Operation Esperanto yesterday was a complete bust. I walked to the office which was just a few blocks away from Kyle's and it was closed, possibly permanantly. The building was covered in scaffolding and it seemed like people weren't coming back.
Luckily I had brought another address with me. For some reason I coulnd't find the station I needed to get to on my map, but I looked it up on the internet and I had a vague idea of which region it was in.... Long story short - I was completely wrong. I was headed further than I needed to go and the exact stop was perfectly visible on my map. Somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours later, I was at the right location. The address was for a bookstore: thinking that it would be cool to get some esperanto books, I went in, but the owner informed me that there was no such Esperanto club at that location.....
Sadness.
After that, I remembered that Kyle told me that I could take the busses around the city for a visual tour- so I tried. I got on a bus and I guess I missed the fact that it went out of service after a few stops.. so then I was on an out-of-service bus for about 10 minutes. I was fine with this, as it was still driving around. It went back in service on a different street and then made it back to the original stop I had been at. It went in the other direction, but then I got bored and bitter so I walked for about an hour or so to Alexander Platz, then took the train back to Kyle's.
Kim and I had dinner later that evening and then Kim needed to study. I didn't want to stay around, because I knew that I would be getting on her nerves - I'm like a puppy needing either something to do or attention of somekind. On Kim's advice I took the train into the downtown ish area. I'm convinced that Kim was trying to get me lost for the night because as I was on the bus, I read in my book that the trains stop at either midnight or 12:30, and it was past 11:30. I decided that I would go to Kyle's work because there had to be someway that he was getting home later that night... I got off the wrong side of the train and walked the long way to his workplace. Anyway, he said the trains would be running til 1:20, so I walked down Friedrichstraß. All the bars and restaurants were closing and it was a very uneventuful walk. I stopped for a drink at a hotel bar that had a pianist playing. Of course, once my drink got to me, the pianist stopped - and it ended up costing me almost 10 Euros!!! FUCK! Anyway, oh well the pianist was just playing the standard fare of lounge classics.
I ended up going back a little early to watch Kyle close up the restaurant. He introduced me to the bartender and we spoke a little french. It felt good to be foreign but still understand what was going on. He was from Paris and didn't make fun of my french, so I'm hoping things go that well next week.
Today, Kyle invited me along to his class (Teaching german to Middle-Stage German learners). Yay, I'm officially middle stage!! It should be interesting and it will give me experience listening to only German. I'm also going with him to check out some appartments and then tonight we are going to a museum (apparently thursday is free museum night in Berlin) and then some sort of partying after that.
Fun Fun Fun