After having a very rough first 10 days in Berlin, I decided to run away from home and hit my reset button. I hopped on a train for Hamburg because it was the closest city to Berlin and took me closer to Bremen, which was one of the cities I intended on visiting. Any attempt at exploring Hamburg was thwarted by the extreme blisters I had developed and general fatigue from my travels. I decided to use the day as a day of rest and spent most of my time in my hotel watching German television.
Novum Hotel, Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Novum Hotel, Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Novum Hotel, Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Novum Hotel, Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, Hamburg. Photo by Scarlett Messenger
The second week didn’t go much better than the first. We had great difficulty getting our phones to work and found out we wouldn’t have internet for over a week. With no internet, not tv, no books, no music, and little else to entertain us, we tried to explore the city as much as possible, but I ended up with blisters so bad I actually wondered if I was going to have to seek medical intervention (people with MS have to be careful of such things, just like diabetics.) The week ended with me having a bit of a nervous breakdown and running away to Hamburg without telling my roommate where I was going. Not the most considerate thing, but the situation was complicated and at that moment he was part of the problem.
Week 1 started off badly, with us stranded on our first night in Berlin with nowhere to stay. We sorted out the misunderstanding, but Berlin and I got off on the wrong foot. Rather than try to conceal my culture shock, loneliness, and fear behind a veil of “cool”, I decided to make video blogs to give me a free place to wallow and expose how vulnerable I felt. This actually was very therapeutic, because it enabled me to feel safe in exploring the city, knowing that if the experience was less than positive I could always laugh about it later in my own “comedy of misery” style. I think that if I had not given voice to these feelings of disorientation I would have ended up paralyzed by fear. I think I took for granted how hard it was going to be to be a 45 year old woman with multiple disabilities to be separated from her husband and family for 12 weeks.
