Tille is really nice (far left). He helps me with my bags to walk downstairs in the station to the U-Bahn platform (subway). We talk a little bit about my trip, where exactly in Canada I'm from (I've come to answer 'the middle,… east' to this question) and how heavy my bags are now that we had to give up the cart. Six stops later, we get off at my new home, Subbelrather Street. The AIESEC office is here, and my house is a fifteen minute walk west down the street. After silently thanking the building planner for including an elevator in his vision of 247 Subbelrather Str. I hauled my bags into the office (see picture) and met the rest of my AIESEC coworkers (save my roommate, Levin, who was away on business) Lars, Stephan, Katja, and Janik. (see picture) They had been waiting for me and we quickly left to get some dinner at the closest biergarten (beer garden) This was altogether fine by me, I was tired of breakfast by this point having consumed several interpretations of it during the many legs of my journey. Dinner my second brush with the German language in as many hours. I quickly realized that I was utterly unable to read a menu. Luckily, my fellow AIESECers offered to read it to me before I had to ask, but it was pretty clear I would have to take some language classes quickly. Once we finally managed to translate various pork products, Ostrich steak and 'female turkey' (ok, maybe translate isn't the right word) I settled on some kind of pig-laced pasta. The food was good, and the conversation inevitably shifted to AIESEC, Lars, Katja and Janik had just gotten back from a weekend long conference and had plenty to talk about.
Side-note to meeting my coworkers:
The office here is AMAZING. It has three conference rooms, a laundry room, a shower, a fully equipped kitchen and a huge open-concept central room lined with picture windows. And, keeping in mind that the average age is 25, we also have a gaggle of speakers and a DVD player. The reasons to go home are few and generally involve sleep.
;)