Ugignadl

So in fact I am at my office in the FU Berlin, and of course there are plenty of stories about my adventures getting to this place… including how the handle of my luggage snapped off while navigating the dangers of the Berlin public transport system, which are few, but when lugging around 40kg of luggage with a broken handle, and having to take 2 buses and 2 trains, without being able to read anything, the dangers become much more apparent.

OK so briefly, after I last updated everyone I was pretty damn hungry. I walked around for a bit, and found some shops open, but really everything was in Korean and I was pretty much lost. I went to the place with the most people in it in the end, which happenned to be a very traditional Korean restuarant. Hmmm whoops. Well, in short nobody spoke English. Highlights: trying to explain the notion of takeaway, ordering ox tail, watching people next to me cook their food from scratch at the table, being stared at for being a nub. Eating this food is hard, damnit. I was served 9 dishes of whatever the hell and had no clue what to do with any of them. Seriously. I asked the waitresses but as I said, no English, not even Engrish. The actual ox-tail is starshaped and slippery on the bone, with little pieces of meat in between the spikes. So it’s hard to get at. But oh so tasty. Regardless, I thought fuck it and just ate all the stuff, I was so damn hungry. It was actually really nice. And cheap, only $12 for the lot, enough to feed anyone really. Most of their meals were in fact only $7 so it was pretty cheap overall…. yet I saw a lot of highly paid people eat there, so it must be a good place to eat.

I went back to my room after eating and walking around a bit more. I returned to my room, just as I left it. I had put the tv on to watch some live starcraft (oh hell YES) and had just started to relax when I heard the psycho doorbell (that thing is loud) and thought, oh right here we go I’m screwed now. As I walked over to the doorway I noticed that there is actually a monitor near the door which shows who is standing at your doorway. Well, it was Mr Hon Choo and a buddy. I was like hello, he said something odd and I noticed they were drunk, he had a huge bottle of *something* (looked like cordial, smelt like vodka, probably a kind of ricewine) and some snacks. I’m like, errr, what’s up? He bounced about a bit and was like “poarty? snacks???”" and I said I was tired, sorry. He looked shocked! I felt bad for about half a second then thought, no way man back in Australia it is 2 am and I feel buggered. So I made some charades and then said goodnight and went back inside. Poor guy, although, who knows what the hell was going through his head.

I gathered my things, cuddled up around them and watched pro video gamers battle it out in the world of starcraft (ah what might have been, ex Aus. champion goes to Korea, centre of SC world, to test his mettle… ah cest la vie…).

The next day was significantly less exciting. I woke up, showered and wotnot, prepared to check out, watched a few more starcraft matches (it’s 24H, each match worth $100,000 and the play is just incredible if you know what you are watching, the commentary would have been nice to understand but even without it… oh man, it was awesome) and finally pulled myself away. I went over to a nearby “cafe” and ordered a coffee and a bacon sandwich. The sandwich was great. The coffee….ugh it was like instant coffee with sugarcream on top. Bleh. Oh Newtown coffee, I miss thee.

Anywho I took again the FREE bus to the airport (along with the all-Korean group, no westerners anywhere near where I was staying) and did the airport thing. Highlights: setting off the security guards at the airport because I was sick with a cold (the irish dude next to me on the way over was coughing, I guess he gave me some virus and my temperature was too high) and their infrared scan (yes they scan you in all kinds of ways there) buzzed at me. I was questioned about why I was sick, how I was sick, was I near any farms blah blah blah. Eventually I managed to convey that I became sick on the way over here, on the plane, not on a farm, and I did not have any sexual relations with that donkey, and my fever is no threat to national security. Eventually they let me go. Naturally I also set off the other security peoples with my massive amounts of metal inside me. Actually, of course that’s not true, what it was in the end was the plastic money, apparently the watermark of the $50 notes I was carrying around in Australian set off their so-called metal detector. Wackos. Anyway, eventually they too let me through.

They fought for nothing, I was never going to miss that flight; I got to the gate lounge two hours before the flight was due to leave. I set to finding a coffee. Again I found one and again it was GOD AWFUL. I’m talking worse than instant coffee. In fact I would have rather taken instant coffee granules and snorted them with chilli powder than drank that stuff. But drink it I did, because I was feeling like shit and you know it might behave similarly to real coffee. (Aside: it didn’t.)

Regardless I opened up my laptop to happily discover free (piggyback actually) wireless at the airport. I used it to chat with Kate a little (hey little ol sis) and Lewis (wassup). It was good to chat but after a little while I had to get on the plane.

The flight was significantly more enjoyable than the flight over to Incheon. This is in fact a non-trivial dedution, for the following two reasons. First and foremost we had the free in flight entertainment system which was for some reason absent on the flight to Incheon. I watched 4 movies, 2 documentaries (one being the cutest thing I have ever seen) and a special from Penn & Teller. I also played plenty of games like mini gold and tetris against other passengers. Good times. Along with that are all the regular aeroplane things: shitty food and impossible-to-sleep-ness were getting to me. But really, the second factor was… vomit. Oh yes I said vomit. I was on the window, next to me were two girls. The girl furthest away was on the corridor. At some point during the flight I realised that she had vomited everywhere. The smell was horrific. The poor staff tried really hard to clean it up but hey, what can you do? IT’S VOMIT. The vomit girl went somewhere and the other girl next to me left as well but oh no, it was too far from me so I’m not allowed to be moved to wherever the hell these other people went.

So there it was. Anyway, eventually we got to Frankfurt and a new problem reared it’s head: we were late. Only fifteen minutes, but you have to understand. My connecting flight to Tegel (Berlin) left exactly an hour after I landed. Check-in closed 45 minutes before the flight leaves. So that left exactly 0 minutes to get off the plane, go through immigration, go through customs, go through baggage claim, go through security, find check-in counter, check-in (?), find security, go through security (??), find gate, go through gate and board (???). Needless to say I was pretty much freaking out.

Anyway that story is for another blog post. I will update on the resolution to that dilemma as well as some of the other things that have been happenning (I hope everyone realises that I can’t possibly convey everything that has been going on… I just do my best) later. For now, the promised pictures.

I did not have a real window seat, but this is us leaving Sydney.

I’m not really super happy about being next to this sick dude.

Oh look we’re in Korea! Yes I know it is shitty, so sue me.

It’s a little hazy eh? Remind you of anywhere??

The weird wacked out television castle making screwed up noises that I wrote about in the previous blog.

More of it. It was seriously something that even the locals were like, wtf. WTF WTF WTF!!!

The room, looking from the hallway toward the main room.

The room, looking from the small table at the back next to the cot toward the entrance.

The walk-in wardrobe near the entrance was huge.

Bathroom was huge and modern. toilet…well, yes it was.

The weird intercom/telephone/internet terminal.

This doorlock IS skynet.

The building from the outside. Notice the huge glowing happy face. These things are everywhere.

The street the big building is on. There are like six or seven of these huge buildings and nothing else. There are a zillion little shops cramped into each building however, and they are all linked by underground as well. It is really quite interesting…

Some of Mr Hon Choos mania must have been rubbing off in this picture.

The place where I ate my ox tail.

The little table in the back corner.

Complimentary hair gel. A typical example on Engrish at work.

Me looking bemused after Mr Hon Choo invaded again.

Huzzah another aeroplane.

I wonder if I will be screwed today?

This documentary, OMG these friggin’ pandas, I tell you what, they are awesome.

Closeup of a panda.

A view from above Russia. I like clouds. All kinds.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.