Getting to Berlin...

This picture is Vivvi's - I stole it!

After the night of craziness getting to Budapest, I was thankful for the (seemingly) easy journey to the airport.  Little did I know that actually arriving in Germany was going to be a lot more difficult than I had originally predicted.  Vivvi and I enjoyed a nice lunch at Pizza Hut with Jake before taking off on our new adventure.  I was excited to go- but frustrated that I didn’t have a guide book for Germany.  I love the “DK” books – though they are expensive, and I like the commentary of the Lonely Planet books – so either of them would have been just fine.  I had been to at least three different book stores looking for a guide book – to no avail.  Call me dorky, but I always like to read up about where we are going.  I like to know what I’m looking at and I enjoy learning about the different buildings and monuments that are in the various cities that I visit.  So – I tried one last time -during lunch- to find a Germany guide book – again with no result.  I did find a nice little paperback about Tata – all in Hungarian- but with nice pictures.  It was only 400 ft. ($2).  What a deal!

After lunch, we said a quick goodbye to the cat – wished Jake and Ellen luck with her – and set off for the airport.  We were traveling by metro on a fairly busy Saturday work day – cultural sidenote: there are about 4 or 5 Saturday “work days” where many people in the country have work scheduled to make up for a lost day of work during the holiday.  We have school on these days – but I had already planned my trip to Germany, so I was off the hook.  The train we were about to board was packed full, except the short segment at the very end of the car.  I told Vivvi – “go to the left, go to the left” – to the empty part of the car - and as we did, we realized exactly why that part of the car was empty.  There was a homeless man in the corner of the car, who might have been sleeping – at any rate, he put off the most rancid smell I had encountered in a long time.  For a girl who got teased about living near the manure smell of the U of M, who worked in the produce department with a drain full of sludge, who has run marathons having forgotten to put deodorant on, who smelled and then ate durian graduation cake – I have smelled some bad things.  This smell, however, was by far the worst.  He managed to clear out an entire section of the metro during the most busy time of the day.  After charging into the train and making the left turn as directed by me, we decided again – and squished in to sit down next to two young people about 10 feet away from the homeless man, but well within the radius of the smell.  As we sat there – Vivvi and looked at each other not knowing whether to cry or laugh.  We watched as new people boarded the train at each stop, observing the inevitable squinching of the face as the newcomers realized the dire situation that we were in.  To our surprise, after about 3 minutes, the teenage boy next to Vivvi, out of nowhere, pulled a functioning gas mask out of his bag.  I don’t know why a random Hungarian is traveling the metro with a gas mask- nor did we ask, but I definitely was jealous.  Many people around us giggled and sighed with envy at his possession.  At each stop, some of the people from our car defected to a nearby car- despite them all being packed – for a little fresh air.  It only took two or three stops for the metro police to be called and for him to be escorted off the train. 

I just spoke to my mom on the phone, and she seems to think that I exaggerate things a bit, so she looked at Vivvi's website (which is where I got the picture) and realized that the smell truly was as bad as I (and Vivvi) described it.  Thanks for the confidence mom, I don't exaggerate anything on here!