off the road again.

Above photo: on my way out the door, heading to the bus station.

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I was up most of the night due to a bad chicken shwarma (let's leave it at that), an awful chicken shwarma, in retrospect...a nearly deadly deadly shwarma (ok, got it). Today I am left feeling only extremely tired and mildly annoyed, but that's a whole ton better than I felt at 3am.

So by the time I got to HBF this afternoon (LENGTHY ASIDE: this consisted of dragging my funsucking black hole of a suitcase behind me for about an hour over the quaintly cobblestoned streets of West Berlin, chuggada-clackety-chuggeda, repeat. I never ever want to hear that sound again, especially not coming from me. Why was I forced to engage in this profoundly uncool travel method? The S-Bahn was closed in some key stations, and the U-Bahn is mysteriously unhelpful in getting to HBF), I officially hadn't consumed anything since yesterday afternoon other than lots of peppermint tea.

After clickety-chuggading past some more impressively gargantuan buildings, I was then faced with the tricky decision of eating at the station or eating on the train. I couldn't remember what the train food was like back in 2004...It seemed like the station was the better idea b/c at least I would have some measure of control over the options. And I really, really, really didn't want to be stuck in a sausage-only situation.

And that's why we're looking at a plate of schweinsbraten mit sauerkraut und kartoffelklöß. I never had any plans to eat the kartoffelklöß: when Mara and I went to Germany for Christmas back in 2001, these things almost destroyed us. Klöß is a perfect name for them: eating one, or God forbid, more than one, is like trying to flush a whole still-rolled roll of TP down the toilet. The toilet gets klößßed.

Steering this post permanently away from intestinal distress, this sauerkraut was actually some of the best I've ever had, kind of more thick-cut than what I'm used to, and nicely spiced with caraway, which is sneakily becoming one of my favorite spices.

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Wrapping things up: Berlin was good. Traveling is good, this trip reminded me very much of my old exploring days, when I lived to be dropped in the middle of a strange city and quickly sniff out all the cool stuff. I mean, some unignorable things have changed: I don't have the budget I used to, or the metabolism, or the ect ect ect. But I ignored all of those details a bit, and for a little while went back in time.

One last thing: traveling by train is better than traveling by plane, but I think a car is even better. Being in the back seat of a car with the window down, heading out of town for fun and adventure is a feeling I miss. Luckily I've done a lot of it at some point in the past, b/c the feeling is familar and sweet. It helps to have a driver you trust behind the wheel and to not be involved in the navigational or logistic details.

Above: about half of the amazing kitchen at the place I was staying.