It's Hard to Get Home When You Don't Know Where You Live

The following day (25/8) a group of us - Tall, Curly, Mo, J, Br, and BB - went to Alexanderplatz to get cell phones. I really didn't realize how incredibly stressful trying to get a cell phone (and especially internet, but that comes later) would be. I mean, think about it, it's stressful enough trying to make sure you're not getting screwed over on a phone plan in a country where you actually speak the language. Now try doing it somewhere where the person helping you only speaks broken English, and for some reason refuses to go into any details because apparently everyone in this country knows how prepaid phones work. Anyway, we managed to get our phones and headed to an internet cafe to use the internet to start them up. And of course, all the installation things were in German. Fortunately Br is pretty good at German and was able to figure it out. I just waited until he could show me how it worked, and it only took about 10 minutes (unlike the goddamn internet...)

After we were all set up, we strolled around Alexanderplatz, which is absolutely beautiful. It's where the cathedral is, as well as museum island (there are at least 30 museums on this little island in the middle of the city).

The cathedral at Alexanderplatz

Mo and I decided that we were exhausted from the long morning of stressful phone shopping, so we broke off from the group, who were going to check out a museum, and headed home. Here's where things get interesting. We had both just been following the group, but I thought I could get us home. Turns out I was completely wrong. We knew we had to take a train back to Freidrichstrasse, and that was easy - it was only one stop. But then we couldn't figure out what train to take from there. Neither of us had any idea what the name of our stop was. We knew we came in on an S-bahn, just not sure which one. 

We got on one train, realized we didn't recognize the area, hopped off, went back to Freidrichstrasse, and hopped on one that sounded right. Turns out it was. But we didn't recognize the area, so we got off and headed back to Friedrichstrasse. So ensued a good hour and a half of trainhopping. Eventually, we were both getting cranky and irritated (we were still super jetlagged), so we found a train station with an info center, and managed to communicate via broken English and German that we needed to get home, knew we lived on Celciusstrasse, but had no idea what stop that was. The woman told us we wanted to head back to Freidrichstrasse (we'd been there at least 10 times that day changing trains), and take the S25 to Osdorferstrasse. We finally made it home! And when we got there, we realized the group of people we'd left earlier were on the exact same train. That was embarrassing. But now, both Mo and I are wicked good at navigating the S-bahn and U-bahn, so hopefully we won't get lost again!

Later that night, I was exhausted from the day and didn't feel like going out, but Tall and Curly came to my room and demanded that I come to Karaoke with them. So I did. And it was so much fun. I was so happy I went. I think it's going to be our new thing to do on Wednesday nights. The only issue is that the bar allows smoking inside, and all the workers were smoking, so when I got home my clothes just reeked of cigarettes... not sexy. The guy hosting the Karaoke was hilarious. He sang country music with a perfect country accent, and when he wasn't singing, sat behind his equipment smoking like a chimney. I don't think I ever saw him without either a cigarette or a microphone in his hand.