The Unforseen Joy of Distant Family Members

This blog entry is going to cover a number of things that are almost completely out of order. We have neglected typing about a few very important things, but right now I'm going to type what's freshest and work my way backwards.

Before I get to the present moment, let me say that Prague might be the most beautiful city the world has ever seen. It has beauty beyond anything I can adequately capture in text. Two dimensional images will fall flat. It is utterly amazing.

An attempt to capture a piece of it is here.....see more on facebook


That was our day Saturday -- we were surrounded by unimaginable beauty. Sunday made sure to change things up a bit for us just to remind us that we aren't actually living in a fairy tale.

We woke up in our hostel Sunday morning.......a little later than planned (after a few too many "snooze" buttons). We had wanted to make sure that we had enough time to enjoy our drive through the Western Czech Republic and that we gave ourselves some time to stop and enjoy the German countryside on our way to Frankfurt. Or so we thought. As it turned out when we arrived, Marcus's place was not at all in Frankfurt -- it was in a very small town called Budingen. It wasn't even really in Budingen. It was really in a small development outside of a small town where there used to be a military base -- but now there is nothing. His small development had no commercial property -- only houses and apartments and corn fields surrounding. Unfortunately, we wouldn't be walking down the block for lunch anymore.

That reminds me that I should add a bit of background info. We started out in Berlin, where we had an apartment for 10 days. We sublet someone's place while they were on vacation. After that 10 days, we were looking at a few options. We had looked at an apartment that we really liked and we had an email offer for another (each for 3-4 weeks), but upon arriving in Germany we found out that I have a cousin who lives in Frankfurt. My father is the youngest of 8 boys, so I have a number of cousins who I've never met. Marcus is one of those cousins. He had stopped by Grandma's the day that we were leaving for Germany (a few hours after we had) and wanted my contact info. An email later, he told us about how he would love to help us out and give us a free place to stay (with him) in Frankfurt so we could free up our money to travel on the weekends. He was very warm and welcoming when he told us that he spoke a number of languages and he thought he could be a great resource for us here and he said that he could take us around and show us some castles, etc.
I was a little hesitant at his offer. While it sounded nice (a free place to stay with someone who has been in Germany for years and knows a lot about it), I know that living with Sam and I could be a pain in the ass. We teach for 10 hours per day from Monday through Thursday now and we need to be in separate rooms with relative quiet. Additionally, there is some general weirdness in some of my extended family. They are all good people inside, but sometimes they can be strange. No one in my immediately family really knows Marcus. Ideally, I would have wanted to meet up with Marcus this past weekend to feel things out a bit. However, he had been in the US for a while and due to the Volcanic Ash that grounded everyone flying into or out of Europe for most of week, he wasn't able to get a flight back to Germany until this past weekend (Saturday night - April 24th). So he was set to arrive in Frankfurt on Sunday morning. Sam and I had to be out of our place by Saturday morning, so we decided to rent a car in Berlin on Friday and drive it to Prague and then to Frankfurt on Sunday. We had to return it by 4pm on Sunday in Frankfurt. I talked to Marcus on the phone to ask where the best place to return the car would be - whether at the airport or somewhere closer to him -- he said the airport was fine as it was only 30 or 35 minutes from his house and he could pick us up. I told him I'd try to call him from the road on our way from Prague.

When we finally got out of bed and got ready Sunday morning, we went downstairs in the hostel and handed in our key and "Czeched out" so to speak. We walked outside and ran into this English dude who was still drunk and hadn't slept (I get the feeling that as beautiful as Prague is by day, it gets pretty ugly at night....lol). As we were saying good morning and goodbye to him, Sam got my attention and pointed to our car (parked across the street). There on the front driver's tire was a lovely little yellow boot. Apparently we couldn't park where we were. We had left the car there from 12:45pm Saturday until a little past 9am on Sunday -- and it wasn't until about 10 minutes before we walked outside (we were told by the drunk Englishman and the street cleaner) that the police came by and booted it. So there was a number we had to call and no one knew exactly how much it would cost.....only that it should be around 500 Czech Crowns (about $25). We went into the hostel and called and the front desk dude talked to the cop to explain where we were. I will give them a little credit -- I half expected to wait hours on end, but they arrived pretty quickly. The cop came up with plenty of cop attitude and unnecessary sunglasses and explained to me (in English) that the maximum fine was 2,000 Crowns ($100), but that he was going to charge us 1,000 Crowns ($50). How sweet of him. The Englishman has been in Prague since October, so he spoke some Czech and he tried to reason with the guy. I told him that I didn't think we had 1,000 Crowns left on us. However, he didn't seem to budge much. He watched us count out every last coin we had -- 960 Crowns -- and then he snatched it out of our hands pissed off and he walked away angry. But we didn't have time to mess around......we had to get the car back to Frankfurt and meet with Marcus.

Fast forward about an hour........I realized that I never wrote down Marcus's number. So.....I couldn't call him from the road. Shoot.

And then we had a little trouble following our GPS when we got into Frankfurt. I hadn't planned to rent cars, so I didn't bring the car charger for my GPS. I figured that we would occasionally use it when walking around cities. Thanks to my parents, I bought the European maps pack for my Garmin Nuvi GPS. I mention this only because maybe that will help someone else. It was an incredible investment. I bought it on Amazon -- it cost $150 plus shipping to get it from Garmin, or $120 with free shipping from Amazon. Sometimes it is as low as $114. Buy it on a MicroSD card if you buy it. If you want to know why, ask me and I will explain.

Anyway......we made a mistake or two on the way into Frankfurt that added to our slow start to bring us PAINFULLY close to the return time of 4:00pm. We pulled into the garage finally at 3:53pm. And then we realized that we forgot to gas it back up......so we're going to get killed on that as they overcharge you an arm and a leg for that in the US......and gas is expensive here to begin with. So we weren't too happy, but what can ya do?

Our next step was to call Marcus. Let me back up once again and give some background. My cousin Marcus had called my dad the same day that we had left for Germany. He wanted my contact info because he definitely wanted to meet me and hang out. He had told my dad that Berlin was about 4.5 hours away from Frankfurt, but he would be happy to drive up to come see us and take us to a few places in Germany. I initially sent him an email hoping that maybe he had some contacts in Southern Germany who might have apartments. We really wanted to live in or around Munich, but we couldn't find any sites that weren't in German. All I really knew about Marcus was that he had been in the military and had stayed in Germany afterward.
When I emailed Marcus, I outlined the fact that Sam and I teach English on the Internet and we're going to be in Germany for a while to experience something different. I told him that we were staying in an apartment that we had sublet and that we were looking at other sublets in Berlin, but that we really wanted to be somewhere in Southern Germany. I hoped that he could help us at least make some phone calls in German and that I could meet him and connect with a cousin I never knew. He wrote back very enthusiastically, explaining that he retired from the military and he collects enough to live comfortably, so he doesn't work or anything. He told me that he speaks a number of languages and that his girlfriend was Russian but she doesn't speak any English. Then he offered for us to stay with him. He said that he would love to save us some money so we could use our money to travel and not have to worry about paying for a place to stay. This was a huge offer. I was very hesitant because I really didn't know him at all, but Sam and I decided that it made more sense to take up a family member on a free place to stay. We thought it would be a good resource to have someone who knew Germany well and it well. I sent Marcus a long email. I think my direct words were something along the lines of, "If this sounds like too much, it is no problem at all. We didn't plan on staying with you when we came to Germany, so if this doesn't work for you, that's absolutely fine. I just need to know so we can make a decision about where to live." Again, Marcus wrote back assuring me that everything was cool and that if it didn't work out at his house, he had several friends with hotels who would give us a special "Marcus rate" - nothing close to a regular hotel rate.

Marcus and I spoke on the phone finally on Friday of last week (April 23rd). He confirmed that he would be in Frankfurt on Sunday morning and that we were more than welcome to come to his apartment on Sunday. I told him that we had rented a car and that we would be driving to Prague and then to Frankfurt on Sunday. I also told him that we would try to call him from the road around noon and that we had to have the car back by 4pm.

Now we fast forward once again to Sunday afternoon at around 4:15pm. We had cleaned out the car and lugged all of our crapola into the airport terminal and sat down and paid our $11 to use the Internet after a pretty crappy day -- between the $50 fine in Prague and the expense of gas when we filled up and forgetting to fill up at the end, we felt like the trip had cost us more than we intended. But so goes life...it wasn't the end of the world.

So Marcus answered the phone and he almost immediately sounded annoyed. He said that he had expected us to call hours before. He kind of left things flat for a second, so I asked him if he was going to come get us at the airport or if we should take a taxi. I told him that I would need his address for a taxi. He said that he had emailed me his address (I checked....he hadn't). He said to go outside and try to get a taxi because it would be at least 30 or 35 minutes for him to get to the airport (which was absolutely no problem for us.....but I figured that he is doing us a favor, so heck with it...we could pony up for the taxi). I asked him how much it would be. He said it would probably be about 50 Euro ($67 or $68 or so). He told me to go get a taxi and then put him on the phone with the driver. I explained to Marcus, as I had previously on Friday, that we don't have a cell phone -- only Skype. I told him that I wouldn't get Internet access outside and that the taxi driver wasn't going to put on my headset. I said it was fine, we would figure it out after he gave us the address. He said that if they try to say 100 Euro to just call him again and he'd come and get us. I was more than a little annoyed.....if I knew we'd be taking a taxi, I would have definitely tried to find a rental location as close as possible to his place. Additionally, the line about "if they try to say 100 Euro" was very suspect. So I gave a taxi driver the address and asked how much. He told me that it would be 40-50 Kilometers and that the taxi would cost 13 Euro for every 10 Kilometers. I did the math in my head and figured that to be between 52-65 Euro and I figured that was close enough. He plugged the address into his GPS as we took off and he almost immediately said, "56 Kilometers". Ok.....I had been hoping for the 40km end, but what can you do? I quickly did the math in my head and I figured on around 72 Euro. I wasn't at all happy.....but again, ce la vie.

The taxi driver was extremely friendly and he taught us a bit about the history of Germany and the Czech Republic on the way to Marcus's house. It was a pretty cool conversation actually. He had been married to a Czech woman, so he told us about some places to see in the Czech Republic and both the Czech and German words for those places. He told us a bit about the Roman Empire and some castles and so on. We finally got to Marcus's and I asked him how much. He pointed to his meter, which read "91.15". I told him it wasn't possible. He tried to explain that this was what the meter said and he couldn't do any differently. I laid the math out for him (thanks to Mom for making me a good Math student) and explained that even if I gave him a lot of leeway, it couldn't have come out to more than 80 Euro, and it definitely should have been around 72. He sat there quiet and asked what we wanted to do. I wasn't really sure how to answer the question. Finally I went through my pockets....I didn't have a 2 Euro coin, so I had to give him 75. I told him that we wouldn't pay any more than that. He said OK and took it and helped us get our bags out of the back. Strange that he didn't insist.....which leads me to believe that we got ripped off. But we're there. We're outside Marcus's place (where is he while we're arguing with the cab driver btw?). But things are about to get better. We'll get inside and put down all of our bags and chillax. Finally this rough day was about to lighten and brighten up.

As the taxi driver drove away, Marcus came from around the back of the building. At first, I wasn't sure if it was him or not. Everyone had told me that he was tall and over 300 pounds. I also expected him to be somewhat dark-skinned. This guy coming around the corner was pretty large and dark, but he was moving very slowly and just sort of smirking -- not even a full smile or hello. I said hi first and his smile finally began to reveal a couple of teeth and he said "hi" kind of matter-of-factly. We exchanged a sort of awkward greeting as one might expect from family that just met (after 30 years in my case....37 in his).

We walked into his building and up a small flight of stairs, where he opened the door and his girlfriend was waiting inside. I was carrying a backpack on my front and back, so I just kind of walked in and Sam followed me. Marcus said, "usually we take our shoes off in the house" in a way that seemed half matter of fact and half like he thought we were rude for not taking them off. I'm usually super-conscious about the fact that some people take their shoes off, but I had so many things that I hadn't thought about it. I apologized and we took our shoes off.

He told us to put our stuff down in the hallway and he said the first thing to do is check the Internet. I figured we could sit down for a second first and catch up a bit. But OK -- we did need to make sure it was all good in the hood so to speak. He said, "so what do you need....do you need to plug in or something? Because I don't have Internet access here, but I think the people upstairs do or something."

WHAT???!?!?!??????????????????????????????!????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

NO INTERNET???????????!?!?!??????????????????????????????????????????

You have GOT to be kidding me.

I have to admit, my first thought was that he was joking. But the confused look on my face led to a look on his face that made it clear that this was no joke. I might have asked him if he was, in fact, serious. He certainly was. He said he didn't know what we had or needed - he figured that we could just plug into a phone jack or whatever and go.

Let me also take this opportunity to mention that Marcus had been in New York since January -- so it's not like he's been living under a rock where the modern world does not exist. He was in and around the city for the past few months.
I absolutely couldn't believe that this day had just gone from bad to worse. I told him that the Internet was the only thing we needed and that we absolutely needed to plug into a router. I told him that this was what I had mentioned in the email and why I had mentioned it. I also told him that we were going to need to figure something out because we had to work on Monday. My head raced trying to figure out what to do. I knew that I would have to email our company to tell them that we probably needed to cancel our sessions for Monday. I also knew that we might need to find a new place to stay. Both required Internet access....and if I had that, I wouldn't be in the predicament to need either. We went into the living room and sat down and I was completely dumbfounded. I don't think there is a better word. I felt like I was traveling through a Twilight zone. Between the taxi driver who seemed to have trouble understanding how the tariff couldn't have possibly been 91 Euro (and still paying $75 Euro -- over $100) and Marcus telling me that the only thing we really needed in a place to stay wasn't there....I was baffled and befuddled and beginning to wonder if I was the craziest person in the world.

So we sat down in his living room -- on the most amazing couch I have ever seen, mind you -- and wondered what the next step was. I had Sam grab her laptop in the off chance that a neighbor had wireless that was not password-protected. Of course, as fate would have it, all of the networks in reach were passworded. So Marcus said, "So what do we do now?" He also muttled something about how he didn't know what we would need because when his father comes, he just plugs in his computer and he has access. He also murmured something about how he was going to buy a laptop this week and try to get Internet in the apartment anyway. He had also previously mentioned that he was going to buy a car this week and some other things. As I'm sure it is similar to the states, I knew that even if he did want to get Internet access, it would likely only happen after a few days.

Maybe this is also an opportune time to mention that Marcus had mentioned in an email that he would only be in Germany for a few weeks and then he had to go back to New York for something. On Friday, when we talked on the phone, he said he would be around for 10-14 days. On the couch, he said he would be there for a week and he asked how long we were planning to stay.

Of course, without Internet access, we weren't planning to stay for long. I told him that Internet was absolutely essential. I asked him if he did indeed have friends with hotels that we could try. He made two phone calls. The first was to someone who had a hotel that had gone bankrupt and was empty.....but he thought maybe we could still go use the Internet during the day (as though that probably didn't get shut off long before they closed the hotel). They didn't have that place anymore. The second was to a guy he plays poker with. His family has a hotel apparently. The best they could do was 56 Euro a night I think. Mind you, we had turned down two places in Berlin that were 600 Euro and 420 Euro per MONTH with everything included. Those were two furnished apartments with utilities and Internet access that we could have had for a whole Month. When you figure that out by the day, it comes out to about 20 Euro per night (maybe a little less since May has 31 days). Staying in a hotel for 56 Euro per night for a week wasn't doing me any favors. Add to this the fact that in a hotel, Sam and I would be teaching in the bedroom and bathroom I guess? So I'd be sitting on the toilet or something? Not so preferable.

Marcus again asked what we wanted to do......as though I would have a solution to a huge problem that he had created. We could have had a place lined up in Berlin and we could have saved ourselves a hundred bucks from the airport to his place as well as the gas to drive all the way to Frankfurt......so we're already out a good bit of money that we didn't need to be....and I didn't have a solution. In the back of my mind, I knew that we could probably find something in Berlin....but a 1-way train ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin is either 97 Euro for a slow train a couple of times a day or 113 Euro for most trains. That's about $145 each. So now we're out $290 + $100 for the taxi and I'll be generous and only throw in $50 in gas from Prague to Frankfurt.....in reality, it was probably quite a bit more. So far, we're down $440 on this favor.

Sam asked if there was an Internet cafe where we could get online and at least email our bosses and look for something else. Props to Sam...I think my brain was too fried by the transition to this netherworld in which we were to think that straight. Marcus said absolutely and that he would take us right down. So we tossed on our shoes and went. Before we went out the door, he held out his arms and dropped two 2 Euro coins in my hand and in Sam's hand for the Internet access. I told him that it was unnecessary -- but at the same time, I accepted.

Marcus drove us to a casino. He said that he thought they had Internet access.......which, odd as it sounds, I have noticed to be true. I've seen signs outside of a few casinos that say, "Internet". So we went in and they had computers with coin slots like an arcade machine. So we each popped in our 2 Euro and away we went.

Sam and I popped off 20 or 30 or 40 emails desperately begging for a place to stay in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Amsterdam, Florence, and any other corner of Western Europe that seemed possible. I concentrated my efforts on Berlin because I know that the rent there is more affordable than in most other cites in Europe. However, at that moment, I would have stayed in a cow pasture in the Ukraine if it had Internet access.

So we fired off emails, including one to our company explaining that we had a personal emergency and needed to cancel our sessions for Monday. It really bothered me to do this because they have recently offered me some sessions that have a lot more students and an opportunity to make a lot more money. However, they are a regularly scheduled lecture series that can not be canceled. These sessions haven't started yet, but I don't want anyone thinking that I am unreliable. The last thing I wanted to do was cancel our classes less than 24 hours in advance, but so be it. We had to do what we had to do. Unfortunately, no one from our company would be online until after midnight and we certainly wouldn't have access then, so I was going to have to hope that I'd wake up to an "it's OK message" when we returned to the Internet cafe in the morning. After almost 2 hours of looking and emailing, I could tell that Marcus was getting antsy (and losing all of his money in a slot machine). I told him that we were ready to go. He called his girlfriend so we could get ready and go to dinner.

I should also mention that on the phone last week, Marcus told me that he was going to propose to his girlfriend at dinner. As it turned out, he had done it earlier in the day before we arrived. Strange situation, but whatever.

I should also mention that his wife to be has a daughter who came out and quickly said hi to us when we arrived and then went back to her room and didn't make a sound. She was cute and shy and didn't speak any English, so she didn't hang out with us for long.

So we went back to the house to pick up his girlfriend. On the way, he said that his girlfriend told him that it was too late to eat (I never understood all of that, "eating late at night makes you fat" garbage). But she was going to come and just drink at dinner. Ok. Whatever.

So she got in the car with us and away we went...without her daughter. Her daughter was 9 and I thought it was a bit odd to leave her at home while we went to dinner...but it was so far from the weirdest pieces of this puzzle that it didn't phase me as much as it should have.

So we went to dinner at a cool little German place in a very stereotypical-looking spot. The building looked like what you picture in a little German town. I don't know how to describe that right now, but it looked pretty.

We asked Marcus for some help with the menu, and he helped a little.....but it also seemed like I knew a few things in German that he didn't. That surprised me a bit. Then when he was ordering, I noticed that he added a couple of Spanish words and a couple of English words that didn't belong. I thought that to be a strange, but not the end of the world.

During dinner, conversation was a little odd. Marcus's girlfriend doesn't speak English, but she understands a fair bit I guess. Sam tried to involve her by commenting on how much she liked this girl's nails -- they were pretty intricately done. She clearly understood the smile and warm expression that Sam gave her and the fact that Sam had pointed to her nails. But she looked down and seemed to hide them and she didn't say anything. I thought it was kind of strange that she didn't even say, "Thanks" in German, but she seemed kind of shy, so whatever.

Conversation was a little weird. At times, Marcus translated some things back and forth, and at times he didn't. At times, he answered questions that I asked and at times he didn't. At times he said more than 3 words, but most times he didn't. It was a strange kind of lack of conversation - not just at dinner, but all day. To give one example, earlier in the afternoon, I had asked him what his job was in the military. He responded with, "to Kill people".

More interesting than that was his response to one of Sammy's questions. She asked him, "So how long did it take you to pick up on the language?". Marcus replied, "I picked up on it the first day". She kind of laughed and he was dead serious. Except here's the thing.....he doesn't really speak the language. Sam wanted Balsamic Vinegar on her salad. I tried to explain that to the waiter because I knew the word for Vinegar (Essig). Marcus chimed in over me to say "Oil and Vinegar" in a German-sounding accent -- as though the word was the same. I think I tried to repeat the correct word, but he spoke over me to insist on "Vinegar". I think the waiter understood enough English to get what he meant....but the fact of the matter was that he was full of it. He didn't even really speak German after (supposedly) living here for 8 years.

As dinner wrapped up, the waiter brought the bill. I glanced at it to add up what we owed. Marcus grabbed it and said, "it's OK" and he pulled money from his pocket and paid. I told him that we could pay for our own and I dropped 30 Euro on the table (about $40). He kind of shrugged and commented that he, "just wanted to save us some money". Then he proceeded to leave the money alone for a while and then slowly pull out his wallet, carefully fold the money, and put it in. I mention this part not because I care about the money -- we can, after all, pay for our own food -- but more because of the way it went down. It was strange how slowly and deliberately he kind of picked it up and folded it and put it away. I'm not sure what the deal was. But whatever. We may have spent as much on dinner anywhere.

So we finished dinner and went back to his place. In their apartment, they had a spare room with a futon-type thing that folded down. I think we had already twice addressed the fact that the futon was fine with us, but for some unknown reason, Marcus made his girlfriend go wake up her daughter (at around midnight) to move her into the spare room so we could sleep in the little girl's Hannah Montana bed. Neither of us understand even a little bit why he insisted on waking up this little girl and moving her. So they moved the little girl and we put our stuff in her room. Sam and I went to bed shortly thereafter and whispered about how he probably had a hidden camera in that room and about how we wanted to get the heck out of there as soon as possible.

The next morning, we woke up and the place was empty. I knew that Marcus had to take his girlfriend to work and the little one to school, but he should have been back well before we had woken up. This wasn't a super big deal. A bigger deal was the fact that the day before, Sam had a problem with her hair straightener. When I had spoken to Marcus while he was still in New York, he asked if we needed anything from the US. After initially saying no, I quickly corrected myself to say that we needed a power converter. Our power converters are too short to fit into the outlets here. We have two outlet adapters that we can plug our laptops into because the laptops automatically change the electricity. However, Sam's expensive hair straightener ($130) does not convert the electricity. She learned that the hard way when she blew one in Australia a few years ago. So I asked Marcus if he could pick one up for us. He told me that he had plenty of them because he picks one up almost every time he goes back and forth. So on Sunday night, Sam went to the bathroom to get ready before we went out to dinner. She came into the living room from the bathroom and she asked Marcus if he had a power converter because she wanted to straighten her hair. He said, "yes". And that was it. Just "yes". She was standing there and he was still laying on the couch. So she said, "OK -- is it just in the bathroom somewhere?". He turned and said, "So you mean I have to get up?" He rolled around and got stumbled off the couch and he got the adapter and plugged it into the wall for her. A while later, Sam told me that her straightener didn't work and she didn't know why -- she ended up having to use Marcus's girlfriend's straightener. Fast forward to Monday morning. I saw the adapter in the bathroom. I picked it up because it just looked like a straight up wall adapter -- not a power converter. It CLEARLY says on the side that it "does not convert electrical power". In English. Black & white. There goes another $130 plus the cost of the converter here -- I'm imagining slightly more expensive than at home since there is probably a smaller supply.

So we started to get ready and Marcus came back. He asked what we wanted to do (I felt like I had heard this more than I ever care to hear it again by this point). I told him that we needed to get back to the Internet place to get on the computer. We showered up and finished getting ready and he took us. We got on the computer, and by a stroke of divine intervention, we had exactly one email out of the tons of emails that said, "yes, you can move in today". All of Sam's emails said "no". I received one other "yes" response from a place that said that we could move in on Tuesday -- but it was only for 3 days. The one guy who said that we could move in right away, Alex, didn't say much else. He attached a few pictures and said he would be free after 4pm. At that point, I didn't even remember which listing was his, so I went back to find it again. The listing was about as minimal as could be. I normally would have assumed that a listing with such little information was a scam -- but we had been desperate. The listing just had a short list of what the apartment had and a couple of pictures that weren't very bright (yet the listing touted how the apartment was "bright" and "sunny"). Basically, all Alex said was that we could move in that same day and that he was free to talk after 4pm. He gave his number. He had a Germany phone number and last name......two promising sign. We've had contact with people in China and Nigeria and various other countries who supposedly have an apartment for rent in Florence or Rome or blah blah blah.

We were still looking through and writing some more messages because we still couldn't be sure about this place. Marcus had to go pick up the little one from school at 1pm, so he offered to leave us there (we were at a new casino, btw) while he went to get her. While he was gone, Sam and I finally had a chance to talk where we felt far enough from prying ears. We had previously (the night before) discussed staying Monday night and trying to have somewhere else to go Tuesday morning.

However, I was sufficiently creeped out and unhappy at this point. I knew that we had one potential offer and another place that looked legitimate for 3 or 4 days from Tuesday. Sam was clearly upset and frustrated and I couldn't see telling work that we would miss another day. My initial thought was to wait until 4pm to call this dude from Marcus's place and see if it was on the up and up and then possibly catch a train after that to Berlin. But between the look on Sammy's face as she continued to stare at the screen in desperation and my own desire to get out of dodge, I manned up and made a decision. I told Sam that I thought we should tell Marcus we had the place when he came back and we should ask for a ride to the train station. I thought that perhaps we would sit in the Frankfurt train station until 4pm to call Alex and then go from there. If things weren't good, we could still catch a train to Berlin and stay in a hostel for a night. It sure beat another night in the Hannah Montana bed with a guy whose job was "to kill people".

So my next stop was the train website. I looked up the schedule and found that we could leave Frankfurt a couple of times each hour more or less. The cost was the kicker -- 113 Euro each. That's 226 Euro together for a 1-way ticket to Berlin from the main Frankfurt station. Considering Marcus's reluctance to pick us up at the airport and the fact that we were in some small podunk town outside of Frankfurt, I wasn't confident he would bring us there. From his podunk town, I think it only came to like 232. More or less, about $300. On top of what we wasted on gas to get to Frankfurt, the extra money we paid to return the car in a different city than where we picked it up (about $40), the $100 from the airport to his house, the $130 for the straightener, the $10.83 I had to pay to use the Internet in the airport to call Marcus, the $13 it cost us to use the Internet to look for apartments, the $200 or so that we lost from not working on Monday, and the priceless frustration, this wasn't really making either of us too happy. Each time I started thinking about how much money was just being thrown away for no reason whatsoever, I wanted to cry. This was turning out to be a very, very expensive mistake. This is actually the first time that I've really put the numbers on paper and thought about them. It's one thing if we chose to spend that money on something. It was another to feel like we threw it in the garbage.

Anyway -- I remembered that I had read that there was some sort of German Rail pass. I researched it and found this to be true. For a 2-person 3-day pass, it only cost 258 Euro altogether. It was a small amount more than the 1-way to Berlin and we would get three days of unlimited rail travel. In other words, we could get our ticket to Berlin plus a round trip to use on any other days within a month. This seemed like a wise decision. The catch: you can only order them online to be shipped to your home address outside of Germany. These passes are only available to non-Germans, so they only mail them outside of the country. The website also says that they sell them in select train stations in Germany -- but it doesn't mention anywhere which train stations those are. Nice.

A quick Internet/Lonely Planet search revealed that you can buy this pass in the Frankfurt Airport. Since that is only about 30-35 minutes from Marcus's house, I decided that the least he could do was drive us there. When he came back, I told him that I was sorry that we had to run so fast, but we had found a place in Berlin that was much more economical (500 Euro for a month with everything (TV, electricity, Internet, the whole 9 yards) included -- a much better idea than spending 60 Euro a day for the next 3 or 4 days. I told him that we needed to get to the Frankfurt Airport so we could get a train back to Berlin. I explained that we were going to buy a special pass that we needed to buy at the airport, so we needed a ride to the airport. He told me that we could get our passes at any train station and that he would take us to a place called Hanau. I explained to Marcus that we were looking to buy a special 3-day pass that wasn't available everywhere. He told me that pass was only available for the weekends -- I knew he was talking about the 3-day family pass available for German families which covers up to 5 people. We were looking at something for foreigners. I explained this to Marcus and he told me that we could definitely buy the pass in Hanau and that even if not, the airport was only one stop away and wouldn't cost more than a few Euros to get to. I was getting a little annoyed, but I also didn't want to blow another $100 to get to the airport, so I bit my tongue and said that would be fine. I told him that we could have lunch with him and then we would need to go. He mentioned twice that he thought we should probably get going if we were going to travel all the way to Berlin. The second time was enough for me, so I just agreed.

So we went back and packed everything up and off we went to Hanau. We drove. And drove. And drove. It seemed to take almost exactly as long to get to this Hanau place as it did to the airport. I've since looked it up on Google Maps. It was 56km from the airport to his place -- and 35 from his place to Hanau. A difference of 21km is about 12 miles. Considering the fact that the highway has no speed limit, that's a pretty negligible difference -- it's not like it takes 12 minutes to go that much farther. So we got to Hanau and he didn't help us get in with our bags or ask about the train passes - he just opened up the trunk and said peace out. That was fine with me.

We went in and asked about the train pass. Of course, as I already knew, it is only available at select train stations. It cost us 14 Euro more ($18 and change) to get to where they sell the passes. FanTASTIC. Get me out of here.

From there, things got a little better for a little while. We got our train to the main station, where we also got our passes (apparently from a very friendly ticket agent -- Sam smiled more than I had seen in days while they were talking. I was guarding all of our worldly possessions). We could take any train for the rest of the night, giving us many options. We sat down in the McCafe in the train station -- the first time either of us have eaten McDonald's food in a long, long time. Kind of strange that we don't eat it in the US and we got it here. Also kind of strange seeing as how we have only seen 3 McDonalds since we've been here -- props to Germany on that one.

Anyway -- I got back online in the train station and called Alex a few minutes after 4pm. He sounded German -- that was a plus. We didn't talk too much - I told him that we would take a train around 5:15pm that would put us in Berlin around 9:30pm. He asked which station we would go to and he said that he could borrow a car and pick us up when we got in. This made me hesitant -- a guy who likely expects us to have all of our cash, at least 2 computers, and all of our other things (including American passports) -- wanted to pick us up in a car. Who knows where he would drive us? I politely declined and said that we could get a train to his neighborhood and walk it. He told me that it was raining in Berlin. I told him I'd email him our train number and that I would call him when we arrived.

So I was about 50/50 at this point as to what was going on. All I can say for sure is that I was praying with every last ounce of energy I had that this wasn't going to be a scam and that we weren't going to get jumped by 6 guys, beaten up, and robbed. All I could do was hope.

We got on our train at 5:15pm and hoped for the best. Apparently you can pay a few extra bucks to reserve specific seats, but I didn't catch that before we get on. Without reserving seats, you have to do the truffle shuffle through open seats until the train starts to empty out. This was far from our biggest concern at this point. Once we got a few stops out of Frankfurt, the train emptied considerably and we got two decent seats that had a table in front and two seats facing us. All 4 were empty. so we sat down and relaxed. A stop or two later, two guys got on and sat across from us -- and old man in a 3 piece suit and a young man who appeared to be in his mid-30's. I was writing part of this blog entry and I noticed that they were pointing to the back of my computer and talking. I have a lot of stickers on the back, so I figured they were just looking at them. At some point, the old guy asked me something in German. I told him that I didn't speak German -- and the young dude immediately asked me the same question in English, so I responded kind of slowly (teaching English online has me in a mode where I automatically talk to non-native speakers slowly). As it turns out, that wasn't too necessary. The two men were both German -- they were grandfather and grandson -- but the grandson had been born in Minneapolis and lived most of his life outside of Germany and his grandfather had spent a few years in Maryland at some point. More interesting than that -- the old man told us that he was born in a small town, but he moved to Berlin 72 years ago. That would have been 1938 -- a very interesting time to have been living in Berlin indeed. He proceeded to talk our ears off about history for the rest of our time on the train -- and it was very, very interesting. He told us about rebuilding after the war and the way that people pulled together despite the horrible situation and he pointed out Volkswagen headquarters as we passed it and the town that wouldn't be if not for it. He taught us about the canal system and the history of Germany and the different dialects spoken in the South and North. I only wish that I had felt more comfortable to ask him about his childhood and the height of the Nazi empire -- and the 30+ years that he lived in a divided Berlin and what it has been like since it was reunified. He did make sure to mention that he lived in the American sector -- not the communist part. Anyway -- this was a definite improvement over where things had been in the morning and a slight improvement in conversation from, "to kill people".

We got to Berlin at precisely 9:26pm -- the exact time the schedule said (the German train system is pretty tight). We called Alex and I told him that we could take a train to a station near his apartment. He explained to me how to take the train there, but I definitely haven't perfected the art of understanding German names when spoken by Germans. I didn't completely understand and I had to ask for help in the station.

From here, the short version of the long story is that we didn't go the right way. Instead of taking 20 minutes, it took us about 2 hours to get to the right station. At that point, Alex was nowhere to be found and there were no phones or Internet access. It was raining. The only real option ended up being to have Sam sit near the exit of the train station (with all of our worldly possessions) while I ran down the block (with my backpack still on at this point) trying to find a phone. As I ran around, the plastic bag that had been hanging from my backpack with our travel books in it broke, dropping our books on the ground and soaking them. Eventually, I had to return to Sam to drop off my backpack and make another run for it through the rain. I finally found an Internet cafe a block and a half away and I called Alex. He was very nice on the phone and he said that he would be there to pick us up at the Internet cafe in 10 minutes. I sprinted back to get Sam -- the train station was a little shady at this hour of night and I was concerned, but there was no other option really. When I got there, Sam was visibly shaken. Some strange (probably drunk) German man had come up to her and pointed at her bags and screamed at her in German. Someone came walking down the stairs and he screamed at them and then stumbled away. It was enough to give her a scare.

We saddled up the bags and walked down to the Internet cafe -- just getting wetter as we walked. A couple of minutes later, Alex pulled up in a really small car. We packed our bags in and I prayed that we weren't getting beaten up/robbed/killed. We needed him to drive us to an ATM because for some reason we weren't able to take out money when we tried somewhere else. Sam went in to take out the money and I talked to Alex in the car. I asked him about why the apartment was vacant and where he was living. He explained that he had worked in the hotel industry for a few years but he didn't like it. He decided to go back to school. His apartment was paid for with his schooling, but he stayed with his girlfriend and her daughter from a previous relationship. Her daughter was only with the father once a month, so at most they had used the apartment once a month for the past 6 months. One of his friends told him he should try putting it up on Craigslist and he did. If only I had known all of this before and I had some time to negotiate. I definitely could have gotten him down at least to 400 Euro. Anyway, as I got to talking with him, I started to feel a bit more at ease. He was very friendly and very sincere. He seemed about as harmless as you could possibly imagine.

Sam got the money and got back in and we drove to the place. Alex pulled in, and it immediately started pouring harder than it had all night. Wonderful yet again. So we grabbed the bags and ran as best we could -- getting absolutely soaked on the way in. Then we started walking up. And up. And up. And up. I've since counted -- 76 stairs, no elevator to the apartment.

However, once we walked in, our luck completely changed. The apartment is absolutely beautiful. It's got nice wood floors, VERY comfortable leather furniture, and a large bedroom and decent kitchen. There is also a nice patio-type area. It's like an enclosed balcony with large windows on both sides. Since we're on the top floor, we get a LOT of sunlight during the day. And the biggest part -- the Internet is perfect. Alex spent a while with us here showing us everything we needed to know and making sure that our computers connected to the Internet without any problems. He was the friend that we desperately needed at that moment -- a really great guy.

After we went over everything, we paid him. Sam mentioned that it was April 26th -- so she asked if that meant we were out May 26th or something. Alex said, "or 28th, or 29th -- it doesn't really matter much to me". I think he was just thrilled to have a bunch of extra money in his pocket. He said to let him know if we needed anything -- an extra pillow, information about tourist attractions, anything at all. We appreciated it.

Anyway -- we said our goodbyes and Sam got a shower and I took a nice, long, HOT, bath. We were finally able to relax. We talked to our families at length to explain the adventure of the past few days, and we went to bed VERY late.

We were both mentally drained and physically exhausted. But man -- it was nice to be home :-).