets at 4pm so yeah, lame.  This was back when I was still in the Hostel and I went with some of my hostel buddies (Vin and Brynn). They're pretty cool. We  started at the main palace (Sanssouci). There was not a whole lot of information around to tell us what was what and I really can't be bothered to look things up on wikipedia. But here was the view from the bus stop

What's all this then

Looking kind of cool huh? So we take a couple steps and BAM! Cool fountain.

Sup, I'm a fountain

You'll also notice ruins in the back right. So we cam to this ramp that looked like it went up into a court yard. But when we got closer it looked like there was a fence so Brynn and I decided there must be a different way in. Vin was not as convinced.

"C'mon guys, lets just check out. I am pretty sure we can get in*"

"Ummmm, not looking good here, but maybe*."

"Yeah, we can't get in through there*."

*maybe not actual quotes

So we continued our search for a way in. As we turned a corner in the road BAM! (there are a lot of BAM's in this one) Windmill?

Yes, a windmill.

So once again I do not know what this particular windmill is for, or why it is right beside a palace (of course the answers to those two questions are probably related), but I liked it so have another picture why not.

Oppressive windmill

So we did find a way into the palace (well the courtyard parts, you had to pay for the rest).  So here are some pictures for inside. I really do not have much to say here. It was cool and all, I just don't have much  information to go with everything. Next time Gadget, next time.

ummm yup

Cool path

Well my front yard may not have a reflecting pool, but it does have a novelty mail box.

Front steps

Oh, so yeah they had a bunch of Fig tress, no biggie

So we checked out Sanssouci as much as we liked and still had a little bit of time left, so we headed over to Potsdam University. 

This building is actually used for classes. I think more Universities double staircases and gothic statues, just sayin' 

So thats what little I saw of Potsdam. I will try to give a little bit more next time. 

and Scene!

ZOO, ZOO, and more ZOO!

So when Jo was visiting me we went to the zoo. I love zoos, but I have a problem where they also make me feel really depressed. I'll be looking at some animals and then start thinking "they're probably cold, do they have enough space, THEY LOOK LONELY I WANT TO HUG YOU!!!!!!!" and so on. Usually what happens when I do this is I need to look in some other direction and see something different and the process starts over again "poor elephants.. OOOOOOH GOATS!" So the follow are just some pictures from the Berlin zoo.

The Berlin zoo (Zoologischer Garten) is the oldest zoo in Germany and has one of the most comprehensive collections of animals (almost 1500 speices). It is pretty much in the middle of the city near Charlottenberg. 

When you get in, pretty much the first thing you will see is elephants (ELEPHANTS!). They were actually kind of sad, but still awesome. Here we have Jo making a new friend.

Brand New Besties

The elephants are pretty goat adjacent. The goats were cool, you can't see much of it from the picture below, but they had a whole artificial rock hill mountain thing with a cave. The goats know how awesome they are and make sweet poses. Pretty sure they are thinking "Oh, you're taking a picture, I guess thats cool, I'm just going to hop effortlessly between these rocks and around that cliff face. No big deal." So to summarize: I like goats.

Goats looking epic

Next up we cam to the lions. Most of them were inside, but a couple were outside, giving off a goat like attitude. At this point I would like to mention that there are pretty much no cages. There is a trench and a railing, but it would not be all that difficult (in my opinion) for these animals to make a leap of fate and try to make it over. I am also left wondering how many stupid children decided to just wonder into one of the animals pens. 

Stupid child: "Grrr I'm a lion too"

Lion: "ummmm no you're not, *CHOMP*"

Maybe that's how they get rid of all the stupid children here.

Lion being all nonchalant 

Don't worry child, Come closer. I'm only going to clean you... with stomach acid

So we venture on and see more things and then some sweet giraffes. This is another picture where I want you to see more, but whatever. So the Giraffe house is like an Arabian palace and looks awesome. There was a way to get inside of it, but we couldn't find it. Very sad I know. Also in with the giraffes were these smaller guys that looked a bit like reindeer, but without antlers. they were pretty cool too

Good hay today

My favourite part was when we found the  Hippos. If you don't love hippos then check out the first picture below.

Yeah I know, awesome. This lazy guy above is one of the most dangerous african mammals, and he's adorable.  We spent a lot of time here, so much so we even saw a fight between a parent and there sassy adolescent child (pictured bellow), They were speaking hippo so I just ventured a guess as to what they were fighting about.

"You are too young to go to a concert alone"

"But it's Bieber, I have to go"

It's sad when families fight, moving on. So a little background for the polar bears (Eisbäre). A few years back the Berlin zoo picked up a baby polar bear (I don't know where from, just somewhere. Maybe ebay) and it was the star of the place for a long time. Knut (Ka-noot) as he was named, was a big deal. He's grown up now and chills with all the lady bears *high five*. I'll come clean with the picture below. My plan was just to say that it was Knut and play it cool. The truth is that I have no idea, there were four or five polar bears and I could not tell which was which, but hey this looks like a guy who is a stud. So if your a good physiologist and can tell male polar bears from the female without making them flip and spread then let me know.

"What's up, I'm just chillin' out water side"

While wondering around we started to here some sweet howling, we walked toward the sound and found a pack of white wolves all huddled close with a couple standing on a large rock all howling away. It was sweet. What wasn't sweet was the fact that I couldn't get a picture because 15 other people had the same idea and kept on getting in front of me.  I was able to get this picture below though, post howling party. One of the odd things about the wolf pen was that some guy was just wondering inside of it. He had a shovel and a zoo t-shirt so I'm guessing he was working, but it looked more like he was just killing time and hanging out with wolves

From the people that brought you "Where's Waldo" we now present "Where's Whitefang"

So penguins are awesome right? No one is going say otherwise, or fifty others will probably bust out a Morgan Freeman impersonation and break into "March of the Penguins".  But yeah awesome. These ones were not very energetic though, they were almost perfectly still. I took like ten pictures of them and they were in al the same position for everyone. It was crazy, maybe they were fake.

"Is it humans or t-rex that need movement to see?"
"I told you Todd it's humans! Now stay still and they'll go away"

Seals, clowns of the sea... Yeah I have not a whole lot to say about the seals. They were doing laps and jumps and it was pretty cool.

They have a huge aquarium as well and this is were pretty much anything with scales are. I will warn you, if you do come to the zoo, the aquarium is extra so just know that before sashaying on into the aquarium without paying. There were so many cool things in the aquarium, but I'm not sure if you have ever taken pictures through glass before, it doesn't always go as planned. Any way check out this... Alligator? That may also be a crocodile. Don't worry about it. 

"What's up"

One thing was this large swamp area where they had all kinds of animals inside. Including a bunch of crocodiles. Now that doesn't seem like the best idea ever, but I didn't see many random animal corpses so it must have turned out all right.

"I know I said I didn't want fast food, but this is ridiculous" 

So thats the zoo, much more to come. Hope the two or three people that read these are enjoying them.

summary

penguins = awesome

Hippos = more awesome

crocodiles = something that does not eat turtles

me = conflicted between delight and depression at zoo

and Scene

An American Thanksgiving in Germany with the French

Thanksgiving, it's all about football, family and being on the last Thursday of November. Ours had none of this. A friend of my roommates is American (kind of), he was born in germany because his Dad was posted in the American section of Berlin before the wall came down. That being said he has no accent whatsoever, when he speaks english it's like an American, when he speaks german it's like a German and when he speaks french it's like the French.  In any case Steve's family always celebrated Thanksgiving together here. Unfortunately this year his entire family bailed on him. Fortunately they had already bought all of the food for the meal. So Steve called up Marine and Tobi to see if he could have it at our place with a few friends. A giant free meal? I guess that's okay.

SO I'm out all day doing.. well something I don't really remember. To make the story more interesting we will say that I was out training chimps to use jet packs while operating surgical lasers. Yeah that sounds about right. When I get home it is about 4:00pm and steve is pulling into the driveway just as I am getting in.  I help him bring everything in and then it turns out that the Turkey is still completely uncooked. Just so we are clear, it wasn't cooked and still needed more time, he had not started to cook the turkey at all, or even prepped it.  It turns out steve had never made a turkey before or any other part of a thanksgiving dinner. Don't get me wrong, Steve can cook, just he underestimated the amount of time everything takes. So me with my, "helped make a couple turkeys" busted on the cooking scene. Steve had planned to have dinner at 7:30-8:00.... that wasn't going to happen. I show steve all the tricks I have learned about making turkeys: butter and seasonings underneath the skin, basting, some other things I think I made up, you know all the staples of making a turkey. So we finally get the bird into the oven at about 5:30, and know to attend to everything else to be done. Here's a list of the things that needed to be cooked (all from scratch with nothing prepped).

1. sweet potatoes
2. cranberry sauce
3. potato roasties
4. peas in some weird white sauce that was really good
5. Carrots
6. Gravy
7. Stuffing

So Steve and I took the initiative and booted everyone else out of the kitchen for most of the night. To be honest most of the things did not take very long, it was a lot of waiting for the turkey. The Cranberry sauce was awesome, it have orange zest in it so it was a really nice mixture of sweet, sour and bitter citrus. The sweet potatoes were done with garlic, which doesn't sound like it would go together, but it very much does. The Roasties were just simply tossed in garlic, herbs and olive oil and baked. Carrots were just boiled, because that is how carrots roll. The gravy was really good because we basted the turkey with a maple sauce and that was al in the gravy. The stuffing in my opinion was kind of gross, it was mostly ground pork, and I am used to bread crumb stuffing, but thats me. Then there were the peas. I don't understand it all that much, but after the peas are cooked you add ingredients into them to make a white sauce that is mostly flour, and somehow it turns delicious... My guess is witchcraft, early american pilgrims were all about the witchcraft.

So we wait for the turkey, and wait, and wait. Everyone got to the house and were all waiting (expecting dinner to have been ready at 8:00) and staring at Steve and circling the kitchen. In attendance were the four of us who live in the house (Marine, Tobi, Bertron, and Me), Steve, Jessie (friend of the house. fun fact: She's from poland), and two of Steve's friends who were visiting (I don't remember their names, they were french and they rolled with that). So almost half of those in attendance were french, not so bad. The problem is that everyone except for Jessie and I spoke French ( the two nameless frenchies spoke english but no german). So you would think that seeing that sue to all the language problems that english would be the way to go so that everyone could understand, but no. French dominated that night, and nothing against the language (it's next on my list of languages to learn), but Jessie and I were both sitting pretty awkwardly doing what little we could to steer the others toward english, or at least german, I can keep up sometimes when it's german. Neither of these happened. The food was good (as was the wine) but the conversation remained out of reach. It's one of those odd moments when you really wish that you had a more multicultural upbringing, especially when it comes to language.

Also one small moment to be judgement about the french couple that came (they were together by the way). The girl was 20, and the guy looked to be in easily in his mid thirties. I've been watching Mad Men lately and some of the relationships in that show creeped me out less then this one. OK judgement time over.

So re-cap

Me = still unable to understand french
thanksgiving = delicious
Steve = now knows how to make a turkey
the french couple = kind of creepy

(PS: Sorry I forgot to take pictures of any of this, do not worry the next few post I have planned have pictures. YAY!!)

Scene