bikes!

TodayI woke up pretty early from jetlag and went to mauerpark to buy an ethernet cable at the flea market.. which I did, and I also bought a bike from a shady turkish guy for 50 euros.. then on the train ride home I talked to a random german guy on the train who also had a bike, who noticed that the highway next to the train tracks was closed off and there were thousands of people riding their bikes on it... apparently it was some demonstration, but the next thing I knew I got off at the stop he did and went down by the biker staging area at an onramp to the highway to take some pictures. I ended up riding my bike onto the highway to get some better shots, and then got caught up in the awesomeness of 150,000 bikers riding on the highway into berlin and ended up riding my new bike all the way from nikolassee to brandenburger tor, which was incredible.

after that I came back to schlachtensee and left with fellow interxchange student Paul, who was ready to head out for the 4:45 meeting of all the kids in the program with the bike he bought a few days ago, so we took the s and ubahns together to the treffpunkt and then met everyone and went on a boat tour on the spree, followed by a presentation about all the stuff we're going to be learning (the actual seminars will probably be a ton more interesting than the overview, but it's nice to have started learning again!)