Apartment Search

Today I went and looked at a few different apartment situations, Im going to move in with roommates for a few months  a) so that I have people around to practice my German with and b)I can't really get involved in any kind of lease for my own apartment until I have all the right paperwork and permits.

The first place I went to was not too far from my school, which would of course be very convenient.  It was two students looking for a third room mate because their other was leaving. They were nice but they had a few rules:

1. I was not allowed to wear shoes in the apartment.  They had special slippers for everyone (I got to wear the Guest pair) that were to be worn at all times while in the apartment.

2. Everyone must take turns feeding the chinchillas

3. Guys must sit to pee.  They will not tolerate any stand-up peeing.  Mind you, only one of them was a girl

4. No meat is allowed to be kept in the refrigerator.  They are vegetarians, and although they don't care if I eat meat, they do not want to even look at it

I did not take this apartment.  The having to pee sitting down was the deal breaker.

After that I went to a different area of town and met with a guy who will be in Paris until mid June, so Ill be taking over his room until then.  It's in a much better area; more young people, full of galleries and cafes.  At one point he even said I "could pretty much do whatever I wanted" in the apartment and I laughed since I had just been to the other place.  He looked at me funny

Yesterday I moved in with my host, he is about in his mid to late 40s and is a nice guy. He's a dramaturg/graphic designer/playwright/all around artsy guy. I was really nervous about just showing up to some random person's house and living with them for 2 weeks, but from talking to him he usually always has a student living with him. He only speaks German with me, his English isn't that great anyways. There have been a few times we have had to stop talking about something because neither of us could get our point across in the other's language. But that's half the fun. He lives in a very residential area of Berlin, there is even a farm down the street. He has the offices on the ground floor of the building for his workspace and lives on the top (4th) floor. It's a fairly small place, 2 rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The shower/bathtub is in the kitchen. And very awkwardly placed, I can only fit all the way to one side. But it's kind of fun.

Today was also my first day of classes. It was a little tough to start, everything is in German, which I expected and hoped for, but it is going to take a few days to get fully used to. I still find myself saying things in Spanish when I don't know the German word. Even to talk to other students I have to speak German, very few people even speak English, most of them are from somewhere in Europe except for a guy from Mexico and a guy from Ghana. We'll see how it goes...

Finally in Deutschland

I made it to Germany in one piece, with no lost or damaged luggage.  it was quite a trip from Panama to Berlin.  Probably the most interesting part of it all was the layover in Colombia.  It wasn't very long, but it was amazing the amount of security they have there.  After getting off the plane from Panama, I had to go through a metal detector and X-ray scan of my carry-ons (didn't they just do that before I got on the plane?)  Then to walk to the boarding gates, I had to go through a manual search of my bags by the police.  They took everything out, smelled every pocket and crevice, then ushered me along.  Then each individual gate has another security checkpoint before the waiting area.  Another metal detector, X-ray, and manual bag check.  I thought this would be the last of the hassling.  I was wrong.  While sitting in the waiting area, I was approached by an attractive woman dressed in civilian clothing, but showed me a badge and said she was the police.  She didn't speak English so thank god I speak Spanish.  She then grilled me on where I was, how long I stayed there, where I was staying, why I went there, what I did, where I was going, where I came from.....the list goes on.  I imagine they are looking for people who get nervous or agitated, but I say if they made it to that point without getting caught with anything, kudos to them.  I guess I passed her test because she gave me back my passport, said thank you and moved on to the next person.  

It was a long flight from Bogota to Madrid (10 hours), but they had personal TVs with on-demand movies, TV shows and music, so it all worked out.  Of course I wasn't able to sleep, I hate airplanes.  I should've tried to upgrade to business class.  The layover in Spain went fairly quickly, it took me a while to go through customs, collect my luggage, check in for my new flight which was on a different carrier, go through security......  so I didn't have to wait long until the flight boarded.  Even though it was only 3 hours, that was the longest flight I've ever been on.  I'd been awake at that point for over 24 hours and needed to get to my hotel and sleep.  

Once in Berlin everything went very smoothly, I got my baggage and got in a cab to my hotel.  The cab accidentally went about 2 buildings past the hotel, so he decided to back up.  Literally right in front of my hotel is where we were in an accident.  Someone was coming around the corner as we were backing up and we crashed right into them.  A flawless journey halfway around the world and I was in an accident in front of my hotel right before I was about to get out.  Nothing major, just a fender bender.  So I got my stuff out of the cab, paid him, and went inside to check in.  I watched the police come and all the hassle of it from my balcony.  Oops.

I was starving so I went to the nearest restaurant to eat, a very traditional German restaurant.  I had some delicious Schnitzel and an even more delicious beer.  Then went home and slept for 13 hours.  Today I walked around for a few hours, sat at a restaurant for a while and people watched.  Today is when it actually hit me: holy shit I think I just moved to Berlin.  I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen here, but am excited to see.  Tomorrow I move in with the host I found through the language school I'll be starting Monday for 8 weeks.  We've exchanged a few emails and he seems like a nice guy.  He's in the art/design/music/theatre world so I imagine we'll get along.

Goodbye Panama

I leave today for Germany. I have a long trip ahead of me, through Colombia and Spain, but am excited for whatever lies ahead. I had a great time here in Panama and thank everyone that came to visit me. I was here for almost 3 months and went only about 3 weeks without having someone visiting, it was great. Best (and longest) vacation ever. Last night we had a party at Andy's with the group of friends we've made down here and had a delicious lasagna feast.

Here's a few numbers from my time down here

# times I rented a car: 4
# times stopped and had to pay off the cops: 3
# of Balboas (my favorite Panamanian beer): probably a million
# times I was punched in the stomach by someones mom: 1
# islands visited: 8
# days I went without showering when we had no fresh water: 6
# hot showers I've been able to take while down here: 5
# pictures taken: 2,090

This is the end of the Panama posts, off to Deutschland!

Bocas del Toro

We spent 3 days/2 nights in Bocas del Toro, an group of islands on the Caribbean at the border of Costa Rica. This is the most touristy place in all of Panama and I did not like it. We didn't see the sun even once the entire time, it was overcast and rainy for the three days we were there. And this wasn't bad luck, it's like that most of the year except a few days in September and October. But this I could live with. The town of Bocas is pretty run down, which is also not a problem as we are in Central America, but priced like a resort town. The absolute worst part was that it was full of college-dropout wannabe hippies. Teeming with them. All of them from the US. It was gringo loser central. I don't have a huge problem with hippies per se, except the ones that are clearly trying too hard to be hippies and are clearly still having mom and dad pay for everything. The kind that carry around surf boards to look cool, not because they are going surfing or even know how to surf. Anyways.

The only worthwhile thing we did while in Bocas was spend the entire second day on a boat cruising around the islands and jumping out to go snorkeling. This was probably the best deal in all of Bocas, $20 for the whole day of that. First we went and hung out with some dolphins for a while, they were swimming right up to the boat. That was pretty cool. Then we cruised about 20 minutes to a little bay and got out and went snorkeling for a while, then to a small island that had a ridiculously overpriced restaurant for lunch. Then to red frog beach, where we didn't see even one frog. But we did have to walk through a jungle to get to the beach. We passed a small lagoon that had crocodiles in it. After hanging out on the beach for an hour we got back in the boat and cruised to another snorkeling spot where we spent another hour. The rest of the time in Bocas was spend walking around the very small town and sitting and drinking beer at waterfront restaurants. Not a place I will ever go back

Boquete

My old neighbor from NYC came to visit me for a week. We started out in Boquete, a small town in the mountains in the northern part of Panama. This was one of the most beautiful places I have seen here in Panama so far. It's a little town nestled at the bottom of the country's biggest volcano. Year round it is like spring, never too hot, always with a slight cool breeze. It's just high enough in altitude to be just below the clouds, sometimes in them, so there are literally dozens of rainbows just bouncing from hillside to hillside. As our taxi-driver-turned-tour-guide said to us, it's a slice of Heaven on earth.

We started at a wildlife sanctuary and were led around by a volunteer who told us the stories of each of the animals being kept there. Some were being held and taught to fend for themselves, later to be released back into the wild; some were horribly abused and past rehabilitation but were there to be cared for for the rest of their lives; some are on the verge of extinction so they were brought there to reproduce. We saw many different types of monkeys, countless species of birds, some jungle cats, and some other things that I'm not even sure how to classify. One animal was explained to us as a mix between a cat and an otter. I'm still not really sure how that worked out. I pet a baby anteater.








After the wildlife sanctuary we got some strawberries at a strawberry farm and ate them. They were delicious. We didn't have enough time to do river rafting or horseback riding, so we decided to go to a coffee plantation we read about that was supposed to have lots of good trails to walk along. We got a taxi and drove about 10-15 minuted into the mountains, much further than we had expected it to be. When we got up there no one was around and I asked the driver if it would be difficult to get a cab to take us back to town. He said yes, nobody goes up there unless they are going to that place specifically, and since there was no one there, there wouldn't be a lot of cabs around. Then he offered to drive us around and show us all the best sights of Boquete for $30. Since it was a $7 cab ride each way and entrance to the coffee farm was $10 each, we figured we'd actually be saving some money going that route. So we agreed. Best decision we could have made. This guy was born and raised in Boquete so he knows it very well. He drove us on paths through the mountains, showing us where all the produce for the grocery stores in Panama City is grown. The entire place was pretty surreal and out of a story book. We would chase rainbows and he knew exactly how long it would take for them to be fully formed and exactly how long they would last. I swear I saw a unicorn. He took us to waterfalls, to the entrance to the trail to the volcano, showed us crazy rock formations. We went to a botanical gardens that is some rich guy's house that he's landscaped like crazy and has it open to the public. The best part was the driver wasn't able to speak a word of English, so my Spanish really came into use, and I understood every part of the tour and was able to converse with him. If I had more situations like that while I've been here I'd be relatively fluent by now. He ended our tour by driving up to a high point with views of the entire city below, with the volcano in the background, then taking us to the best coffee place in town. It was the most delicious coffee I've ever had. We got up at 5 the next morning to catch a bus back to David, where we would change buses to take us to Bocas del Toro. We had to chase after the bus because it left 10 minutes early. But luckily they stopped for the crazy gringos running after the bus flailing their arms.






Boquete was full of all types of sweet flowers

Carnaval

Words cannot do any type of justice to the experience of Carnaval, and unfortunately, due to the amount of water involved, I didn't take my camera so the few pictures I have are from Andy's, which he had in a sandwich bag. Daytime consists of thousands of people packed into a few small city blocks drinking and dancing all day while being hosed down by gas trucks full of river water that have people throwing shirts, bandannas, and other crap into the crowd. This entire weekend was up there with Oktoberfest as one of the most fun experiences of my life. We made friends with everyone around us, they were calling us the giants (they were all very short) and loved that we could speak Spanish since none of them could speak English. They cheered when we caught our Popeye's (chicken) scarves. They poured beer on us, and squirted us with their squirt guns. Everyone shared their liquor with us and celebrated being alive. At the end, we had a group that wanted to cook us dinner. I was having trouble walking straight

Then everyone goes home to nap. Night time is when everyone goes out to clubs. The club we were at easily had 10,000 people at it, with thousands more lined up outside unable to get in. And since it is a huge Panamanian national holiday, they keep drinks cheap so everyone can afford it. Drinks were $1. Bottles of rum were $16. We went through a few bottles

The Raft

Josh and I spent a day building a raft. I thought we could be pirates and pillage and ransack the nearby villages, but everyone else was too lazy to storm the beaches.

We found an old mower blade and taped it to a stick to use to chop down bamboo. We found an old tattered hammock that we used to tie all our pieces together.




That night we celebrated a successful day of building by drinking copious amounts of rum and beer (as the pirates would have done). Naturally, this turned into yet another dance party on the tables.

Butterflies

While at the house in Boca Chica, I went a little crazy one day and took many many pictures of butterflies. Here's a few