Berlin

So I'm getting things started over in Berlin with my old friend Jan.  The trip over included lots of really bad airplane sleep, a couple hours with my friend John Paul in Boston (where a guy kept staring at him while having conversations with a stuffed toy), a couple hours in Zurich, a distinctly average romantic comedy (No Strings Attached), a lost (forgotten) book (the only one I brought), lugging a 50 pound instrument through 4 different cities, and being thrown back into speaking German after 13 years.  Definitely a good start.

The most notable incident involved me taking my pedal steel off the conveyer belt only to find the case OPEN and the whole thing wrapped in about 5 pounds of duct tape.  Granted, they had to ensure that the case wasn't full of illegal stuff, and it was packed pretty full.  But they clearly were opening a really delicate instrument and the case had obviously been closed when they received it.  So obviously it was capable of being closed.  So they took the most expensive thing I own and left the fucking case open and just covered it in duct tape while it travelled in cargo holds across the ocean.  I was pretty fucking pissed needless to say.

I slept 12.5 hours last night I feel tired, sick, and really really really excited for the weeks to come.  (There's also a German rap song on the radio that came out when I lived here in like 95).