packing, repacking and the perils of not shaking jetlag

before tuesday jetlag was never something i was concerned about - never had a problem hence didn't think much about it. 

but NOW i CANNOT SLEEP IN!!!!!!

every morning at 5am berlin time POP go my eyes and i'm awake. Jeremy is much the same - i look over and there he is staring at the ceiling. 

The first response we had was - alright we'll just stay up late. so tuesday night it's 8pm here and we're both sliding off the seats in the U-bahn (underground train network). come 9pm in our hotel room i'm drooping on to the laptop keyboard and jeremy's staring sleepy eyed at his. I think it was about 10:30pm when we both crashed. 

and wednesday morning - up at 5am AGAIN!! 

Wednesday and thursday were the same - we try to stay up but come 7pm we're really fighting it and end up going to bed before 9pm. 

this morning was a touch better - woke up around 6am. maybe it will be bearable by sunday then hey? 

In other news we're moving on to our 3rd place of accomodation which means repacking - URG. 

we're leaving the Circus hostel (fabulous by the way!) and moving our baggage that has grown to ten separate bags (!!!) to an apartment that a woman who's visiting cologne is renting out to us for a week or so. Should be cool - we can wash clothes and jeremy's excited about the prospect of an iron. the worst part will be shuffling our way there on the underground - just form a mental picture of us two pretty much covered in baggage squeezing on to seats and knocking out other train users. 

At least i guess we'll be warm - it's pretty damn cold here. we were seriously snowed on on our first day when we visited our uni. Just raining a bit at the moment but they are expecting more snow. 

and yes jeremy got his BAG BACK!! yesterday or the day before. all good except a zip is broken. 

we've been trekking all other the city looking at different apartments. Mostly in the areas Kreuzberg and prenzlauer berg. these are the two boho, interesting areas. almost everyone recommends KBerg to us but its really popular. We find an apartment online that's within our price range and then go to call and its already gone, almost in a few hours. 

We should find something soon though, we're looking at 3 tomorrow, one in Berlin Mitte - like the CBD area but bigger. the area where we've been staying this week at the hostel is fantastic, in Berlin mitte and just really cool. lots of good spots are within walking distance and a few really good berlin designer shopping strips too. we found some apartments near here but they keep getting snapped up too quickly for us. 

much love to all!

 

3/4 of a day in China

house boats and the like on the river near us. 

Our hotel! Was cold.  

Ying Li and I outside the expensive, empty department store. She's a professor in computer imaging in northern china. 

Plane food - hhhmmm

Our short dance through china began it's course of moderate - to high confusion before the plane was out of Australia. 

Our vegetarian meals hadn't been registered although we'd been told they were confirmed twice by our travel agent, so we struggled to resolve our lack of meat-free food with the chinese hostess's very limited english and our complete lack of chinese. 

They were very helpful though and gave us a number to call once we were in shanghai to confirm our meals for the next leg on monday. 

Shanghai airport is absolutely HUGE and was almost empty when we arrived sunday night. We really had no idea how our free stop over worked so stopped every staff member we came across. Many gave us a slightly frightened look but eventually one guy offered to call our hotel to work out how it worked. We then realised our driver was waiting for us  - YES  - with one of those cool little name signs on the other side of customs. 

It was another 10 minutes before we found him though due to an immigration staff member walking off with our passports and asking us to 'sit at that chair over there' - around the corner! We compromised - stood in between his desk and the far away chair and proceeded to shoot him suspicious 'we-think-you're-doing-something-seriously-dodgy' looks until we were abruptly presented with them again with no explanation. 

All the people we dealt with on our short time were incredibly polite and very helpful - from the cleaners pushing carts through mounds of rubbish along the footpaths to the lovely shop assistants in the empty, expensive departments stores with zero english. 

They all went to a lot of trouble investing in intricate hand gestures that we rarely understood, BUT we learnt how to say thank you in chinese so made sure that everyone understood that we were thankful.  

our SAVIOUR came in the form of Ying Li, a chinese woman staying at our hotel who was returning to her university after working at U Sydney for a month. She had much better english than anyone else we encountered and was continuously enthusiastic to help us out. She helped us communicate with the staff at the hotel and even went shopping with us to the local supermarket so we could navigate around the live turtles and chicken feet in the isles. They have a dumpling stand in the middle of the shop!

Grocery shopping in other countries should be offered as a subject in language courses  - we couldn't read any of the price tags and most ready-to-eat offerings were in big pots, thus we managed to confuse many, many vegetables with meat products (Ying later set us on the right course) and ended up getting biscuits and fruit juice because the packaging was vaguely recognisable. 

Aside from feeling mostly helpless due to our inability to communicate, the whole place was just fascinating. I’d love to go back when I have a chance – hopefully I can learn more than three words of Chinese.

One of the most interesting things was the amount of people employed in the different shops. In the supermarket, Lotus, there were staff on every table ready to bag produce for you and at the expensive department store there we three women with big red sashes waiting to greet you at every entrance. 

The food was really similar to the Chinese food in Australia – we’ll see what the standard is like here in Germany.

‘til the next post! 

hello everyone! 

just had our first breakfast in berlin! 

We need to run off to start organising our LIVES now. 

in short - jeremy's bag has been lost so in between  our enrollment admin stuff we're going shopping - yee haa!

hope everyone's well. 

CHINA was fantastic - shall upload photos and all when we get back. 

MUCH love to all. 

xx