LaTech Berlin 2012

Sunday I arrived at the airport rather early to get my trip started. Airports are fascinating when you have the time to sit back and think about the thousands of lives being lived to the fullest, the business men and women that travel to the ends of the world to live a dream or to put food on the table, or lastly the people that are pushing there lives to the extreme for the sake of new memories. Finally we board the airplane where it was in the 90 degree range and quite warm.

We pass through the lower clouds and still we climb until we reach the cruising level where the earth is merely a blanket of clouds. Throughout my travels around America my favorite thing is to experience something that is so vast it is hard to take in, like when you are surrounded by only land or water for as far as the eye can see. But this flight was a little different in that I felt like I was able to sit and watch the world turn. We left Dallas during the day, for several hours during the flight we soared above the clouds while it then turned dark I could watch the moon pass the plane by. I was able to see as far as I could possibly see with only the light of the moon in the distance. It was as if the moon was in our line of travel and we simply skipped it. But it was more than just that, it was the feeling of floating a different level in the atmosphere that allowed me to respect the vastness of what goes on between the earth and space everyday for millions of years.

Then the moon disappeared and I watched the sunrise from above the clouds. I eagerly waited for the flight to land in this new place, a dreary, grey, and cold new place. The first stop was Amsterdam, for a very short stop, and an abrupt transition into a part of the world that does not understand me and I also do not understand them. But this new place is something that I could definitely get used to. With a short hop and skip we made it to Berlin where we spent the rest of the day becoming acclimated with the city and its transit system. Which is quite confusing if I may say so. We took our first German bus and train system. Then we made our way down to the spree, where we had a nice view of the German Chancellory across the canal. We stopped for our first cold beer or in the German terms that I had to order it were "dunkel weizen beir". After leaving the beirgarten we were right beside the fire and police station by Sauerbruch Hutton. This building was much nicer in person with the concrete structures holding up the police end and the massive folding doors for the fire station end. We had our first view at the operable windows, which are the cities main source of air conditioning. After the long two day journey we finally settled into our nice apartments. The strange part was that we went to sleep with the sun up and woke up the next morning with the sun up. Except for the few hours on the plane, the night sky had not been seen in days.