David Goes All Odysseus on Berlin

I know I haven't introduced anyone to my host family or even mentioned my basic living arrangements in this country yet, but that will all come in time. Before I get to those, I feel the need to remind the adoring faithful that the absurd happenstances which define my life know no bounds, and are neither slowed by international borders nor dissuaded by oceanic distances. Fret not, little ones. 
With that being said:

Thursday nights in Berlin are a little weird. We don't have classes on Friday, so they're almost like Friday nights in that respect, but the trains stop running after 12:30 and alot of the buses shorten their routes around then too, meaning you can go out, but coming back could be an adventure. 
And in the course of the two Thursday nights I've gone out in Berlin, I have had a 100% success rate in turning the return journey into an adventure.

I'd tell you what happened during the first journey, but I've only heard second-hand stories. I understand it involved getting thrown out of a bus and PTFOing in a taxi cab, but all I know is that I ended up in my bed and the next morning people were looking at me funny. 
This Thursday's adventure, however, I remember much more clearly. And holy Christ was it terrifying. 

We started to end the night at a relatively early 2-ish, at which point we left the Oscar Wilde bar and, aided by an off-duty student assistant (AKA German person), waited a half-god-damn-hour for a bus to whisk us away to some döner place that was, remarkably, in the vicinity of where we'd been the week before, which, as you might recall (I sure don't), didn't end so hot. 
If nothing else, I know there's a bus here that will take me home to Grunewald. I am pleased. 

So we grab some döner (imagine shwarma, but called "döner"), and our student assistant takes two of the students in the program with him to another bus stop. I quickly realize that is not the bus stop at which I need to be and mosey on over to the one that serves the M19 to Grunewald, the neighborhood where I live. I wait for 20 minutes in the ridiculous cold across the sidewalk from a titty bar, and finally the Grunewald-bound bus waltzes on up. Or, more specifically, the Grunewald-Rathenauplatz-bound bus, which I took to mean "Grunewald via Rathenauplatz," but would've been more accurately translated as "you get the fuck off of my bus at Rathenauplatz, Dave Wile."

Not knowing this, I made the rookie mistake of getting onto the bus. Come Rathenauplatz, the bus tells me in German that I have no choice but to gather my things and figure out my own damned way home. I do so. I realize that I've been to Rathenauplatz before. Not on foot, but by car. In fact, both times I was in a car in Berlin, I was in Rathenauplatz. In even further fact, both times I was in a car in Rathenauplatz, the driver ran the light there. Not that that's weird here or anything: I've only been in a car twice and have run red lights a total of 6 times. Regardless, rather than chalk up my appearances at this specific traffic circle to coming from and going to the same place, I decide it must have been because it's so close to where I live. 
So I figure I can just walk the bus route home. Go time.

I'll give everyone a map so they can keep up. Also, so they can see how idiotic this idea was.

Yes, those are lakes.

I begin along Kurfürstendamm, which runs all the way into the middle of Berlin. I walk about a block and half to the Rathenauplatz, where I have a decision to make. I decide to keep going straight. Now that I have the benefits of a map, I see this decision was remarkably incorrect. At the time, I felt like a gangsta. 

I now found myself on Hubertusallee (the vertical yellow one), where I realized I was both cold and walking. In order to kill two birds with one stone, I decided running at 3 in the AM down the street would be a fantastic idea. So I'm running guns blazing in a direction that for all I know has nothing to do with getting me home (and, as luck would have it, didn't) in my H&M jeans, sexually-ambiguous form-fitting Macy's sweater, and gigantic winter jacket until I happen upon Herthastraße. That's the one right above the Hubertussee in your map, for those following along at home.

DASHING young lad - eh? Eh? Ross, see what I did there? Bazik? Anybody?

I find a bus stop with a map on it and decide to check my coordinates. I realize that, although I have been going in the generally correct direction of "south," I'm not exactly close to where I need to be. I need to hop onto the Herthastraße, hang a left onto Bismarckstraße, and eventually hit up Koenigsallee. Easy enough. 

Unfortunately, upon turning right onto Herthastraße, I realize that my chances of getting home on well-lit roads just tanked. I tell myself to sack up and go on with my journey. Along Herthastraße, I realize that I'm in Berlin's rendition of that neighborhood behind AU where all the diplomats live in comically large houses, diplomats included. Now although walking amongst wealth in the daytime might seem like a safe place to be, I can't say I found wrought-iron gates to be exactly as comforting as one might assume. Plus, I had the additional fear now that any of the 6 trillion security guards stationed around the area could misinterpret my frantic walking and snipe my ass at any moment. I understand that makes little sense now, but I was also in the state of mind where I thought walking the distance of 3 S-Bahn stops was a grand idea.

Regardless, I get to Bismarckstraße, hang my left, and find what must be the Disneyland of Biergartens. Lit up like the 4th of July on a Thursday night after 3 AM, I figured I'd stumbled upon the residency of the diplomats from the country of Beer. I resolved to go there one day, and continued on my odyssey. Looking back at our maps, I get to the part where it bisects the Herthasee and Hubertussee (oh I forgot to tell you, Bismarkstraße is the one that bisects Herthasee and Hubertussee), where I come across two giant stone carvings of sphinxes with eerily realistic features of the top half of a naked woman, one on each side of the bridge. In the shadows of night, I was convinced they would each come to life and either ask me to answer a riddle to which I would not have the answer because I suck at riddles or just eat me. Neither scenario seemed fun. Yet still I passed, went over the bridge which, like everything else here, must have had a beautiful view had I not been trying desperately to avoid shitting myself, and hung a right at the next street, Delbrückstraße. I take into account the fact that there are 2 streetlights on the entire road and run the length of it just to be safe.

Still clutching my bowels, I turn from Delbrückstraße onto Koenigsallee. From here, I just have one more turn to make, "right onto a street that starts with an F." I was practically home, and I could smell it. Once again, Athena would put my ass in its place for such unwarranted hubris.

This divine ass-whooping first manifests itself when I round a bend and see an actual person. My heart freaks out, but I resolve to keep walking and just cross that bridge when I come to it. Fortunately, I realize he's standing next to a little "Polizei" booth, so he's a cop. Unfortunately, I'm also aware I'm just the sort of ruffian the police don't want scouring this absurdly wealthy neighborhood. I'm walking by gargantuan monolithic buildings that Google Maps says have their own goddamned names. For example, allow me to introduce you to Löwenpalais (Lion's Palace):

I reiterate: Daytime, sweet stuff. Nighttime: JESUS CHRIST LIONS.

I march on despite having inadvertently walked onto the set of a Stanley Kubrick film. I get ridiculously confused at a little triangle island in the road called Hagenplatz, but ultimately continue marching on down the Koenigsallee. I pass Douglasstraße. Doesn't start with an F. I pass Oberhaardter Weg. Doesn't even think about starting with an F. The road is starting to smell like a zoo, and that makes no goddamned sense. The streetlights are becoming sparser. I continue down the street until there are no more fucking streetlights. I stop for a second and analyze variables. Something had to go wrong. I freak the fuck out.

I turn around and sprint as fast as I goddamn can because I'm certain some animal or hunter á la Jumanji has been sitting in that spot for years waiting for just the right person who can't find streets that start with F to gallivant on up the road at 4 AM and kill his ass. Or, specifically, kill my ass. So I find myself sprinting like the wind, looking over my shoulder every few strides, convinced that some awful, masked, machete-bearing murderer will be nonchalantly walking towards me yet still gaining ground because horror movies have taught me that that's right up there with gravity as a physical law. I begin to question the decisions of the past hour and a half that have led to this predicament. 

Luckily for me, I come across some nice stone steps that might be my ticket to finding a street that starts with an F. 

These steps. At 4 AM. Safety first.

I come to the top of the stairs (or, more specifically, I run to the top of the stairs) and find myself at the corner of Höhmannstraße and Regerstraße. I hang a left onto Höhmannstraße. This street is slightly better lit, so I'm only checking over my shoulder every fifth step or so. After a couple houses, I find myself at Oberhaardter Weg again. Well, thank God I'm at a familiar street. I hang a left there, whereupon I come across good ol' Koenigsallee again. I bust a right at Koenigsallee. I'll find that street that starts with an F if it's the last thing I do. And, at this point, that is a distinct possibility. 

I find myself back at the Bermuda Triangle that is Hagenplatz again. I decide to see what the bus stop at Hagenstraße has to say about where the street I'm looking for is. I am appalled at what I see there.

There's a funny thing that Berlin does with its street names sometimes. Whereas DC treats street names like they take the genius of a generation to create and will stop at nothing to make sure they don't go to waste for something as foolish as giving a completely different street a different street name, Berlin is the exact opposite. They've got names literally just coming out the wazoo (literally!), and they actively hunt for any opportunity to throw someone's name on a street. And while Hagenstraße was Hagenstraße this side of Koenigsallee (you know, the side I was walking on for the last hour), it was Fontanestraße on the other. And would you look at that. Fontanestraße starts with an F. No shit.

I go down Fontanestraße, sensing my bed ever nearer. There's an occasional streetlight. I'm seeing signs for the S-Bahn station. The possibility that I could survive this ordeal has increased exponentially in the last five minutes. I get to Am Bahnhof Grunewald, which is right before the tunnel to get to the train station. I enter the tunnel. I'm like 98% certain of my survival.

I'm an optimist.

I somehow come out the other end, onto the side of Grunewald I know like the back of my hand. I start thinking about how unfortunate it was that no one was jotting down every thought I had throughout my journey, because were I to be murdered now, only I would be aware of the irony. But I'd be dead. And I'd hate to see some good irony go to waste.

I mosey on down Dauerwaldweg, make my right turn onto Falterweg, and slip my way inside #15. Ultimately, this was my final trajectory:

Look closely and you can kinda see the constellation Draco.

Google Maps estimates the distance at 5.4 km, or, for those of us who have the sneaking suspicion that kilometers are an entirely fictional unit of measurement like myself, 3.4 God-forsaken miles. 3.4 cold, terrifying, lonely, foreign miles. 

And I didn't shit myself once. Like a champion.