Jason's Daily Notes

Spent the morning/day at Nicole's, getting my things organized and eating. Nicki made schnitzel; yum!

My train from Hamburg to Berlin was in the afternoon at 16:20. I needed to be at HH Hbf at 16:00 - I said bye to Nicki and left a couple minutes too late: I forgot my British phone at the apartment. The bus was there, so I took it to Altona and caught the S-Bahn from there (due to construction, the S-Bahn between Sternschanze and Hauptbahnhof so I had to take the other S-Bahn line).

I got to the Hbf with a few minutes to spare, bought some croissants to snack on, and waited to meet Thomas, the rideshare coordinator. There were several other people also sharing the train ride; something like 10-15 in total. They had multiple tickets for all of us. It was very confusing and hectic as everyone piled into the train at once.

The journey was 4 hours in total, with a change in Schwerin.

I sat across from Marieke, a 21-year-old girl who was studying languages at a placement in Berlin. We chatted for the first part of the train ride. I then napped. I haven't had my headphones for a while, so I couldn't distract myself with music.

The train was delayed slightly as we arrived in Berlin. The journey officially ended at Berlin Hbf, but I took the train further directly to Alexanderplatz (technically schwarzfarhren but saving me some time). I got a week ticket but also didn't validate it (again, schwarzfahren). It wasn't long before I arrived at Manuel's; His place was just next to the U-Bahn station.

We met, and he introduced me to his flat. It's clean and spacious, like many places in Berlin. I had made plans to meet Martin that evening for dinner, so I walked over to his place (yes, he lives a 15-minute walk away!). His friend from Estonia was also there. We had spaghetti with simply raw garlic, oil, and lime juice (I know!), which was remarkably not bad.

I stayed for a little bit, chilling with Martin and talking a bit about business (he's building his startup to launch a version in Berlin).