Today has been the longest day ever!I woke up this morning at 5:30am Pacific Time, got on a bus to the Airport at 8 am, then waited around at my favorite airport (PDX) for three hours until our flight left at 1:25pm. Then there was the long, long flight, during which I hardly slept I was so excited. In fact, I've been so excited that I've barely slept the past 3 nights. Of course I was the one person in our group to sit next to a totally random person who happened to be afraid of flying and spoke broken english and a language I had no hope of recognizing. Finally we flew into Amsterdam and I have to try to relate how beautiful it was. The sky was black and dotted with stars. The ocean was just a touch blacker than the sky, the horizon almost indistinguishable except that the stars stopped. Then as we got closer to land, stars started to appear in the ocean too. Boats light's that mirrored the sky. In the distance, the light of the coastal cities lit up the clouds of a storm ahead and behind the storm the sky began to lighten as the sun rose lazily. As our plane circled in descent, the first rays of morning light struck the wing just so that I could see the smooth column of air traveling over wings like a clear streamer. Below the lit streets curved around darkness that revealed itself as water as the sun struck it and we landed in Amsterdam. After going through customs (which took forever due to the line) we made our connecting flight to Berlin and arrived around 11am local time. That is 2am Pacific Time. We settled into our hotel, Air in Berlin, which is a strange mix of old and new, like much of the city I've seen already. Buildings are crammed together and no two near each other look alike. A completley modern style building made of steel and glass will be crammed against and almost growing out of the centuries-old stone building next to it. An apartment building that looks ancient on bottom sees to get newer with each floor. The hotel we are staying in seems to be made of at least three separate buildings. You can see the pics of our triple room. I can't imagine what the boy's quad looks like. I'm sure I will get more pics of the hotel as I will be here a week. After a nap, we met to walk around the city and find some food, only to find that it was pouring down rain. Since we were tired anyway, we decided to just eat next door at the Thai-food restaurant. It was actually very good and they served plenty of beer! It is Germany after all. I had a Beliner Weisse, which is a sour beer that they add flavored syrup to. Not like maple syrup, more like grenedine. I had the green syrup and that's honestly all I could taste. Not very good in my opinion. After our meal (around 3 local time) we decided to walk around the neighborhood to see what was there. We are just a block from Wittenbergplatz which has a lot of shopping. We stopped and got some Gluhwein (glue-vine) which is a hot-mulled-spiced wine. It was very rich, not exactly what I expected and very very hot! It wasn't long though before we trekked back to the hotel and passed out from exhaustion. It was a very full day.
Whew! You made it! :)
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