Tonight Packing, Tomorrow Berlin

Tonight is our last night in this apartment. We're leaving at 6 in the morning to go to the airport. Checking in may be a problem as we have one-way tickets, but I've gathered quite a thick packet of documentation to argue with in case we need it. Another problem may be the weight of my suitcase. I have no idea how much it weighs. That's how heavy it is. I'm only bringing one checked luggage though, so hopefully they won't give me much trouble and if it's a female representative, I can just tell her it's the shoes and she'll understand. Carlos is still packing. The apartment is messy despite all efforts to clean it. I feel exhausted from carrying things to and from the garbage, leaving things out in the ally, and generally running around tearing my hair out. Tonight there were so many things we had to get rid of that I put them all on Craigslist under the free section. For those who aren't familiar with the crazy people on craigslist, allow me to enlighten you. Craigslist is full of jobless, worthless, extremely horny people, several of whom's only purpose in life is to troll the free section looking for junk. Once they find it, they wait outside your door, salivating at the mouth, screaming at you "Where's that toaster you said you had? Where's the fucking toaster??? I drove all the way from El Cerito!" This is why we don't put a "reply to" address, and heaven help you if you should leave your phone number. Yikes. We were planning to go out to Ryoko's tonight, our favorite sushi restaurant in the San Francisco. I've heard Berlin has one sushi restaurant as well, and that it's okay. And for dessert we have a bottle of port that we got in Napa quite some time ago. But this is provided we can take care of everything that needs taking care of. Carlos swears he will haul the mattress downstairs at 6 in the morning. We shall see. All n' all, I'm part scared, part exhausted, and part curious (that's 3 parts!) about how smoothly this all will go. The flight itself is a monster- 1. San Francisco to Seattle where we have a 6 hour layover 2. Seattle to Copenhagen (Denmark for those who are terrible at geography) where we have only 55 minutes to get through EU customs AND catch our next flight from 3. Copenhagen to Berlin Germany upon where we will take a rather expensive cab ride to our boarding house in Kreuzberg, shower, and collapse exhausted in our new land. Till we meet again, USA!

We're Going to Marrakesh

Marrakech or Marrakesh (مراكش Marrakesh), known as the "Red City" or "Al Hamra," is a city with a population of 1,036,500 (as of 2006) in southwestern Morocco, near the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Marrakesh is also known as "The City of Gold." ... And we are "going there" on the 27th of March, or at least so it will look to anyone wanting to see our travel itinerary. Why? Because Carlos and I made the mistake of getting one-way tickets into Germany. Silly us, we wanted to save a few hundreds of dollars, but have since learned that it is possible to get deported if you do not have a return ticket when traveling to the EU. Although it is unlikely that they will even ask us to see a return ticket, if they do we can now at least say that we're exiting the EU. The tickets were only 25 euro (including taxes!) on Ryanair.com- they had other tickets that were actually 0.01 Euro (no shit) but these were for single passengers only, and we thought it might look suspicious if we took seperate flights. This is the weirdest solution to an honest problem I've ever come up with. It still might not work, but it's more likely to work than having our tickets leave us in Germany. Am I going nuts?

2 weeks

I am leaving in 14 days. Packing is almost done already, despite having had a sprained ankle for the past week. I wish I hadn't packed up my hair dryer already and definitely should have eaten lunch today. The people on Toytown tell me there is no peanut butter, root beer, or nachos in Germany. They suggest I try to blend in and develop a taste for curry wurst. Through the glory of the internet, I've met an Aussie who is moving to Berlin in March. Maybe we will be friends.