Willkommen in Deutschland

After 24 hours of travel (from Houston to Miami to Berlin to Saarbrücken), I have reached my final destination. My flight to Berlin and Saarbrücken were both delayed due to some type of plane repairs. By the time I reached Berlin and made it through customs, my next flight had already left so AirBerlin rebooked me on a flight several hours later with LuxAir. When I landed in Saarbrücken, the first thing I saw out the window was a tractor chugging along the runway. I started to wonder what I had signed up for--did I just travel 6,277 miles to arrive in a German version of Sealy? I couldn't find my suitcase in the baggage claim, so I had to fill out a missing luggage report. When the woman helping me asked me to describe my bag I told her it was black and really heavy. "How much does it weigh?" she asked. "Fifty-eight pounds," I replied. Wide-eyed she said, "Fifty-eight! Five, eight?" She even wrote it down and showed me the number because she couldn't believe it could possibly be right.

Afterwards, I took the bus into town and found the street where my new flat is located. Since I had no key, I had to wait for one of my flatmates to come home, which gave me some time to people watch. My flatmates are really sweet-- two are from France & one is German. They showed me the main square in the city and we stopped and talked over coffee before going to Karstadt, a huge store that sells just about everything you could need. A taxi came with my luggage at 19:00 and I hauled all 58lbs of it up 54 steps. The flat is located above two restaurants in an old building that is really close to the center of the city. My room has 2 large windows from which I can see lots of rooftops, pidgeons, and 4 church steeples. The hourly bells remind me of TCU.

the windows

The view from my room

A sweet note that was on my door when I arrived :)

Though I was exhausted on my first night, I decided to go out with Erika and Cécile. We went to a disko which ironically enough was hosting a "USA College Spring Break" party. I couldn't stop laughing when we walked into a room that was covered in American flags. It looked like a scene from a tacky MTV show.

 

I've spent the last 2 days getting settled into my room and acquainted with the city. I have a lot to learn before I can stop feeling like a tourist-- starting with German. I have forgotten so many basic words of the language, but I hope I will remember many of them with time. Tomorrow is my first day on the new job and I have so much to do to get ready. Wish me luck!