The Girl Who Ate Everything

For an overview of my trip to Berlin that took place from April 5 to 12, check out this introductory post. I'm a total noob when it comes to Berlin and German history, and all German translations I've presented are done with Google Translate; if I've written anything that's wrong, please let me know!

I can't tell you how many times I mentally punched myself over this post taking OVER THREE WEEKS to write. It's no prize-winner; it's just really long. Long enough to be two posts, in which case the lag seems less shitty, right? Ok.

Breakfast sandwiches, gimme.

Here's the course I take every morning through my local subway station in Brooklyn: descend stairs, turn right, swipe Metrocard, walk through turnstile, turn right, walk past benches, wait for train.

During my vacation, this was my morning course through Nollendorfplatz station: walk through northwest entrance, turn left, BASK IN THE SWEET, SWEET GLOW OF THE LAFINO BAKERY STAND AND BUY A SANDWICH!!, ascend/descend stairs depending on what train I want to take, wait for train.

The second one wins. If I regularly commuted through Nollendorfplatz, the stand would just blend into the background, but to me—tourist, lover of cheap sandwiches, unaccustomed to the convenience of baked goods for sale inside a metro station and intent on taking advantage of that convenience while ignoring that low-wheat diet thing I was on before the trip—it was the highlight of my morning. I could happily walk to the station from the hotel knowing my reward would be a €1 sandwich.

...Along with a fantastic, easy to use, state-of-the-art network of trains that could take me just about anywhere I wanted to go in Berlin.

But...sandwich.

As I said in my last post, it's not like Lafino's sandwiches are anything special—but in the context of my trip, they were. Yesterday's was ham, lettuce, cucumber, and mayo on a baby baguette (baguettini?); today's was hard boiled egg, lettuce, cucumber, and mayo on a baby baguette. I downed it before Kåre and I got to our first stop of the day...

Photograph: blacque_jacques on Flickr

Last weekend, I accomplished a thing!

Not a...remarkable thing. Or a difficult thing. Nor something that's actually worth writing about (although I'll admit I gave myself a mental gold star, because if it's good enough for a five-year-old, it's good enough for me). But I'll mention it anyway because it doesn't happen much.

I brought my usually out-of-date Flickr page up to date! All those photos that have been sitting on my hard drive over the last month? Edited and uploaded. This means I could feasibly blog about stuff that happened as recently as three days ago instead of digging back to three months ago (I'm going to finish those Berlin posts, though, I swear, SWEAAAARRRR [impassioned yell turns into high-frequency shrill; neighborhood dogs turn their heads in confusion]). How'd I overcome my usual photo editing malaise? It went a little something like this:

• Late Saturday afternoon: After a morning and afternoon of hanging out with Melissa, I pop into the Serious Eats office to edit photos (I rarely edit photos at home these days since my work computer is so much faster). While thinking about what to supplement the editing process with—I usually listen to a radio show or watch a TV show on my second monitor—I turn to the folder of Sherlock episodes Max gave me weeks ago.
• A few seconds into the first episode my brain yells, "MARTIN FREEEMAAAN!!!" The yell is a mix of happiness—Martin Freeman is on my short list of "actors I'm pretty/very fond of"—and distress for not knowing he was on this insanely popular TV show for the last two years. If my yell had been audible, it would've sounded more like the latter category. Something like "AUUUUGGGHHHUUUGGH" with a hint of gurgle. (I wanted to take a stab at writing that out in IPA, but after poking around this guide for a few minutes, I was put in my rightful place as a non-linguist and I gave up.)
• Late-late Saturday night: After watching two 90-minute episodes of Sherlock, aka a three hour period during which my butt and my chair enter the fusing stage, I finish editing all my photos. Weeeee!!!!
• Sunday afternoon: At home, I prep photos to upload to Flickr, which probably takes longer than most people would expect it to since it involves tagging every photo and writing descriptions with appropriate links to locations and whatnot. But this time it takes even longer...because I'm simultaneously watching Sherlock.
• Late Sunday night: Not only have I successfully uploaded all my photos, I've also watched the remaining four episodes (six hours) of Sherlock.
• Late-late Sunday night: Despite having finally uploaded all those photos, I feel like fail for having spent most of the day in my room, further strengthening the butt-groove in my chair. But since I'm less of a do-er and more of a forever-sedentary-er, I throw out the idea of doing anything productive and decide to rectify my ignorance of Martin Freeman's career for the last five years by watching more TV, this time in the form of Boy Meets Girl, which is quite enjoyable, although low on Martin Freeman. Around 4 a.m., I slump into bed.

So all I need is a really compelling TV show to keep me glued to my computer, and I'll push the boundaries of healthy computer use and sleep deprivation ever further.

Aaaand on to the food portion of this post.

[stares at monitor; clasps hands; narrows eyes to slits] (This is how I give the illusion of deep thought, even though my thoughts are more along the lines of this.)