So I ended the last post (as far as I remember) saying that the next post would be in London. Well when I missed my flight by five minutes due to a lost mitfahrgelegenheit (the longest word for carpool ever), I thought there was no use writing until I got to London... which I was still determined to do. So I got another mitfahrgelegenheit to Köln and was going to catch another one on sunday afternoon to London. To be fair, I devised this plan after fifty bajillion other ones werent going to work and it was 4 am after spending the night sleepless and kind of depressed in the Berlin airport. Im finally back in Berlin after the person who was supposed to take me from Köln to London had a family emergency but there have been so many moments in the past week when I've had to remind myself what a wonderful wonderful problem this is.
The first was actually just seven or so hours after I missed my flight. I was in the lobby of the airport just leeching wifi and waiting when a woman sat down next to me crying. She was about 55 but in great shape and dressed to the nines and being comforted by a young twenty something. The way they acted it was pretty obvious that she was the most fantastic cougar ever. So when he went to the ticket counter to sort things out and left her, distraught, next to me holding a Brazilian passport, I thought I would make her feel better by google translating "I hope things work out with your tickets" into Portuguese. Turns out she lives in Florida. She is Greek but was raised in Brazil and after being shipped to the US for swimming, decided to stay and was a national level swimmer so we had loads to talk about. It was also a nice glimpse into my future as a cougar. She hadnt been back to visit her friends in Athens in 17 years and was bringing her boy to meet them all (read:s show off). Apparently her friends were driving all night to meet them but they had lost their credit card. As a result they couldnt buy the tickets ahead of time and by the time they got to the airport there was only one ticket left on the flight to Greece. They didnt know if there were other flights or how to pay for them because they only had US dollars. So I found them a flight for her boyfriend and she left on the original flight. I also bought him the plane ticket and he would pay me in cash. But the woman told me the wrong last name (oooops) and to change it I had to cancel the ticket and repurchase it which caused my bank to think my account was compromised and freeze it. So with transaction fees that left me $20 poorer all told and with a frozen bank account and no tickets to London OR Athens but I think Breno made it eventually since at least he had the flight information and knew that there were tickets available. Fingers crossed.
The second was when I was in Köln and got to watch the Olympic opening ceremony in a sports bar and convinced a bunch of other patrons to play the opening ceremony drinking game with me. Only instead of drinking every time NBC had ridiculous commentary we drank every time the coverage of a country's team was completely dropped to show inane coverage of the German team. They skipped over 20 countries to show wide angle shots of those horrible pastel ski jackets. Not even an interview or commentary on the athletes... just views of the team from really far away. I actually would have loved to hear "And this is what the olympics is really all about" or a dream team reference at that point.
Finally, this morning when I grumbled my way out of bed to go to work with my CS host. Did I mention that he works for the German Parliament? So he showed me around the parliament and all of the cool Reichstag dome\ roof tour thing for free and then showed me all of the back room VIP areas. Which was pretty darn cool. At that point I wasnt so disappointed that I missed London. I mean don't get me wrong... I was REALLY excited to go to the Olympics but having to spend a week bumming around Germany with no responsibilities is not a bad runner up is it? And plus.... there's always Brazil in 2016 (and I AM going to make it)!
Pictures and other fun anecdotes to come soon. All my love from Berlin....
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