Tag: Germany

Volume 2, Day 23

I woke up early as usual and puttered around in the morning, waiting until my host woke up. R slept in, so I had plenty of time to read the news (and what a news day), study German, and work on my computer. My only significant plan for the day was to visit an art museum and I needed to ask which of the bikes in the courtyard was the spare one to borrow.

It was nearly noon by the time I set off and it was fine weather to cycle along the waterfront. I passed a climate demonstration at the Landungsbruke and continued along following the signs to the Hauptbahnhof. Hamburg’s art mile is all in the surrounding area of the train station, and I was aiming for the Kunsthalle, which lays to the north of the station. There are tons of museums in the city, but with only one full day to explore, I decided to prioritize this one. There was another demonstration of some sort near the train station, but as they were marching away from me I couldn’t make out what was going on.

I locked up the bike and headed over to the entrance of the Kunsthalle. Fortunately, I had eaten the remaining rye bread I bought when I arrived in Hamburg (it’s nice to know I can stretch out 500g loaf of bread over three meals) so I didn’t need to worry about starving to death while exploring the vast museum. I was impressed by the Kunsthalle because the gallery rooms were numbered with a fairly limited amount of backtracking to see the works in order and almost every room had a bilingual placard introducing one of the pieces in detail. Of course, I don’t bother with too much reading when it comes to art as I prefer to take it in subjectively, while multitasking with podcasts in the background.

The art started with medieval religious works and proceeded along the usual progression. An underground passageway connecting the main hall to an annex contained a few modern installation artworks, such as a 500 year project to grow a stalagmite from rain water, and a special exhibition contain 5 tiny sketches by Leonardo da Vinci. One is supposed to reserve a viewing time for those, but because the museum was not crowded, I was able to slip in. Utterly unimpressive, though the rest of the crowd oohed and aahed as they pored over everything with magnifying glasses.

The annex contained a loan from a Danish museum and a gallery of video art, which I sometimes wonder how one is supposed to view in a museum. Are you really supposed to just sit there for the 20, 40, 80 minute length of the art film?

I was pretty much done by 3:30 and I decided to head across the street to a bakery for a cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake. After recharging, I bicycled by a different route back to St. Pauli and could see that Reeperbahn was both beset by Harley Davidsons and was already gearing up for the Friday night. I returned to the apartment around a quarter to five to find R already back from whatever his daytime activity was, and we grabbed the food and headed over to the community garden on foot.

A few people were in the garden working when we got there. We dropped the stuff and had a look at the box of food from the food sharing program. I’m getting the impression that food sharing programs are quite popular in Germany, but I was thinking of it in terms of people sharing food that they produced. As in, oh my tomato harvest is in and I have too many tomatoes. In reality, it is more of an organized gleaning, where people gather produce that supermarkets are on the verge of throwing out. So, as I poked around the massive box of slightly wilted veggies, I had to make a conscious effort to roll with it. To be fair, there was one package of mushrooms that when I went to open, discovered was moldy beyond acceptable levels, so that went straight into the compost. After inspecting what was available, I made a quick supermarket run to grab some extra needed veggies.

Without belaboring the point, I had a lot of waiting around since we weren’t aiming to eat until 8 or 8:30, so I kept myself busy with food prep. The menu included: Chinese cucumber salad, fried peanuts, tomato egg drop soup, Vietnamese summer rolls, daal, hot and sour cabbage, stir-fried cauliflower with tofu and bell peppers, and a giant mala hot pot (in a paella dish) featuring more cabbage leaves, enoki mushrooms, these little root vegetables, broccoli, and asparagus. Apart from the summer rolls, I was in charge, though I had plenty of offers for help.

Because the wok was a little small, I had to cook the two stir-fried dishes in batches. I had been snacking on peanuts and a summer roll during the long prep/waiting period, so I told people to go ahead and start eating as I frying up the fresh dishes. What surprised me was that by the time I sat down to eat, I discovered that the group of seven people had pretty much destroyed most the food. It was wonderful. The food came out much better than I expected (because I really don’t have that much practice stir-frying) and was well received. In the end, there was still too much food and the leftover soup, hot pot, and summer rolls (which were basically untouched) had to be thrown in the fridge when we finally got around to clean up at 11.

The evening really dragged on and I’m not sure if it was because I had mentally switched into Chinese mode to cook or if I was tired from the intellectual challenge of looking at art in the afternoon, but I felt like I was “sundowning” and really incapable of stringing together a couple words in German. I had to exert myself to suppress the Chinese that wanted to come out. Of course, everyone could also speak English, and the dinner conversation drifted between the two languages. I was happy to mostly listen while eating my fill.

Eventually, the dinner came to a close and the cleanup work was mostly finished. Some people had headed home, but others were keen to go “cornering.” I was up for one more drink and headed along for the ride. I did have just one drink, but I have to say the experience of cornering is not for me. I was really full from the dinner, and couldn’t get comfortable. Then, I needed to use the restroom. I looked at my watch at one point and discovered it was already past 1 in the morning. No wonder I was so tired. Since I had my own key, I said good night to R–who was engrossed in a conversation with some old friends he had bumped into–and headed that way. Luckily, one other girl in the group also lived in that direction and wanted to go home too, so we walked most of the way together. I say “luckily” not because I couldn’t find the way, but it kept me from getting hassled by street walkers. I would say the vibe of St. Pauli reminds me most of Las Vegas. People travel here for stag or hen parties.

---

Hamburger Kunsthalle	14
Coffee and cake	2.9
Vegetables	5.75
Total:	22.65 EUR (176.7 RMB) (USD 25.83)

Running Total: 8843.3 RMB (USD 1292.46)
Daily Average: 384.5 RMB (USD 56.19)

Volume 2, Day 22

In the morning, since I didn’t have the luxury of available hot water or unlimited coffee, I got my pick up the old fashioned way with a jog around the lakes. It was surprisingly chilly in the gray, windy morning, but I had tons of company on the water-peripheral paths. There must have been at least 100 other joggers out there on the Thursday morning. My running tracking app failed again mid-run, and despite being more vigilant to catch it when it crashes, I must have lost at least a kilometer from the record keeping. For a person who somewhat obsessively lives by numbers and measurements, this is getting very frustrating. I’m not so much a “Luddite”, but I think the reason I am pessimistic about so much technology is the inexorable march towards suckiness. I so often get hooked into some legacy software tool that is svelte and streamlined, but with each iteration (and good lord some of the apps update literally every f*cking day [I’m looking at you Firefox]), they become worse and worse.

Anyways, I took a quick shower back in the hostel after my roughly hour long jog and mostly packed up so I would be ready to checkout at 10am. Since I had ample time, I headed down to the lounge and ordered a double espresso while internetting and surreptitiously munching on leftover bread dipped in butter (taken with me from Magdeburg). At the appropriate hour, I grabbed my luggage, checked out, put my luggage in a storage room, and returned to the lounge to continue internetting. I had plans to meet R, whom I had met in Berlin and arranged to crash two nights with, at noon.

When it was time to leave, I crossed the street to the Hauptbahnhof to take the S-Bahn over to Reeperbahn, which happens to be Hamburgs red light district. I had trouble purchasing a ticket, but with patience and trying several machines, eventually figured out the secret navigation through the menu to find the option for a day pass. I had a feeling I might be doing a bit of running around, so it seemed like a good precaution.

R was waiting for me on the platform and we walked to his apartment together. He is quite a collector and a frequent treasure hunter of flea markets, and his apartment looks like a curiosity shop. Today was the first day of the summer vacation (R is a teacher), so he was free to show me around town. After a quick coffee, we headed over to a “alternative” pizza place. On the way, R pointed out old buildings which had been saved from destruction in the 1980s through clashes with the police. Though Reeperbahn is a bit seedy, the debauchery is basically limited to a narrow zone, while the rest of St. Pauli is quiet and residential. The area was originally working class, though like everywhere else is slowly gentrifying after that initial wave of students, artists, and immigrants.

The pizza was excellent, if pricey, and I followed R’s lead in ordering a beer–a local craft beer–which was quite tasty. After the lunch, we headed over to a water bus at the old fish market and took it some distance up the Elbe River. It was unfortunate that the weather had taken such a strange turn. The weather everywhere has been mostly warm (hot) and sunny, but even after hitting more than 30 yesterday, today’s high was barely 21. I wore jeans and might have even been better served with a jacket. The sky was completely clouded over and gray as well. After passing the stop where the cruise ships berth, we alighted and walked up to where there was a sandy beach along the river and well-known bar.

After one round, in which I tried Astra–the local beer, we headed back to take the water bus down to the philharmonic building, which took the city 15 years and 80 million euros over budget to build. The building is open to the public and it was interesting to go up, both for the views of the harbor and for its interior architecture. The way up is an incredible long escalator that follows an elliptical curve. We had to queue for tickets to enter the building, but the tickets were free. So, instead of recuperating the building costs by charging a little admission, the city pays an employee to hand out pieces of paper with a bar code that unlocks the high tech entry gates. Germany can’t be bothered to put turnstiles on its public transportation, but does for the concert hall.

A fairly short walk through the Altstadt brought us to a Chinese supermarket, where I did some shopping. I offered to cook dinner and had a menu of dishes in my mind, while there was also a regular Friday night gathering in a community garden. The Asian supermarket was pretty cool, with a good selection of recognizable brands from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese supermarkets. The prices, on the other hand, were enough to cause a heart attack. As R had been picking up the check so far, I made sure to buy the groceries.

I think we caught the S-bahn over to the Landungsbruken and took a minute to explore the architectural wonder from the 1910s–an art deco tunnel under the river with car elevators. We dropped off the groceries and I grabbed a jacket, then we went to a local craft brewery and sat outside. It was quite crowded despite the weather, and reminded me of Beijing or Shanghai. It’s funny how much I associate craft beer with the handful of brands in China, but either there aren’t so many options in the cities I travel or in my travel mindset, I balk at the fairly universal pricing of craft beer (from Beijing to Seoul to Hamburg, a glass of craft beer costs roughly the same). Of course, whereas it is a mark of “expat-ness” to get a craft beer in Asia, its just another street cafe in Europe.

R had an errand to run, so after another swing by the apartment, he pushed a DIY wagon-bicycle with some supplies over to the community garden he works at and ultimately a fab-lab where he stores a lot of stuff for tinkering. It was past nine at this point (he had barely slipped into an Edeka supermarket before closing to return a bunch of bottles for the Pfand), and we had a supper of lentil soup at a Turkish restaurant. It’s notable that though I see Turkish eateries everywhere, I have so far only gone in them with locals.

I was getting pretty tired so I turned down the offer to “corner.” Cornering is a pastime in Hamburg where people buy beer from a shop and sit on a street curb. It’s so weird, but I can attest it really is a thing and there are a couple parts of St Pauli where people travel to for the privilege of sitting on the dirty ground. I guess St. Pauli doesn’t really have much green space, so sitting in a park is out of the question.

Back in the apartment, R put a record on and poured out a nightcap (a Scotch-style whisky from India) and I looked over his library. We talked about books, TV, and movies, so I also got to show off my digital library.

---

Espresso	2.5
9-hour Metro pass	6.5
Asian Groceries	28.3
Craft beer	11
Total:	48.3 EUR (376.7 RMB) (USD 54.86)

Running Total: 8666.6 RMB (USD 1262.1)
Daily Average: 393.9 RMB (USD 57.37)

Volume 2, Day 21

I finished off the toast in the morning and took a walk over to the river (which I couldn’t let myself leave town without at least seeing). I probably should have jogged it, but the short walk was nice and I hung around the apartment until about 9:45, when the landlady showed up. I was already packed, but would have waited until exactly the 10 am checkout time before setting out. The superglue seemed to help with the two wheels I repaired, but by the time I reached the Magdeburg ZOB, the two other wheels had started to fall apart. I I had booked a Flixbus for 11:30 or so and had a good hours wait, but there were seats in the shade and I brought the remained of the salad with me to serve as an early lunch. By the entrance of the train station, a trombonist provided background music and it wasn’t an unpleasant wait.

The bus to Hamburg took several hours and we had barely set off before we stopped at a mandated rest point and were all kicked off the bus so the driver could have his lunch. The highway rest area had a small shop, a restaurant, and a McDonald’s, but the prices were outrageously high. I wonder if the city McDonald’s actually charge 7-8 euros for a “value” meal. I had already consumed two meals, but the boredom was starting to eat away at me.

Once we were back on the road, I passed the time by browsing Twitter, listening to German podcasts, practicing Duolingo, napping, and staring out the window. The German country side was pleasant looking. It is quite flat in the northern parts of German (basically everywhere I have been so far) with lots of fields and almost always at least one wind turbine visible. I’m reminded of a trip I took across the American heartland in 2008 when wind energy was just taking off and they were being put up, and I can’t help but wonder how long these windmills have been there and will there be more. We also passed the occasional village with traditional German timber buildings and what not.

When we pulled into Hamburg’s ZOB, also conveniently across the street from the Hauptbahnhof, I hauled my luggage the roughly 100 meters to the Generator Hostel. Though I wish I could be rid of this corporate monstrosity, it was both the most convenient and cheapest option in town. Fortunately, I know exactly what to expect by this point. Almost. I was shocked to find an electric fan in the room, and as one of my roommates (a Californian) explained, they had special requested the fan because it “was so hot.” The room wasn’t hot and situated to catch the prevailing winds so long as the door was left ajar for the air to move through.

I dropped my stuff and with stomach growling headed up the street to find a supermarket. The area to the east of the train station (where I was staying) was pretty sketchy with plenty of homeless and junkies hanging out on the streets. The plaza is completely strewn with litter and a faint odor hangs in the air. It’s hard to untangle the feeling of urban blight with the heavily immigrant vibe of the street leading from the train station to residential neighborhoods, where every restaurant and shop was Arabic, Turkish, Afghani, or otherwise associated with some exotic far-off land.

I grabbed a half loaf of bread, water, and sliced cheese and continued on my way to a thin stretch of green to make a picnic. It was an early dinner at 5 pm, which was fine by me as my stomach was already growling. After finishing my meal, I finished walking the park and crossed the street to the “Outer” Lake, which was full of small sailboats enjoying the sun and wind. I followed the path south along the edge of the lake, snapping tons of photos and cross the bridge that separates the inner lake from the outer lake.

Having looked on the map, it seemed like there were long distances from my hostel to the lakes to the old town, but the walk had taken me so little time, I decided to continue exploring Hamburg, cutting into the old town and checking off most of the major highlights–Rathaus, Mahnmal St. Nikolai, Chilehaus. Apart from the historic architecture, the neighborhoods are essentially giant shopping malls, and I even popped into one outdoor sporting goods store to price backpacks. Omg, they are expensive: 200-300 euros. I finished walking back to hostel, where I pulled out my computer and worked on it for some time.

It was after 9 by the time I finished up my work and I was nearly ready to pack it up for the night, but I had a hankering for a sweet and decided to reward myself for abstaining from alcohol for two whole days. I popped up to the supermarket to grab a rittersport and another bottle of water. Up in the room, I moved the fan and propped open the door to maximize in the inflow of the already chilly night air. I took a shower and watched some YouTube videos, and decided to go to bed at around 10:30, just at the time that some other travelers came in for a pit stop before going out drinking.

---

Flixbus	14.23
Hostel	130 RMB (16.6 EUR)
Bread and Cheese	3.13 EUR
Chocolate and Water	1.28 EUR
Total:	275.4 RMB (USD 40.9)

Running Total: 8289.9 RMB (USD 1206.84)
Daily Average: 394.75 RMB (USD 57.47)

Volume 2, Day 19

I don’t expect this name to mean anything to anyone. I think most Germans haven’t even heard of the city. It lies to the west of Berlin (though firmly ensconced in former East Germany) and is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. Stradling the Elbe River, Magdeburg has an impressive cathedral and is probably most famous for a canal bridge. (Spoiler alert: I didn’t travel the 13 km out of town to see said engineering wonder.) Most importantly for me, it was on the way from Leipzig to Hamburg and had a hostel.

Contrary to my typical modus operandi, when I checked out of the Sleepy Lion at 9:55, I didn’t hang around killing time, instead taking the long walk over to the ZOB (Zentral Omnibus Bahnhof, i.e. bus station). I wanted to get there well in advance of the scheduled 10:50 departure to Magdeburg to see how feasible it would be to pay cash. Though there was a Flixbus office right there, the company charges a 3 euro “service fee” for even talking to the employees. Considering that the bus fare listed in the app was 5.99, I wasn’t exactly going to pay 50% more to save the company those insane credit card fees. It’s not quite the same as buying a stick of gum with a credit card, but how can they break even. So, having successfully ruled out using any of the official ticket counters, there was still the option of paying the driver cash per their FAQ. I was bored while I waited for the bus to come, and shocked when I refreshed the route in the app (just to make it didn’t sell out) and found that the price jumped up to 19.99 euros within 15 minutes of departure. Ah, so that is the “true” price of the journey and the 5.99 cited in the app was the discounted price. Again I am confused by the business operations. Why not mention the higher price at the point of sale to encourage the user to place the order immediately?

I might have really screwed myself over but figuring out the edge cases of this tech-centric budget transportation company, but luckily there was another bus at 11:50. In fact, it even had a shorter travel time than the one I was certainly not going to pay 20 euros for. I booked it through my phone and settled down for a long, boring wait.

Pricing in Europe is so weird. Some things are so cheap while some things are so expensive. The weirdest bit is that sometimes it is the same thing with such wildly varying prices. I don’t ever want to drink a beer in a restaurant and pay 4 euros when I know the same beer costs under a euro. Okay, maybe there is a strong precedent for high markups on alcohol. But 2-3 euros for a small bottle of water in a kiosk when I pay 19 cents in a supermarket for 1.5 L? There was a little convenience store in the bus depot and the prices of the things there blew my mind. Especially because one could walk 3 minutes to a discount supermarket. If I have mind left to be blown, its amazing how happy people are to spend money in these situations. I would rather go hungry for a bit.

I napped a bit on the bus and studied some German. We reached Magdeburg’s ZOB fairly promptly at 1:40. While I was on the bus, I received a text message from the hostel with a key code and some directions. I thought that was odd, but I had been communicating with them via email in German for the booking. I had to cut through Magdeburg’s train station to reach the main street and walk the couple blocks down to find this centrally located hostel. The walk was pretty exhausting and I realized that another suitcase wheel was in the process of falling apart.were disintegrating

The “Ringel Hostel” was actually more like an Airbnb. I grabbed a key from the streetside lock box and let myself in to the apartment. It was a hallway with four bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. My “dorm room” was a large bedroom with three beds (one of which a double), table, a full bookcase, and window seats. It was pretty amazing, though, to be fair, at least half of my joy in the accommodations stemmed from the fact that I had not only the room, but the whole apartment to myself. The kitchen was fully stocked, so I made a note to take advantage of the self-catering.

I set out to explore a bit and discovered just how small a town Magdeburg really was. The cathedral was nice, massive really, and I spent a bit of time wandering inside its grounds. I passed the “Green Citadel”, which is some building designed by some famous architect. It had a sort of Moorish, Gaudi-vibe to it (but not as colorful). I considered spending some time in a cafe in the courtyard, but

Not a block away, I decided to stop at an Eiscafe. I ordered a spaghetti eis and an espresso and spent a leisurely two hours in the shade outside. I was reading through a German textbook when I overheard two Americans who sat down at the table next to mine. I readily spotted a missionary nametag, though they weren’t dressed in their typical uniform. It wasn’t too hard to ignore them (I usually find it hard to block out Americans when they talk), but I couldn’t help chuckling when I realized that one of them had inadvertantly ordered a sundae with liquor in it. There was a consultation of the menu and a dictionary, followed by indecision about whether or not to finish it. Missionary A: Does it taste like alcohol? Missionary B: I don’t know, I’ve never had alcohol. It got even better when he started selectively eating parts of the sundae while audibly reasoning reasoning whether or not it was alcoholic. “I think the whipped cream is okay” “May it’s in the chocolate sauce” and so on. After my entertainment left, I didn’t stick around long.

I wondered through two shopping malls and looked at the big cinema next to the train station that had caught my eye with a poster of Spider-Man: Far from Home. About ten days to go before that comes out, but I looked at the prices and schedule because I was curious anyways. So Germany, or at least “Cinemaxx” (what a porn sounding name), follows the American tradition of cheap tickets on Tuesday.

There was an underground Kaufland right there and I wandered in to get some dinner. I bought a giant salad that was 50% off and some pineapple that was also marked down 50%. Then I got a little excited by how much I was saving and bought a ton of stuff, inlcuding several beers that were also on sale (such that the 2 liters of beers cost the same as the 500g salad).

I schlepped all the groceries back to the apartment, which was still empty. Ideally, I should have changed into my running shoes and taken a jog along the river, but I was feeling tired after a strenuous day of sitting around, so I cracked open a beer and the package of dried fruits and nuts and relaxed. Did I mention I found a package of bratwurst on sale? I fried up three of those, toasted two brotchen, and ate a plate full of salad while those were cooking. I think I have figured out why I hated salad so much when I was younger. It’s simply terrible in Germany. It is convenient and relatively cheap (compared to China/Korea/Japan) to get some salad mixes, but the vegetables usually don’t taste so great, and it is such an ordeal to get a decent tasting dressing. I bought a bottle of something called “herb” dressing that looked like Italian. Even though it is a “lite” dressing, the second ingredient is sugar and the dominant flavor is either dill or farts, I can’t really tell. The one time I bought a “oil and vinegar” dressing it was canola oil and distilled white vinegar. Seriously wtf. What is wrong with a little EVOO and Balsamic? The German “Balsamic” flavored salad dressings have the color of grape juice and the viscosity of slime.

It was a long movie and somehow three sausages (for the price of one from a street cart) made me even more hungry (or it was the fact that I had polished off two beers like they were water). In any case, I decided to have a look at the Edeka supermarket around the corner from the apartment. Needless to say, I’ve been having some extremely poor impulse control when it comes to consumption in Germany and despite my self-rationalization of “I’ll just eat half the package,” I ended up having a fine old time.

---

Flixbus	6.09
Spaghetti Eis + Espresso + Tip	10
Groceries	14.35
Snacks (potato chips, chocolate, cheese)	4.07
Total:	34.51 EUR (269.2 RMB) (USD 39.13)

Running Total: 7591 RMB (USD 1103.33)
Daily Average: 399.5 RMB (USD 58.07)

You may notice, I don’t have housing… keep reading…

Volume 2, Day 17

In the end, I didn’t find any reasonable accommodation in any of the nearby cities which I might have otherwise wanted to visit (such as Dresden or Wittenburg), but I was able to secure a booking for two more nights in Leipzig and send out a request for a booking in Magdeburg through the Independent Hostels of Germany. Unfortunately, in order to stay in the Central Globetrotters, I would have had to move to a more expensive room. Fortunately, I moved to an even cheaper hostel.

Of course I spent the entire morning hanging around and even after checking out, simply returned to the lounge and plopped down on the sofa for a few more hours. I was in no rush to walk the 700 meters over to the other hostel until I could check straight in.

I did not sleep well. That massive quantity of food left me with a nightlong case of indigestion. After giving up on sleep in the early morning, I had a coffee and decided to sweat it out of me by going out for a run. On my various incursions into the old town, I had noticed the occasional historic marker with a blurb about the history of music in Leipzig. The markers are connected in a music trail of Leipzig covering more than 20 site around town and with stainless steel arrows embedded in the street to show the way. The Bach museum actually had a full map of the sites and said it takes about 2 hours to walk it (excluding visiting museums). Having put off the full trail, I decided to follow it on my jog as a scavenger hunt. It was barely seven kilometers (including to/from the hostel), but it was fun.

While I was hanging out in the hostel lounge waiting to make my maneuver to the next hostel a guy sat down at nearby and set to work decorating black and white printouts with highlighters. We got to talking and he gave me a full sales pitch for Leipzig. He was from England, but had lived there a long time and loved the city. He made several references to business partners, but I didn’t inquire into what he actually did for a living. He, very helpfully, suggested I teach English or apply for uni in Leipzig. Okay.

The Sleepy Lion Hostel wasn’t far, but it was not a fun walk with my luggage and a very uneven sidewalk. I paid cash at checkin and took an elevator up to the second floor to find my 10 bed dorm room. It was actually a series of three connected rooms with four, four and two beds. Each room more cramped but with lockers and a few other pieces of furniture. The bathroom was en suite.

I dumped my stuff and immediately headed into the old town to find a cafe. It wasn’t that I needed much more coffee (having liberally helped myself to free coffee), but that I wanted a lazy afternoon. I had also skipped breakfast and lunch as my stomach kept working away at that pizza. I found a bakery, ordered a large coffee, two pastries, and sat there for not even two hours. I took an inside seat to avoid the smokers and the direct sunlight. I eventually got bored, especially when I ran out of my 30 minutes of free wifi, so I returned to the hostel.

I went to the kitchenette (much smaller and only consisting of fridge, microwave, and tea kettle) to get some water and I bumped into a familiar face. I don’t think I’ve mentioned, but there was a Chinese lady staying at the last hostel. She sometimes listened to her programs without headphones, and she found out I spoke Chinese when I intervened in a misunderstanding between her and another guest (they were both trying to help the other one when neither of them needed help). Since then, she hasn’t constantly tried to push food on me or ask me for favors, such as ordering beauty products online for her niece. Of course, she also kept asking me why I don’t teach English in China. Anyways, one of the perks of moving hostels was finally getting some distance from this overly friend, but completely inept traveler (for example, she doesn’t quite understand the alphabet. Seriously, how do people survive in foreign lands with so little competence?). But she also moved to this hostel and began asking me to help her book a hotel for her in Naples. I tell her to just use Ctrip like I do, you can even (sometimes) pay in RMB with WeChat or Alipay.

Frustrated, I even tried to pull up the app to prove that you can use your mainland payment options overseas, but the hostel was experiencing some internet issues and I didn’t even have a workable signal with my cellular data. I went upstairs to grab my shopping bag because I needed to buy enough food on Saturday to last me until Monday.

When I got to the Aldi, I kind of went a little nuts buying this and that, cookies, gummies, yogurt, liverwurst, sliced rye bread, sliced cheese, canned goulash soup, paprika chips, mixed nuts, wine, etc. I’m finding it harder and harder to resist the call of all the junk food that is so reasonably priced, compared to China. Apart from fresh vegetables, everything in the supermarket in Europe is cheaper and more delicious than what can be bought in China.

Back in the hostel, I had my dinner, then headed upstairs. I gave myself a pat on the back for rationing out the food. I chatted with one of my roommates (a Korean guy) for a bit then settled in to watch a movie. When I finished the movie, I went to sleep.

---

Hostel (2 nights)	30.6
Coffee and pastries	5.5
Groceries	13.09
Total:	49.19 EUR (383.7 RMB) (USD 55.76)

Running Total: 7204.8 RMB (USD 1046.94)
Daily Average: 423.8 RMB (USD 61.58)

Volume 2, Day 16

One of the more interesting things about Leipzig is that it appeared to play a critical role in the Peace Movement that helped bring about the downfall of the GDR. Weekly “peace prayers” in the St. Nikolai church as well as the environmental movement were the basis of a civil society that allowed organization outside the control of the Stasi. The annual Leipzig Messe (trade fair) shined an international spotlight on the city that sometimes made it harder to fully crack down on dissent. My goal for the day was to brush up on my history by visiting two museums. As an added bonus, each of them had free admission.

I headed to the Stasi Museum in the morning. The museum and archives are located in an actual Stasi headquarters, which was been preserved with original paint, furnishings, etc. The museum was entirely in German, and I made a slow pass through testing my reading comprehension skills with the aid of a dictionary. Eventually, I decided I should shell out the money for an audio guide because I wasn’t getting the full story. Though it was a bit expensive, I am glad to have gotten the guide. However, it was a little verbose. I got impatient at times as the British narrator droned on for five, six, nine minutes at a single display case. I spend so much time listening to podcasts at 1.5 times speed, I wish I could do the same with these devices. I guess I was also getting hangry.

Regarding the actual history of the Stasi, I suppose it seems quaint to look at all the analog surveillance and record keeping. But, how can we be shocked, disturbed, angered by the total control of a society when our so-called liberal governments are doing the same on a much grander scale. Snowden blew the whistle on NSA, a few tech companies had a public shaming, but that hasn’t slowed down the march of complete government intrusion into every aspect of our personal lives. From surveillance cameras to biometrics to wiretapping, honestly speaking, the citizens of the GDR were probably better off than Americans today. I should be drawing analogies to China, which gets itself in the news regularly for its overt surveillance, but I couldn’t help thinking about the US and its partners in the Five Eyes. Stasi is shorthand for Ministry of State Security. Plug in some synonyms and we are talking about the National Security Agency.

After the museum, I hurried to the Aldi to source a cheap lunch (salad, pretzel, Zwiebelbrot) and returned to the hostel to chow down on it with a couple cups of coffee. I took a quick power nap, and headed once more into the old town to track down the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum (Forum of Contemporary History).

This museum was awesome. It began with the end of World War II and continued all the way to the refugee crisis, but the focus was mainly on life under the GDR. The DDR Museum in Berlin was pretty good and maybe better in a few aspects, but overall it would be worth the trip to Leipzig to see this museum. At this point, I’m familiar with the broad strokes, so each pass through a museum fills in some details and provides extra context to my mental history book. The museum had a lot of archival footage accessible through touchscreen video displays. I watched a lot of them, listening to the German and reading the English subtitles. Much like my visit to the German History Museum, I ran out of time and had to speed up when I hit reunification.

At 5:55, I exited the museum, looked at my watch and hurried over to St. Thomaskirche, which fortunately was only 2 minutes away. This time the doors were wide open and I paid my 2 euros to enter and found a seat. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but timing is impeccable, visiting Leipzig in the midst of its annual Bachfest–a two week celebration of classical music with dozens of concerts across the city. I had checked the online schedule and made note of the relatively cheap cost to listen to some music inside this famous church. Of course, much like the “Opera for Everyone,” I was suckered in by some false advertising. There was barely any Bach on the program. Also, I didn’t know what a “motet” was. The hour long program mostly choral and quite nice to listen to, except for the little sermon that the church snuck in there. I think I got tricked into going to church.

When the program ended, and people slowly, slowly filtered out of the church, I was feeling quite anxious about a number of things. Obviously I wanted to figure out my dinner, but more importantly, I needed some internet time to revise my travel schedule. Originally, I was planning to go to Hannover for a couple days, then head up to Hamburg. However, Hannover does not really have budget accommodation, so I had spent the week reaching out to Couchsurfing hosts. One by one, I had gotten rejected, and here I was on my last night in Leipzig with the final rejection coming through, so I needed a new plan. Skip Hannover? Go somewhere else?

I returned to the hostel, grabbed my shopping bag and hurried over to the Aldi. I grabbed a flat bread, hummus, mozzarella, salami, and some beers. The flatbread was quite thick, so I sliced it in half to make a doubledecker flat bread pizza with the oven in the hostel. While that was baking, I found that I didn’t have a lot of options, but I did discover that Leipzig still had availability in three budget hostels. So, worse case scenario, I could stay another day. That was enough to allow me to relax and enjoy my dinner. I can’t believe I ate the entire thing by myself.

---

Audioguide (Stasi Museum)	5
Lunch (salad + bread)	2.67
Bachfest	2
Dinner	5.5
Total:	15.17 EUR (118.3 RMB) (USD 17.21)

Running Total: 6821.1 RMB (USD 992.27)
Daily Average: 426.3 RMB (USD 62.02)

Volume 2, Day 15

It was surprisingly chilly when I woke up in the morning. When I had gone to bed, it was a bit too warm and I had lain in bed quite some while fanning myself. Yet, by the morning, the open windows had done their trick. I spent the morning in the usual fashion, opting to make my own coffee rather than help myself to that with the breakfast spread. Shortly after ten, I decided to head out.

So, Leipzig is probably most famous for its connections to pretty much every major musician. Wagner was born there, Mendelssohn and Bach both lived there until their deaths. I even passed a building with a plaque announcing a connection to Grieg. I crossed the ring road and headed into the old town to find St. Thomaskirche, where Johann Sebastian is laid to rest. The church was not open, the Bach Museum and Archive across the street was. I shelled out the big bucks for a ticket and wasn’t expecting much.

The museum is housed in the former residence of a rich family of Leipzig and friend of Bach. Though not particularly large, there is a wealth of information and a back garden. Headphones with touch screen panels appear to contain the entire body of music, organized and searchable. I would have liked to spend a couple hours listening, but I was anxious to keep moving. The most notable aspect of the museum is that the sign in front, which points the way to the ticket counter, was written in German, English, and Japanese. True enough, there was a whole Japanese tour group working their way through the museum.

After leaving the museum, I was thinking of running to the Aldi and having lunch back at the hostel, but as I was meandering across the green plaza next to the church, I was quite taken in by the available foods. As if by magnetic pull, my eyes immediately spotted the gelato counter, but what I went for first was a burger stand. It was a nice bratwurst, but it made me hungrier to eat it than not. Deciding to hang out for a bit in the mini-park, I pulled out my phone to review a bit of German, but discovered that my subscription to Lingodeer Plus had expired. I was maybe five days away from completing all the currently available quizzes, but it was finally time to give the app the kiss off. I would recommend it as a free app, but it is far too undercooked to be worth paying top dollar for.

I walked around a bit at random and found another half dozen ice cream sellers. If I hadn’t packed on so much weight in Beijing, I would be going nuts on pizzas, bratwurst, pommes frites, and eis, and that’s even before one browses the aisles of an Aldi and literally wants to buy everything available. Do I have a mission to try every available flavor of Rittersport? What about other chocolate brands? Between cheap grocery stores, affordable junk food stands, and reasonable street cafes, I might not need ever step foot into a restaurant. I wonder if I am ever going to get tired of supermarket bread so I have to start spending more on bakery bread. Anyways, after looking at lots of ice cream counters, cafes, and parlors, I picked one that appeared to have the best price-quality ratio and got two scoops in a waffle cone. Ambrosia.

The sky was dark with clouds and the weather report had predicted a better than 50% chance of rain at 1 pm, so I finished my ice cream and headed to the Museum of Fine Arts. It was worth the admission ticket, though I have the weird feeling I could have just waltzed in without paying. The museum is currently hosting an exhibition on Yoko Ono, which I wasn’t particularly excited about, but she won quickly won me over. It was really cool that some of the exhibits were interactive. For example, there was a room with a boat in it. Everything is covered in graffiti. At first glance, that is how it is supposed to be. But there is a table with paint cans and brushes. Each visitor gets to add their mark and contribute to the whole. Or, take the wooden block with a bucket of nails next to it. Or, the broken pieces of pottery and a worktable with glue and tape we are invited to use to piece them back together. Though Yoko Ono’s works were all over the museum, the usually galleries were still there covering everything from medieval religious art to mid-20th century works that somehow survived the Nazis (despite being labeled “degenerate”). I think I spent close to 4 hours, and I could have spent longer if not for the fact that I was craving a pick-me-up.

I swung by the train station “Promenade” and picked up a giant cookie-thing called a “Pig’s Ear” in a bakery and headed back to the hostel to have a couple cups of free coffee. I played on the internet for two hours before getting into the kitchen early to make a second spaghetti dinner. For future reference, if I am going to buy a 500g package of spaghetti (for 40 cents), I should probably try to split it into three meals. In any case, I had no problem eating the giant plate of spaghetti and finishing the bottle of chianti and half a salad from the previous night. Though I was somewhat inclined to drink a bit more, it was quiet in the hostel, and I realized I had time to watch a movie before going to sleep.

---

Bach Museum	8
Bratwurst	2.7
Eis	2.6
Museum of Fine Arts	10
Pig’s Ear	1.8
Total:	25.1 EUR (195.8 RMB) (USD 28.50)

Running Total: 6702.8 RMB (USD 975.66)
Daily Average: 446.85 RMB (USD 65.04)

Volume 2, Day 14

Now that I am finally beginning my European adventures and leaving the greater zone around Berlin, it is time to figure out how to get from city to city. The answer, if not immediately apparent from the title of this post, is Flixbus–a budget intercity bus (and now train) operator covering so, so many cities across Europe. I had booked my ticket to Leipzig a couple days in advance through their mobile app. I wasn’t particularly excited about using my credit card to buy tickets as I would rather pay cash whenever possible. The good news, however, is having just checked Wells Fargo, the bank did not sneak in any fees for foreign currency exchanges or what not.

My Flixbus was scheduled to leave from Berlin Wansee at 11:20 am. Though Flixbus covers many cities, not all the routes are daily. Potsdam, for example, has a direct bus to Leipzig only twice a week. Wansee is basically the first train stop towards Berlin from Potsdam, and the Flixbus stop was just across the street from the train station. So, again, it wasn’t a huge inconvenience. Since I would have to pay to get to Potsdam station from my residence in Sansouci, it was the same price to go the extra stop. Or, so I assumed. I ended up buying my train ticket in a rush as the once an hour train was rapidly approaching, so I still feel like I haven’t grasped the German train ticketing system.

My Couchsurfing host warned me that when Flixbus says to be at the stop 15 minutes before the departure time, they really mean it. As in, the bus will leave without you and is within its rights to do so. The idea that a bus would leave 10 minutes prior to the departure time is basically inconceivable to me, though I can understand the logic of wanting the passengers to be early so that they have time to board without delaying the bus. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to take any chances, so instead of catching the train which would have gotten me to the Flixbus stop exactly 15 minutes early (barring any delays on the tracks), I took the earlier one and spent a full hour hanging out on the little hilltop park between the highway and the titular lake.

Of course, the bus didn’t arrive until 11:20am. Actually, two buses arrived at the exact same time, and I nearly went to the wrong one. After the driver scanned my digital ticket and cleared space underneath for me to put my luggage, I clambered aboard and searched for an open seat. The bus was basically full and it was incredibly hot, parked in the sun with the A/C off. What I didn’t hear from the outside was the announcement that it would be sitting there for a while, and as I was looking for a seat, passenger after passenger pushed their way past me to exit the bus for a smoke. We sat there a full thirty minutes before we took off. WTF. I would have been fine.

The bus had some nice perks like wifi and power outlets, so I’ll definitely be riding it again. I napped a bit on the bus and noticed that the driver was a little insane, but no more so than the average Chinese bus driver. It didn’t help that the highways we traveled had tons of slow moving trucks.

Shortly after 2pm, we pulled into a major bus depot adjacent to Leipzig Hauptbanhof. I walked around the front of the train station to reach the hostel on the other side. Though it was a short walk, I am getting a little worried about my luggage situation. Having ruined the two wheels of my pink, hard sided suitcase (which I bought in 2013) in Japan, I threw it out in Beijing and switched to the other, slightly larger suitcase I have. I got that suitcase from Alex after spending 3 months in Taiwan where my previous big suitcase had not only bit the dust, but the cheapo replacement suitcase I bought in Taiwan also pretty much disintegrated. A generous application of duct tape kept it together until I reached Shanghai, and at Alex’s urging I accepted this large hand-me-down suitcase. He gave it to me because it was already somewhat broken. There is some issue with the wheels, where they sometimes try to stop spinning. It served fine to get me back to Beijing and move house across Beijing a couple of times, but I forgot about the wheel issue when I packed up to come to Europe. One of the wheels is visibly disintegrating, so I may soon be forced to exercise the creativity that got me through Japan.

I was able to check right in to the hostel, which added a city tax of one Euro a night to my bill, but graciously spared me the linen fee. I’m still scratching my head over how this is a thing, but at this point I know it is a fairly common thing. There is a decent sized dining room, a couple couches, and a fully stocked kitchen. The 8-person dorm room is also spacious and again improbably equipped with a table and set of chairs. I’m quite happy with the hostel, especially as I sat down to do some work on my laptop, I noticed that there was free coffee sitting out, leftover from breakfast. The adjacent train station also hosts a mall with an Aldi, so I’m pretty much all set for a few days to be as cheap or as healthy as I am inclined.

It was a good thing I decided to be “lazy” and just do some studying/writing in the afternoon because I looked up once to find a sudden downpour catching literally everyone off guard. No one in the street had had the foresight to carry an umbrella. Yet, an hour later, the sun was back out and all but a few puddles had evaporated under its bright UV stare. I decided that I should see some of the city, one way or another, and changed into running shoes to jog a loop around the old town. It was hot.

Before showering, I decided to make a run to the supermarket to get some stuff to cook dinner: spaghetti, a jar of sauce, and a package of shredded grana padano. I showered quickly and made my dinner. While waiting for my water to boil, an old man slipped into the kitchen to make his dinner as well. After a delicate dance of pantomime to share the small kitchen, we ended up eating at the same table and I learned he was from France and didn’t speak a word of English or German. I also found the limitations of my French, which is also basically nothing.

I spent a while chatting with a kid (19 yo) from Texas who was staying in the bunk above mine. He wasn’t happy with either the US or his college, but I advised him to save up as much money as he could, earn the degree, then take a gap year and travel. He wasn’t exactly backpacking Europe, instead spending a month with a German friend in a nearby town. He just popped over to Leipzig for a day to get a break from the small town.

And speaking of kids, there was of course a largish school group with their chaperones staying there. They came in with a huge stack of pizza boxes, dropping them in the kitchen then disappearing for a long while. While I was chatting with the Texas kid, I saw the kids slowly set the table, but they hadn’t even begun to eat when I went upstairs to go to bed. What’s impressive, however, is that when I poked my head into the kitchen to see what was taking so long, I saw that the middle aged women chaperones were making full use of the kitchen–baking bread and frying up sausages and schnitzel. I need to figure out how to get a home cooked German meal.

---

Train ticket	3.1
Flixbus	8.12 EUR (9.13 USD)
Hostel (3 nights)	318 RMB
City tax (3 nights)	3
Salad, yogurt, cookies	2.93
Dinner and AldiTalk topup	12.09
Total:	546 RMB (USD 79.50)

Running Total: 6507 RMB (USD 947.18)
Daily Average: 464.8 RMB (USD 67.65)

This is the first time the daily average has ticked up. I still hope I can get it close to 50 USD a day.

Volume 2, Day 13

As far as I am concerned, Potsdam is just the name of some conference involving FDR, Churchill, and Stalin. However, my visit to Schloss Charlottenburg included so many references to the palaces in Potsdam (including bringing in furniture and works of art to replace those damaged or lost during the war), that I now understand Potsdam to be sort of the Versailles to Berlin’s Paris. So, obviously, the palaces needed to be on the top of my to-do list. Me being me, I didn’t actually do too much research, other than skimming down the list of sites in the Lonely Planet and making a point to avoid Monday when the palaces would be closed.

I took my time getting out the door in the morning, enjoying an abundance of coffee and checking off the standard items from the daily to-do list. Around 10 am, I headed out the door for the day having no key to return and walked the 10 minutes or so towards the New Palace on the west end of the Sansouci Park area. As I walked up to the tourist information building to buy a combo ticket and figure out exactly which buildings were included in it, I was somewhat surprised to find it closed. For some reason, which I think was mainly to foil my plans, the New Palace is closed on Tuesdays while the other buildings are closed on Mondays.

That fact put a real wrench in the works. I considered my options as I walked about, taking copious photos of the building and gardens. The other tourist information center was on the other side of the grounds, some 2km away. Rather than head straight there, I decided to take a zigzagging, scenic route. The first paid building I came to–the Chinese pavilion–was a real monstrosity and clearly not worth the 3 euro independent ticket price. The fact of the matter is, the only way to justify an 18 euro combo ticket is to include two major palaces (each priced at 12 euros), and treat the minor buildings as bonuses.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @danwu248 on Jun 18, 2019 at 10:55pm PDT

By the time I reached the ticket counter at Sansouci Palace, I was 95% convinced that touring the insides of the palaces wouldn’t be worth it. The fact that even on a Tuesday, one needs a reservation to enter said palace and the soonest reservation was 2 hours away completely convinced me to skip the palaces on this trip. I can convince myself I’ll come back some day on a Wednesday to see the palaces. To be completely honest, I got a little “palaced” out in Charlottenburg and wasn’t really ready to be overwhelmed by Rococo (or have my world Roc-ed, if you will).

I headed north to get a closer look at some ruins in the park, only to find the path closed due to “risk of falling tree branches.” Thwarted once again, I retraced my steps and visited a few of the other minor sites in the grounds. All in all, the park is nice to walk around, and there is no shortage of statues and fountains to entertain one’s yearnings for art.

Since the palaces were off the itinerary, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I wandered over to a church and got some good news through a sign advertising a organ performance at 3 pm. That gave me something to aim for, and in the meantime, I wandered into the old town.

The old town, which is not really such an old town having been mostly destroyed in the war and not really rebuilt until after the GDR was out, is a very pleasant stretch of cobblestone streets lined with shops and cafes. At the near (western end) lies the Brandenburg Gate, which looks nothing like the famous namesake in Berlin. A cathedral marks the other end of the main stretch, while the “Dutch quarter” occupies the space north of the cathedral.

Walking up to the plaza with the Brandenburg Gate and another fountain, I stopped to read an information sign. A middle aged German man came up to ask me directions. I didn’t fully understand him, but was able to figure out that he was asking if the street I had just come from led to the Sansouci Park. I answered as best as I could in German, while his wife called to him after finding the street sign pointing in that direction. Afterwards, I walked around the fountain to take some photos of the gate and noticed that nearly everyone sitting around the fountain or walking on the plaza had an ice cream in their hands. I was intrigued and looked around to see where they were all coming from. There was a large eiscafe on the corner and it had been a couple days since my last ice cream so I two scoops.

Wandering down the main street after my ice cream lunch, I passed plenty of little restaurants and cafes that would have made a nice, cheap lunch as well. But, I wanted to hold off for dinner. I wandered all over. The ambience of the old town is exactly what one imagines Europe to be. It was sunny, warm and so, so quaint. Of course, like everywhere else, the public restrooms require money. I’ve become something of a camel in my days so far because I refuse to pay for a toilet. Honestly, the city should pay me not to urinate on the street. I didn’t really need to go, but even since the park, I had been keeping my eyes open. I was honestly surprised that the bathroom for the palace (obviously not in the palace, but next to it) had a fee. Neither the Starbucks nor McDonald’s, I passed appeared to have restrooms.

After crisscrossing around old town for a long while, I cut south to find the massive St Nikolaikirche. I considered going up to the top of the dome for a view of the city, but I have strong reservations about giving any money to the church. There is also my contrarian logic about paying for the privilege of climbing stairs not making any sense. On the southern end of that plaza, was an art museum that I would consider paying for. However, they just were closed for two days to change exhibitions. I really can’t get a break. I headed a little further south to the river that bisects Potsdam. It is a little unclear as to whether it is a river or a series of interconnected lakes, but in any case, there is a small island in the river (Friendship Island). I crossed a bridge over to the island and found a restroom on the backside of a cafe.

I wandered about the gardens for a bit looking for a shady spot to sit and rest awhile, but couldn’t find a place that suited me. So I kept walking, and crossed another bridge and headed to another green spot on the Google Maps. Other than the cluster of crowded cafes across from where tourists can board pleasure boats, the park wasn’t particularly great. I did find a bench in partial shade and lay down for a bit.

After my power nap, I headed back into the old town to find a supermarket to get a drink, which I finished on my way back to the church, arriving their exactly at three for the 30 minute organ performance. The organist stopped between pieces to introduce the works. I was not following his German, but his voice sounded just like an NPR announcer. After the concert wrapped up, I walked back through the park, passing through an entirely different section (technically a different park) and enjoying the Roman and Tuscan inspired villas. I killed some more time on bench studying German and wandered back to the apartment at around 5pm, when I knew A would be back from her classes. She was busy on homework, but I drank lots of water and did a bit of studying myself.

I was thinking about dinner, and after an hour, I left to go on a supermarket run. There was leftover rice, cheese, and salsa from the previous night so I was thinking nachos and fried rice. Though avocados seem to be regularly available, none of them were ripe enough to make a fresh guacamole, but I grabbed stuff to make a salad. I got back to the apartment and set to work prepping for dinner. M wouldn’t be back until 8pm, so I wanted to be ready to eat as soon as she arrived, but that didn’t stop me from cracking open a bag of tortilla chips first. Another roommate returned while I was busy in the kitchen. She came in with a ton of groceries and was also intent on cooking. She made a fresh pot of rice and sauteed some vegetables, but it took her a while. Her boyfriend arrived shortly after M returned and the five of us ate together.

The evening came to a close pretty much as soon as dinner was over.

---

Ice cream	3
Club Mate (beverage)	1.04
Groceries	7.43
Total:	11.47 EUR (89.5 RMB) (USD 13)

Running Total: 5961 RMB (USD 867.62)
Daily Average: 458.5 RMB (USD 66.74)

Volume 2, Day 12

I had been in Berlin for perhaps a little too long, at least from the viewpoint of seeing more of Europe than just Germany. The next stop on the itinerary would be Potsdam, which technically is doable as a day trip from Berlin, but that isn’t how I like to roll. Though I had been unable to get a couchsurfing spot in Berlin, I had one lined up in Potsdam. My host said she would be available from 3pm, so I had most of the day free to kill, which essentially means I hung around the hostel for a couple hours after checking out.

Eventually, I refreshed the directions on Google Maps and headed out the door. Fortunately, there was a S-bahn station just around the corner. Unfortunately, the first ticketing machine I found was also a cashless one. I moved down the platform to find another one, and in the meantime missed my train. I was able to plug a few coins into a machine for a stupid ticket and then started looking up again how to get to my destination. Because these interconnected systems have different frequencies of trains, it is surprisingly more complicated than just waiting for the next train and following the prescribed course. I ended up taking the ring line in the opposite direction around the northern stretch of Berlin and transfering at the West station for the S-bahn spur that terminated in Postdam Hauptbahnhof.

The ride went much faster than I expected, but as I was navigating the walkway above the platforms looking for how to transfer, I once again barely missed the train I needed. So, I ended up spending half an hour in the train station waiting for a train that would take me two stops. Though I could have made a lunch from any of the numerous shops in the station, I grabbed some candied peanuts from a vending machine and kept studying German. The train came on schedule and rather than a suburban commuter line, it was a real Deutsche Bahn train. I wasn’t completely certain as to whether my ABC area ticket covered the two stops (though my destination station was listed on the map). Have I mentioned this? Berlin (or greater Berlin) has this stupid zone system with complicated pricing for tickets and tons of rules that a ticket vending machine cannot adequately explain. I think generally a single ticket is valid within 2 hours in a single direction covering all forms of transport (S-bahn, U-bahn, tram, bus, regional trains) as long as they are within the zones. I guess it works well if you have a long commute in the morning, but for zipping around town as a tourist, the day pass would quickly pay for itself.

Anyways, as the DB train was pulling up to the Sansouci Park station, I saw a conductor working her way down the aisle from the corner of my eye. I didn’t exactly want to find out if my ticket was valid or not and the timing worked out just perfectly. Actually, despite all the delays, it was basically exactly 3pm as I dragged my luggage down what looked like a country lane. These were the western outskirts of Potsdam, with single story homes each surrounded by elaborate gardens. Above this semi-rural paradise, a single apartment building stood up like a monolith. This was the student housing where my host and her three roommates lived. I rang the door bell. No answer. A delivery guy came and went. I rang again. I swear I could some ringing. Still no answer. Uh-oh. I texted my host through the Couchsurfing house and prepared to retreat to a bench in the shade. She popped outside within a minute.

Luckily for me, the apartment was only up one flight of stairs. It was quite a spacious apartment. One not so big kitchen/living room, four decent sized bedrooms, and two bathrooms. Something of that size would have to cost 10 million RMB in Beijing. R was done with her studies for the day–she is working on her Master’s thesis–and suggested we go over to a lake where we could swim. I loved the idea, changed to swim trunks, and packed up a go-bag. We had a bit of time before we needed to leave the house, so I made a quick cup of coffee. Afterwards, we walked back towards the train station to catch a bus to one or two stops before the main train station where we transferred to a tram. R helped me buy a day pass on the bus, which apparently costs the same as two one-ways, and I can only assume the bus pass covered the tram as well.

One of the other roommates met as when we got off the tram and we walked over to the lake together, passing through the neighborhood of rich people houses. The lake was quite crowded with swimmers and it was pointed out that on the other side of a clump of trees was the naked swimming area. A didn’t want to swim, so she was able to watch our stuff while we went in the water. The water may have been a bit cool, but it felt good on a hot day and the top layer was warm. Most impressive was the sandy bottom at the entrance way–no slimy rocks to squeamishly step on!

After swimming, we lay out in the sun talking about travel, studies, and generational differences. R considers herself the grandma of the apartment, which I guess would make me something of the great-grandpa. But, we were all united in our disdain for the group of possible 16 year old kids blasting “terrible” German rap music while engaging in all kinds of delinquent behavior.

We hung out at the lake until about 7pm, and swung by an Aldi on the way to the tram to grab some things to make dinner. Of course, I was offering to cook and was able to source pretty much everything I needed for fajitas and salsa. There was even cilantro although it came in a planter (which I wonder why no one in China does that). Unfortunately, that store didn’t have regular tortilla chips. It was 8pm by the time we were back and I got to cooking right away. I started some loosely Spanish rice, refried (kidney) beans, and chopped away vigorously at the veggies. You could definitely tell they were still university students because none of the knives were sharp. Dinner was ready just after nine and not a moment too soon. My stomach had been growling the whole time.

We ate and talked and listened to classic rock (lots of Bowie). It was a wonderful experience and I hope to do it a lot more. We weren’t up too late. I still needed to shower the lake off of me, and the couch in the kitchen/dining room/living room was actually just a bed with a ton of pillows to turn it into a couch. I slept really well.

---

Breakfast, candy, water (after deposit return)	1.08
Metro ticket	3.4
Peanuts	0.8
Bus Pass	4.2
Aldi groceries	8.48
Total:	17.96 EUR (140 RMB) (USD 20.44)

Running Total:5871.5 RMB (USD 857)
Daily Average: 489.3 RMB (USD 71.42)