Why Is All The Water Here Carbonated?

Nothing bad actually happened, but it tasted nasty and left me with constant, creeping, 12-hour paranoia about potential food poisoning.  Really, the worst part isn't the potential for food poisoning, because it really isn't that likely, it's the psychological torment the budget sushi leaves you with. How cold was that package, really, when I bought it? I ate it quickly, right?  Did I leave any of it out for very long? How much of that was actually raw?  I know one of them wasn't, but that big piece of nigiri DEFINITELY was. People explicitly told me not to do it.  I didn't listen.  It was not worth it.

For hours I've been sitting in my room at the new hostel I moved to and writing.  It's on the third floor and pretty hot so I've had the window open and for the entire time this American guy has been out in the courtyard explaining American politics to some people.  I actually have no idea who he's explaining it to because for the 3 hours I've been here he's been basically the only one talking.  But I am pretty sure that for some of them English is not their first language, just based on how he's speaking to them. Things he's discussed: How he understands the Vietnam War more than most Americans and his only fact to back this up was that he knows about the secret bombing of Cambodia, which has been not been a secret for decades. CIA blacksites. How he understands the political climate that created Trump. Shadow governments. East German interrogation techniques and facts which I can tell he got from a tour I went on yesterday because they are verbat...

For real.  At first I though it was my imagination, but no, this is the only place I've ever walked where I don't walk faster than everyone with my inhumanly long alien-legs.  Automatic doors are calibrated for this faster speed and open sooner and faster than in the US.  It's an surprisingly nice to be able to walk full speed at a door and not stop or slow down for it to open like I normally need to at home.  I'd never realized I was missing out on this.  Even three days after realizing it I still smile every time.

So in the last few days I've seen a few groups of people running crooked shells games on the sidewalk, but I still hold that the first one I saw was the absolute worst. I was walking near all the tourist stuff downtown and passed a group of 3 people standing around a squatting man.  I grinned when I saw what it was, and made a point to grin at a woman who was obviously in on it.  I stopped to watch a couple rounds and found that they hadn't hooked anyone yet; all 3 'tourists' were in on it.  But then I realized they had hooked someone.  Me.  I figured I was probably the mark right now and they wouldn't just let me watch much longer. For anyone who isn't sure how crooked shells games work, it's sometimes like this:  You and a few of your friends go out some place where there gullible people around and play shells, that game where you hide a ball under one of three cups and shuffle them, then the player has to guess.  Your friends pretend to be gullib...

I keep trying to buy a non-carbonated bottle of water.  Thought I found one this morning but I opened it and *ssssssss* nope.

So I took the wrong but out of the airport in Berlin and had to walk to the subway station. After finally figuring out the ticket system and getting on, an old man who was talking to himself got on after me.  The doors of the car had already started to close and actually did close on the front of his walker.  It was tense for a moment but a few people helped him with the doors and he made it on. He moved over to the side of the train where I stood and looked at me and said something.  I didn't know what he said so I looked around and he said it again.  I realized I wanted me to move so I got out of the way and apologized (in English, of course, because at that moment I of course couldn't remember a single word of German).  I felt like an idiot until he said the same thing to two women who had been standing next to me.  There wasn't much room for them to move quickly and he actually started pushing them out of the way with his walker.  They weren't ver...

So when I landed in Frankfurt I had to go through German TSA to get to my transfer flight, which was no big deal because I figured how much worse could it be than regular TSA?  I mean, they didn't even need me to take my shoes off so it couldn't be that bad. So I pull my laptop out of my bag and my little bag of liquids and the guy pushes it all onto the conveyor.  I stand in the body-scan machine or whatever it is and then the guy wants to pat down my ankles and back which seemed weird but okay.  Then I look over and notice they've pulled my backpack aside and on of them is looking at it skeptically and not pushing it along with everything else. I gather the rest of my things and put my jacket back on and he still has my backpack.  I stand there for a minute or two before he motions me over to a counter on the side of everything else. "Is this your bag?"  And he's got a thick German accent and doesn't look super happy to be talking to me. I tell ...