End of a very looonngg day one

On my way to Berlin, I took two different flights with a layover at the JFK airport in New York. For the most part nothing exciting or out of the ordinary happened. Before I got my boarding pass, I knew my flight from JFK to Tegel International in Berlin was delayed an hour, which I didn't mind because it meant that I had more time to figure out where I was supposed to be going. I arrived at JFK with no problem and my confidence boosted by Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love," and set about finding my next destination with determination. Originally I was supposed to switch terminals altogether which meant me having to find transportation between terminal 3 and terminal 4 because they don't connect. Since I now had over an hour to find where I needed to be, I had visions of getting to the gate early, relaxing, calling my friends who live in New York, and getting a quick bite to eat. I asked a security guard how to get to terminal 4 and he directed me to the nearest Airtram. Following his directions, I wandered along slightly alarmed because it seemed that I would have to leave the actual building. Once, while traveling to St. Maarten with my parents for spring break, we got locked out of the Newark airport and ended up spending the night with the homeless because the airport was closed and there was no way of getting back in until later that morning. So, with the worry of walking out of the airport and not being able to get back in, I asked another security guard where to go, just to confirm, and she pointed me in the same direction that the first one did. So, I left the building, went across the street, and down an elevator to the Airtram.
I arrived at terminal four shortly and was so proud of myself for making it, when I realized that my terminal might not be the same at all due to my flight being delayed. I looked at my boarding pass, but instead of a gate number is read "see airport monitors." I found a bank of TVs with the list of arrivals and departures and sat there for a bit searching for a flight whose destination was Berlin. I asked yet another security guard where I should go and she directed me to a gate, the only problem was that somewhere along the way I must have left the secured area because I had to go through security yet again. On top of that the line was extremely long! With the hopes of finally finding where I needed to be, and proud of myself that I wasn't freaking out or giving up, I put all of my stuff on the conveyor yet again, disappointed that I had to get rid of my three dollar bottle of water I bought in the Chicago airport. Once through security, I found a delta airlines desk and the lady there directed me to a gate that was nearby. I went to the designated gate only to find that it was going to London and not Berlin. By this time it was a couple of minutes past 7 o'clock, I hadn't eaten yet, and my hopes of relaxing were all but diminished. Then, after asking again, I found out that my hour of wandering was basically pointless because the terminal I needed to be in was the one that I originally landed in, and on top of that there was a shuttle that took delta passengers back and forth from each terminal so they didn't have to keep going through security. After getting where I needed to be, I hurriedly got something to eat, found my gate and was there for about five minutes before we started boarding.
Skip forward to me sitting in my seat on the plane next to a man of very few words and it is now almost 10 o'clock at night when the flight was supposed to take off at 7:55. What happened? First they needed to put gas in the plane, then there was a problem with the mechanics, then the weather was bad so there was a backup on the runway. The plane and I had been sitting in the exact same spot for two hours, and I was already bored. As for sleeping, it is neither fun nor easy on a plane to say the least.
Once it was almost time to land I will admit that I did freak out a little bit. I calmed myself down by making a list of everything I needed to do once I landed, "luggage, money, taxi."
When we landed, I got my fat luggage (it was 20 pounds over the limit...) and looked for a currency exchange place. Afterwards I followed an English speaking family to a bank of taxis. My German was a little rusty and a I was a little self-conscious in speaking it, so I address a taxi driver in English as he lifted my luggage into his trunk and exclaims, "What do you have in here?! A goat?!" Right then I knew that everything was going to be okay.
My taxi driver turned out to be really cool and we chatted as he drove me along to my hotel. We started out speaking in English but then transitioned into to German, which could not have been a better way for me to ease into Germany than if I had planned it myself.
When we got to the hotel, he unloaded "my goat" and I had hoped that I could go to my room, shower, and take a nap, only to find out that it is not meant to be when the guy at the front desk told me my room wouldn't be ready until three. It is now 12 in the afternoon, and my conference starts at 2:20. What to do for an hour? Luckily I knew the area a bit, because of my stay in Berlin two years ago, so I find an atm in Potsdamer Platz and hit the motherload when I remembered that a mall was nearby. The time ended up going by pretty quickly, as it usually does when I find myself in a clothing or book store, and I made my way back to the hotel meeting up with a few fellow CDSers on the way back.