Cedric vs Cobblestone Streets

Am Sande, the city center of Lüneburg. All the buses go here eventually, and people usually give directions starting here.

Fucking Lüneburg, friends. It's beautiful, warm, it's been sunny pretty much during all the daylight hours and thundering during all the night time hours. Honestly, ideal. However, getting here was a challenge, to say the least.

Let's rewind a li'l bit: I'm landing in Berlin at 21:05 on Wednesday, 17 May. I get off of the plane, very tired from having not gotten any sleep over the past 24 hours (real time hours, not counting time zone changes). I go to the information desk, and they tell me I can catch the train not far from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof, or main train station, then hop on the last train to Hamburg for the night (Hamburg was my destination for Wednesday because it's really close to Lüneburg and hospitality is substantially more available). I think, "awesome!" and I exchange whatever large bills I have in dollars to Euros before making a mad dash to the train, which leaves in ten minutes. I make it on in time with my ticket (which nobody ended up asking for? I think this was a fluke) and got to the Hauptbahnhof by 22:15. Looking around, I see a schedule which shows the train for Hamburg leaving at 22:22 from platform 7. I think, "great, I'm on platform 5. Shouldn't be that hard to get there." Turns out there are two platform 7's at Berlin Hbf, and I missed the train.

There are no more trains headed to Hamburg, and the next train back to the Flughafen doesn't arrive at the Hbf until 1:00. I figure it's best to just eat the extra cost and find a room in a hostel or something. Turns out, everywhere in Berlin is booked, and the cheapest places that aren't booked are almost 200 Euro. So I wander around a bit, still really flipping tired, until a cab driver asks if I need a taxi after seeing me walk past a few times. I tell him yes please, and if I could get to the Shönefeld Flughafen that'd be great. The cab ride cost 50 Euro, and I got back to the airport at 1; suddenly waiting till 1 for that train to pay only 4 Euro didn't seem so bad. I stumble out of the taxi, drunk on sleep deprivation at this point, and find my way back into the lobby of the little airport. I put my suitcase down in the lobby (the actual arrivals and departures areas were blocked off because there were no more flights coming in for the day), and try to sleep on it for the night. I'd figure out getting to Lüneburg the next day.

However, apparently the airport doesn't take too kindly to strange people sleeping in their lobby during times when there are no flights coming or going, so I had to leave at 2 in the morning or so. I make my way to the only other place I know in this area (the Bahnhof) and sleep on a bench outside until about 3:30. Oddly enough, the sun's just about to rise at this point, so I can't really get back to sleep. The next train that I want to get on is at 4:44 and would be the first of four trains I would board before finally getting to Lüneburg. I made it into town at about 8:30, and the city map out front showed that the campus of the university that I was through wasn't too far away. I merrily walk down the road with my suitcase, uke and backpack (about 40 kg altogether) and start seeing signs for Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Awesome. I follow those for a while, and after two or three km, I find myself at Leuphana Universität. However, I look at the address that I need to find, and it's on Scharnhorststrasse, which doesn't seem to be on the posted Uni maps and isn't immediately apparent. I circle the area and move into the outerlying streets to see if it's just a little off campus to no avail.

Here's the train that took me from Shönefeld for the first time. I would end up sleeping here.

I finally cave and ask someone for directions (at this point, I do not have a SIM card so I do not have data or calling to get help) in German. I say the street name and she kinda laughs nervously and says "oh, that's a long way from here." She then proceeds to give me directions to the street, which I would later learn was another 3 km away. However, I suppose I missed some of her directions or maybe they were incomplete based off of local knowledge, but I found myself lost again, perhaps another 1km closer. At this point, I had not had any food or water for 24 hours, my feet were blistered from walking between Wednesday and today, and I needed to stop somewhere for necessities, so I stopped in at a Pharmacy on Feldstrasse, close-ish to where the campus without the mysterious Scharnhorststrasse was.

By this point, the wheels on my suitcase are gone. The cobbestone of the streets and sidewalks have completely worn them down, and I am effectively dragging a 22kg bag across cobblestone to my destination. It's a beautiful sunny day, fairly warm, and I'm totally wiped already.

The cashier was very pleasant, and she pulled up the street on her computer via maps. She showed that if I followed one of the main roads long enough that it became a different road name, I'd be really close to the campus. I thanked her, purchased some goods (but no water, because they surprisingly didn't have any bottles of water to buy???) and went on my way. I'm now sure that I'm headed in the right direction thanks to the visual aid, and I start heading confidently (although still while in pain and exhausted and thirsty etc) toward Scharnhorststrasse. However, the street I was following stops having a sidewalk after a while, and a path that leads off the road seems to be the only way to go.

So, I take the path and begin veering off course to my destination. Thankfully I ran into one more helpful woman during my walk who mentioned we were real close to Scharnhorststrasse and gave me quick and simple directions. I somehow still managed to miss a turn and walk an extra km in the process (by now I'm up to 10km for the day). By 12:20 I am finally at the USAC office at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, and I'm exhausted. The offer me water. I drink four glasses like a freshman takes his first shots at a house party. I already feel a little better (oh yeah, it's also pretty warm here and HECKA humid so I've been kinda dying), and I start to rest.

Lennart, one of the student assistants for USAC, showed me to my apartment perhaps an hour later. We take the bus there and I meet one of my roommates, Thomas. We briefly exchange hellos and then I go to promptly take a shower. Laying down in my bed, I decided I'll wait until my other roommate, Felix, gets home so I can meet him too. I fail to do that and fall asleep at 3 in the afternoon, and I sleep the sleep of the dead. I wake up briefly during a thunderstorm in the night, then fall back asleep and wake up at 6:AM the next day, 15 hours later.

Here's my room from after I took a shower and before I fell asleep.