Saturday morning I woke up at around 8am, nearly 9am. The first person I saw was a really frantic Salah running around the apartment. When he saw me, Salah: I’m going to miss my flight! What can I do?Me: You can probably pay a little extra to get on the next flight. Which airport are you going to?Salah: Tegel. Is there a taxi that I can take? Will it be faster?Me: There are taxis at Wannsee.After this he rushed out the door. I hope he made the airplane. Especially if he took a taxi all the way from Wannsee. The taxi would’ve been really expensive. Probably about 50 Euros or so. I found out later that he’s flying to Paris and then back to Lebanon. It would be a real hassle to have to change the connecting flight too.
An hour later, the Polish guy (I can’t spell his name), left as well. He just has to take a train. After this, I went to the computer room to check my email and came back to find Shahab really worried. It turns out that his mom had helped him buy an ICE ticket to go from Berlin to Frankfurt (where his flight leaves to go to Canada) but had put her credit card as the ID. So for the ICE, you need to use either a credit card or Bahn card as an ID if you buy a ticket online. They compare the ID and your ticket on the train. I think it’s so that you can’t pass the ticket onto someone else to use. Anyway, his mom had not made a Bahn.de account so they can’t change the ID online. He’s really, really worried and wanted to buy another train ticket and get DB to refund the one that his mom had paid for. I told him not to worry and just go to the Hauptbahnhof and ask about it and that the last thing he should do is to worry about buying another ticket. Train tickets are always available. But he’s still worried sick. He came back late that night and told me the next morning that they couldn’t change it so he got another ticket and has to go through a long paper process to get a refund. I guess people don’t usually ask for refunds on a fully flexible ticket. I think he could’ve gotten them to change the ID. It’s just that he was so suck on just buying another train ticket. What he really should’ve done is buy a plane ticket on German Wings. I mean, a full price train ticket to Frankfurt is like 100 Euros. Crazy, yeah? So lesson learned: Don’t panic. Always make an account.
I had planned to go souvenir hunting this weekend and was walking through the parking lot to catch the bus when I saw Jingwen walking into the parking lot. Very surprised, I called out to her because she had her head down. Turns out that she had missed her flight and had to reschedule for Sunday night. First of all she misread the bus schedule and caught a bus that left 10 minutes later than what she had planned. And then she found out that on weekends, the S-Bahn doesn’t go to the Shonefeld airport. She had to take a U-Bahn and an airport shuttle or something complicated like that. And on top of that, EasyJet closes check-in 40 minutes early instead of 30 minutes. So even though she wasn’t checking in any luggage, she still couldn’t make it to her flight. The next flight was Sunday evening. Since her original flight was supposed to be Saturday morning, that’s nearly 2 days less. She has to pay 50 Euros to change her flight and 100 Euros more if she wanted to change her return flight. The lady at the counter said that she could check the other airlines but they open at 10am; it was 8am. So after thinking about it for a while, she decided to change only her flight to Paris and came back to Wannsee.
However, luckily for her, some idiot tried to jam a whole folder down the key drop at the Housing Office’s key drop. So I couldn’t put Salah’s key down the box. I didn’t think it was safe just leaving where anyone can take it so I had planned to drop it off on Monday. So Saturday night she stayed in Salah’s room instead of on the couch in my room.
Okay, so the misfortunes end here, more or less. Jingwen and I went out to Berlin together. She wanted to go to Charlottenburg but I was pretty tired of seeing gardens and palaces at this point. I think she was too but she just wanted to be able to say that she had been there. I took us to the flea market at Tiergarten. Jingwen’s not very interested in flea markets plus her feet weren’t up to walking too much, so after walking through one aisle, she sat on a bench and waited for me. I really like flea markets and I found one stand that was selling a huge box of stamps for 5 Euros. I was so shocked at the amount of stamps in the box that I didn’t know what to make of it at first. All the stamps are in really good condition too. So after thinking about it for a while, I got the stamps. Great choice. I increased my collection of East European stamps by like 100 fold. Probably more.
After this we went to the Arkaden mall in Potsdamer Platz to eat at the ice cream place. Jingwen treated me to ice cream as a thank you for letting her leave her stuff in my room and such. We both got similar things. Even though they were on the small side compared to the rest of the menu, we both got full from it. I nearly didn’t finish. It was so amazing.
We sat in the middle of the mall and found free wireless with my computer. We both checked email and then decided to go to Alexanderplatz since Jingwen had never been there. After walking around there for a while, we wanted to take the tram all the way to Schloss Strasse since we had never been on the tram before. But after failing to find the right tram, we just go on one that took us back to Alexanderplatz. There we took the S-Bahn to Rathaus Steglitz and walked to the mall on Schloss Strasse.
This mall is pretty big and we walked around it for about 3 hours. I got a tank top and bag while Jingwen got a shirt, flip flops, bag, and probably some other stuff. She really likes shopping. I wanted to get souvenirs but apparently they don’t have any souvenir shops there. If they did, the stuff would’ve been cheaper than at the tourist attractions, which is why I wanted to check there.
So after not finding souvenirs, we went back to the dorm and cooked dinner. I packed a little bit. I have a lot of stuff but I think I will be able to manage. Most of the stuff that are still in the dorm I will not bring with me – oil, salt, laundry detergent, etc.
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