We are about thirty minutes into my first rain here. There were some sprinkles earlier but now it is a good, real rain. It's also 4:30p and getting dark--daylight savings has the unfortunate side effect of making it completely dark by 5:30p. It is pretty ridiculous--as soon as it gets dark, a switch flips in my head that tells me not to do anything for the rest of the day.
Friday we are going to register for our new address, register Syd, and set up a bank account for me. We tried the bank thing today, but you can't get an account until you've registered, so...that's where we are for now.
Yesterday Shane had his class at the FU, so Syd and I were on our own. When Syd finally woke up and stretched around 11:30, we headed out for our walk. Mauerpark has a dog run (fenced in), so we went there so I wouldn't have to worry about chasing him through the streets alone. He first met two big dogs, including a German Shepherd who was very friendly. We then kept heading up the hill and he sprinted for this golden retriever looking dog whose owner was trying to get on the dog trick seesaw thing. The owner was a probably 12ish year old girl, and my German has survived enough to have basic dog conversation, and then asked where I was from and she said she spoke English, so we talked in Germish. She was super sweet. She learned English because her family moved to Scotland when she was 6 for a year, and every summer they go back to visit. We chatted and she was worried about her accent (which was excellent!) and then she said her dad spoke perfect English but that he got hit by a car and died two years ago. I managed to stutter out my condolences, and she was so matter of fact about it, even said that it's okay now, but damn. She was really fantastic. As always with the dog conversations, we never gave each other our names, only introduced the dogs. It's so funny.
Shane and I finally made the trip to Ikea. There are two in Berlin, and they are building a third, so that'll be one Ikea for every 1.1ish million people. Pretty impressive, really. Houston had one Ikea, Emeryville had one, Berlin has three. Take that, America!! Shane brought his massive backpack and we fit everything in that but the mattress pad and the clothes rack. Shane said Germans don't really hang clothes, so very few places have closets or armoires with a rod. We bought a cheap rack but didn't think of where we would actually put it, so it took a day to figure out...and we should have bought more clothes hangers...and another curtain rod. We got a curtain and a tension rod for the bedroom window (and that tension rod is amazing...I mean, go Ikea, for real), but guests staying in the living room will still have to contend with the daylight in all it's glory.
Tonight we are meeting some of Shane's friends to see a Christoph Schlingensief movie, which he is pretty sure has subtitles. Shane said it would be gory, but not? Or something. I hope it's not terribly gory, I'll have to hide. I am interested to see what food (if any) theatres have here. I have my fingers crossed for pretzels and cake.
