Bushaltestelle: Goezalle / Drakestraße

Getting from the airport to my apartment proved to be the far more interesting and confusing part of the arrival process. FUBis was kind enough to provide a staff member at the airport who would assist us in purchasing the correct type of monthly public transportation ticket and help get us going in the right direction, but it took my forever to find the location they indicated on the map of the aiport. It did not help that the Lagepläne in the airport do not have little dots that say "YOU ARE HERE", so you pretty much had to guess.

Luckily, I did manage to eventually find this person, whom I initially spoke to in English, for the sake of convenience. A few moments later I was at the bus ticket window, buying my gleitende Monatskarte, and being confronted with my second opportunity to (mis)understand German. In this case, I only needed to hear the cost in Euros, but even this still requried asking, "Wie bitte?" so that the man behind the window would repeat the figure. Numbers (Zahlen) have turned out to be a particular weak spot for me, and I have found that I often need to ask the person saying them to repeat, unless there's an electronic display on the cash register, that which they have just said. Of course, this is rather irritating. But I'm getting better.

Plus one monthly Bus, U-Bahn, and S-Bahn ticket, and minus 72 Euros later, I managed to board the correct bus along with (and thanks two) two other FUBis Studenten who had also just arrived. These were the first two people I met here, both from New York, both already graduated from college, and both smokers. But both quite nice.

We had to change busses at the Berliner Haupbahnhof, or main rail terminal, which is a massively impressive building constructed almost entirely with glass. There is a picture of this somewhere in one of my many facebook albums. It's almost a tourist deistination in and of itself, just because the building is so awesome. Contrast this to NY Penn Station. S. once twisted her ankle (or something) trying to avoid a group of tourists taking pictures of it. I recall much anger being expressed at these people taking pictures of something so ugly and uninteresting. This is not the case with the Hauptbahnhof.

We finally reached the Studentenheim, or "dormitory", after about an hour of bus travel. I should point out that the term dormitory is a little bit misleading, since German universities do not provide students on-campus housing. Instead, all students live in Student housing wherever they can find it. All student housing in Berlin, as far as I can tell, is managed by one central firm, the Studentenwerk Berlin. This organization is also responsible for university cafeterias (more on that later), meaning that you can use the same cafeteria card at any university dining hall. Quite convenient. I shall describe the Studentenheim and rental agreement process further in my next post.