Ankunft/Arrival

In which I land in Hamburg, try to navigate to an Aldi without a map or phone, and generally create embarrassing situations for myself.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost been three weeks since I came to Germany–time flies and the last few weeks have really been a whirlwind. Now that I finally have wifi and internet again (hallelujah) I’m going to try to attempt to catch up on everything.

My journey started at around 5:30am, stateside. After saying a sleepy and tearful goodbye to the family, my Dad and I set off on the drive to Minneapolis. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and my suitcase came in at 49.5lbs–just under the weight requirement of 50lbs! I tried to pack light, but bringing along necessary winter clothes and shoes takes up space and weight–but it’s cheaper than buying everything again in Europe.

Even once I was at the airport, it still didn’t feel real to me that I was going to Germany for almost a year to live and teach there (it still just feels like a vacation, but that will all change come Monday 😉 ). Although I was nervous, I also felt very calm knowing I’d been to Germany before–I knew I’d be able to stumble through explaining myself or getting help if something went wrong. And this time my phone would be unlocked so I could just pop in a SIM card and immediately be able to call/text/look up things on the internet, which would make being in a foreign country much less stressful and alienating (or so I thought)….

There was complimentary wine and beer on the flight–apparently this is standard? Of course I had some because I thought it would make me sleepy 😉 But I think that plan backfired, because I could NOT sleep on the plane. Maybe it was the ice cream they fed us.

The one positive aspect about not being able to sleep was looking out the window and seeing London as we flew over!

The flight itself was pretty sh0rt–barely seven hours from take off to landing. So once you subtract the time for meals, landing, and take off, we really only had about 4, maybe 5 hours to try to sleep. As we neared Hamburg, it was amazing looking out my window and seeing the sunrise. If I were a pilot, I think that would be my favorite part of those flights–flying towards the sunrise in the early morning.

I felt really out of it when I landed–brain fog…confused… just weird. You know that state your body is in after you’ve been awake for too long and  your body is attempting to shut down? That’s how it felt. If the airport had had those newfangled sleep pods, I might have paid a pretty penny to take a nap. Unfortunately, they didn’t have them, so I wandered through the airport with my heavy luggage and finally found a quiet bench, where I laid down to nap. Except people kept coming over and talking loudly on their phones. Underneath the cover of my eyemask (aka hat pulled over my eyes), I gave them the evil eye.

The next important step was obviously wifi–which when it comes to wifi in Germany…things seem a little archaic, to put it nicely. The Hamburg Airport only gives  you 30 minutes of wifi, so I decided to go to Starbucks because all Starbucks have free wifi, right?

Well, it didn’t.

So I drank  an iced coffee (what an American choice 😉 )–all the Europeans in Starbucks were drinking out of little espresso cups (real glasses, not paper). That’s one thing about Starbucks that I like in Europe–they usually serve your coffee in a real glass. Anyways, I promise not to go to a Starbucks again in Europe unless it’s out of a dire need for wifi! I plan to take full advantage of the excellent cafes throughout Europe 😉 ( I did manage to let the fam know I was alive and had all my luggage, so at least I was able to get that taken care of.)

Next step: leaving the airport to head to the train station!

It wasn’t as overwhelming as I expected to be surrounded by German again–but the northern dialect is a lot easier to understand than southern German or Austrian German. I am happy to report that several people in the Hamburg airport even came up to ask me questions in German about buying tickets / other random stuff. Although I couldn’t help them, it felt nice to be mistaken for a local. 😉 And no one switched to English, even when I made a mistake–SUCCESS.

So a few important lessons learned in the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof– the main train station.

First: The people at Starbucks are not always that friendly. Case in point [exchange took place in German]:

“Do you have free wifi here? ”

A rather harsh “NEIN.”
“Ok.” *pause*. Then courage again to ask another question in German, “Well, do you know if there’s any somewhere in the train station?”

“No idea, but probably somewhere like McDonalds *shudders at the name* *annoyed eyeroll*”

“Okayyy,” *meekly walk away*

Next important lesson learned: DO NOT POUR CARBONATED WATER INTO YOUR WATERBOTTLE. It will bubble out, leak all over your backpack and on your important documents, and on the back of your pants, making it seem like you’ve wet your pants.

Third: 3 different Germans had never heard of Aldi. I thought this was a well-known store?

Fourth: When they announce that your train is leaving from another platform and it even says so on the electronic sign, DO NOT GO RIGHT AWAY if no one else is going. This means you have to lug your suitcase up and down the stairs like fivebajillion times only to find out that the electronic sign WAS A MISTAKE, and the Deutsche Bahn personal will say “WHATT?” when you tell them what it  said, shake their head at you, make a phone call to ask the people at the other platform “What the heck is going on with your sign man?”, and then send you back up the stairs, back to the original platform.

At any rate, I survived, found an Aldi, bought an Aldi Talk SIM card, found wifi at McDonalds, tried to dry my pants, and eventually got on my train to Greifswald. But not without badly bruising my arm from trying to lift my luggage around. *sigh*

So I arrived in Greifswald at 7pm-12 hours after landing in Germany–sweaty, dehydrated, exhausted, and ready to go to bed.

Coming up next: more wifi adventures, SIM card madness, and Denmark.