My arrival in Tuebingen

In order to go abroad this summer, I applied to a program called CDS, through the German department at my school, which helped me find an internship with the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut in Tubingen. CDS held a conference in Berlin for the summer 2010 participants, which was why I flew into Berlin and was there for a couple of days. The conference was pretty fun. It certainly helped with the transition into the German culture and I got to meet a lot of other American students taking part in the program. I absolutely love Berlin, but I don't think I could ever see myself actually living there. It is a fun place to visit but not really to live. It is extremely Americanized. I would say that Berlin is probably the most Americanized city in Germany probably due to its reconstruction after the war. But, whenever I would see a McDonald's or a Dunkin Donuts I would look at it, cringe, and think "noo! don't ruin German culture!!"
The train ride from Berlin to Tubingen was certainly interesting. I felt like a chicken running around with its head cut off half the time. I wasn't really sure how to use the Deutsche Bahn, but luckily I chose a route that only required one transition. My journey started out at the subway station nearby my hotel, when I realized just how heavy my luggage was. When I put it on the scale at the airport and it read 70 pounds, I didn't think much of it, but when I had to lug it down multiple staircases it is heeaavyy!
After I managed to make my way to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, I wandered around the station for a little bit and got something to eat, when I saw a sign that read "Gepaeck Center" (Luggage Center). Now, one thing that had been bothering me was that usually in the U.S. there is always someplace that you have to take your luggage. You usually give it to someone who puts in on the train, plane, or bus that you are riding on for you. When I saw "Gepaeck Center," I thought, for some reason, that I had to check my luggage so they could put it on my train. I went over to the little desk to check out what it was, because I wasn't 100 percent sure that that was its purpose, and ended up giving the guy at the desk my bag. He then handed me a ticket saying something like, "take this ticket, get it stamped, pay, then give it back to the guy over there." That was when I knew that the "Gepaeck Center" was not for checking your luggage, but it was instead a place that you could just leave your luggage for a little while. I wandered around the station a little bit more because I didn't want to look like a complete idiot coming back to get my luggage two minutes later. A couple minutes before my train was scheduled to arrive, I retrieved my heavy luggage and went to go wait at the terminal
When I bought my tickets for the train, I had some troubles figuring out where and how to buy them. Because of this, I was still not completely sure that I did it right. The first time I tried to buy tickets I somehow ended up reserving a spot on a train instead of actually buying tickets, and the second time I bought tickets but didn't reserve a spot. This turned out to be a pretty big mistake.
Once I got on the train, I waited for people to start settling down before choosing an open spot. I figured that if nobody was sitting there, this meant that the place was open and I could sit there for the duration of the train ride. Instead, this didn't necessarily mean that the place was open because at the next stop people would get on and say that they had reserved that spot. It was like musical chairs for awhile, until I figured out that most of the seats had a label which told you if the seat was reserved or not and where the person was traveling to and from.
I swear I sat in every place possible on the train, except first class, because it took me awhile to figure out the system and I was on the same train for about six hours. I got to sit at a spot with a table, a normal spot with just two seats, and a spot that was in a compartment that I liked to think of as the "harry potter compartment." Finally, like the vagabond that I felt like, I ended up just sitting on the floor next to the doors until I got off at Stuttgart.
My next fear was that I was going to miss my connecting train to Tubingen because the train that I was on was running late. So once we stopped at Stuttgart, I dashed out of the train, ran down a flight of stairs (which is no easy feat with my goat in tow), and ran back up another flight of stairs to the terminal that the train to Tubingen was waiting at. I had no trouble making the train and found an easily accessible seat to crash on while I caught my breath.
Once I finally got to Tubingen, I had to figure out where the buses were and which one I had to take. My roommate, Angelika, helped me out a lot and told me where I had to get off and which buses would take me to the bus stop right in front of our apartment, so it didn't turn out to be that complicated. In no time at all, I was finally at my new home!