I live in an internet cafe.

So today is my fourth day here searching for an apartment or "Wohngemeinschaft" (WG) in an internet cafe. I feel as if Alex, Zilai, and I are just living here. I think we stay here for about 4 hours or more per day, emailing, calling, and running around the city to see various places. I am starting to get accustomed to the keyboard here (like remembering the y and z are switched on it from the U.S.), but even so, I still make some mistakes.

The weather is still basically cloudy. I don't understand it, but it seems like Berlin really does have worse weather than London. Didn't think it possible.

One other observation I've made is that nobody here jay walks, as in, everywhere is clear, but the Germans wait until the pedestrian signal goes green. I've jaywalked (I'm from the NYC area, what do you want!) and gotten heads shaken at me. I guess everyone is not nearly in as big of a rush as they are back home, but even so, it will take some time to get used to.

Today is actually a national holiday here: Der Tag der Einheit Deutschlands. 15 years ago today the two Germanys were reunited into one nation. I heard from our host that there might be stuff going on by the Brandenburg Gate, such as beer drinking (surprise, surprise) and eating (wurst, perhaps?). I think we may try to go over there later after some appointments.

Other than that, there really isn't so much to say. The 4 places I saw yesterday were really nice and the people are friendly. Two of those places spoke in English with me (well, actually, one of them we spoke in English, German, and Spanish in one period of time!), and the others were completely in German. It is still a process, but I am sure it will sink in in a few weeks.

The car with the Midd sticker still hasn't seen our note yet. It's been sitting there since...Friday?

Pictures!

I'm sitting in a Starbucks paying 8€ an hour because Alex and I thought we could get free wireless here. But no, you have to put in a credit card number...but we figured, eh, we trekked here with our computers, might as well just do it. And now I can post pictures because they're on my computer, while normally I would be in an internet cafe.

The search for an apartment is only going ok...Alex is having better luck with getting appointments. But it's only the second day we've been searching. I'll just keep pressing on, I suppose. It still scares me though because I don't want to end up in some crappy neighborhood...maybe I'll just end up in an apartment by myself. We'll see.

Im posting pictures from the past few days, including the car with the Middlebury sticker on it.