April 5, 2009: Flea Market

I was tired. I got up at 10:00 and had some breakfast. At breakfast I met two guys from Germany and a lady who was teaching English in Seattle. After breakfast I got to talking to the teacher and it turned out that we were headed in the same direction. We took the buses and trains together all the way back to East Berlin, where I was last night. Here we parted ways I went to check out a flea market. The flea market had all sorts of interesting things from custom teeshirts to old postcards to junk in boxes to old medical instruments. It was a good time and I bought some trinkets to remind me of the experience.

After the flea market I got some all-you-can-eat Indian food buffet, it was hella-good. Time to go home. I caught the train to the main train station and saw which trains were going back to D-Dorf. I did not want to pay for a reservation so I had to wait for an hour for a train that the computer said I did not need a reservation for. I decided to go and chill on the front lawn of the Reighstag. It was a good choice, the sun was out and the grass was green and inviting. I wrote some post cards and admired both the Reichstag and the Berlin Hauptbahnhoff.

I got on the train to the realization that it was going to be packed. I managed to find a spot in the restaurant car and took a seat. About 3 stations into my trip a girl about my age took a seat across from me. I asked her if she spoke English and it turned out she did. Mary, as it turned out her name was, is working on an internship in a town west of D-Dorf doing essentially the exact same thing that I am! She was great because she spoke English very confidently and because English was her third language she did not know some of the words so she just tossed in the German equivalent, it was fun to listen to. We talked for three hours about pressure vessels, medical grade rubber and bolts in shear (somebody out there talks about this kind of stuff). It was nice to talk to someone about my job and it helped pass the four hour trip back home.

I got back to Ratingen at 22:30, checked my email and got to bed.