The first few days

Flight:
Condor Airlines, who I had not previously heard of, rocked it. Premium Economy class tickets give you extra leg room and some meal benefits. Extra legroom comes in handy when 1/2 way thru a 9 hour flight your fidgeting child wants to play on the floor.

The plane was a 2-3-2 configuration and we had the three middle seats in a row, with one seat in the row forward of it. The extra seat was kind of like the "parent rest" seat. I took it for the first three hours while Cassandra handled games and the meal, then we switched for the "rest" part of the trip. Children failed to rest until the final two hours of the flight. Jasper was chill even when not resting, while Cody was fidget-mania. Lots of climbing in and out of lap. No desire to lay down and be quiet. So he and Daddy were up until effectively 4 am Seattle time. Not helping was the Japanese guy next to us who had his window shade open the entire time (when all cabin lights are dimmed and every other window shade was down) as he took pictures out the window into the blinding sunlight.

Cody was fast asleep and required getting awakened for the descent into Frankfurt so he could sit up for landing. Stewardesses were adamant about this point. This created sustained howling.

For descent into Berlin, Cody suddenly announced a dire need for a bathroom break. Stewardesses were all seated and the landing is like 3 minutes away so too late to actually make it to the bathroom. Yet do you want a child with soaked pants dripping pee all over you, the seat and any German unlucky enough to be sitting nearby? Thinking quickly, Cassandra unscrewed the lid of Cody's water thermos, stood him up in front of his seat, and had him fill 'er up while the plane was landing. "we'll sterilize that later," she quipped.

Berlin:
The baggage claim greets you at the end of the jet bridge, so the delay is barely a minute before you get your bags and can start annoying stern airport officials with taking your "we arrived" pictures. A friend sent a van for us and we packed everything in for a drive south through the city to our AirBnB in the Schoneberg neighborhood. 

We unload our stuff in a massive mountain of nylon duffels, bike boxes and backpacks in front of our new home for the nex three weeks until the actual apartment lease begins. We are waiting for the owner to show up to let us in. Cody again decides it is time to drain the main vein, so whips it out and begins watering the decorative bushes at the entrance to the building. Our backs were turned. When we saw this outrage we ran over to cluster around him in the hopes that none of the numerous passers-by would notice a small white butt and a stream of liquid squirting on bushes. We tried to rationalize that we were not parent failures for creating a child capable of such abomination of manners. 

Parks:
Walk any direction in this city for 10 minutes and you are bound to hit a park. Not just any type of park, but kids parks. (Kinderspielplatz!) And most of these kid parks have play/climbing/swinging structures that are the envy of the first world. Our kids have been treated to massive, two-storey medieval castles, long distance zip lines, cable-web nets extending 30 feet into the air and something made of hundreds of pieces of rubber sheeting fastened together into a tree house of sorts that I cannot possibly describe. We've been taking the subway (U-Bahn) around the city to run admin errands and have sampled a pile of parks in two days. Kids will have plenty to do here from a parks standpoint.

Razorfish Office:
One of the errands was to go and get paperwork signed/meet people at the Razorfish office. It is located next to the East Side Gallery, the longest section of the wall that is still standing. Office is bright and modern, yet housed in a century-old warehouse building that pre-WWII supplied merchant shipping along the Spree, the main river running through Berlin. People were apologetic that it has no air conditioning, which in high summer becomes a bit of an issue. So I guess it isn't all that modern. Everyone was overly excited to have us there, and several were mystified at why we would uproot our entire lives to come and work there like this. People love it when you move to their country, but many cannot comprehend doing that in reverse, which potentially makes them wonder what the hell is wrong with us.

Tomorrow we go to see the apartment for the first time and get coffee with Ilona, our steadfast relocation agent. I have yet to replace my mobile phone and am getting used to the concept of having no phone at all. Eventually I will get one through work, but with the bureaucracy and approvers' vacation schedules, it'll be weeks. I don't mind, it is a good exercise.