These last few days I’ve felt miserable. Still do. I think I’ve just overextended myself on too many fronts. I crashed with a friend and barely got out of bed, let alone left the apartment. It’s not just coming off of 24 hours of travel getting back from Canada, or the fact that the lingering summer heat has killed any energy I might have had between 11am and 5pm. There’s something else going on.

I’m hoping it’s just stress. I only found out yesterday the larp I’m traveling to Poland to play, while scheduled¹ for Sept 15^th-17^th, actually starts on Sept 14^th and that’s when the bus arrives.² So I’m once again finding myself scrambling to redo plans at the last minute, and what I had thought was going to be two lazy nights in Warsaw has turned into one hectic night where I’m going to have to argue with the hotel to try and get a refund for one of the non-refundable days I booked.³

Today, I’m exhausted. I slept horribly — there were thunderstorms which woke me in the middle of the night — and when I finally woke up I had back pain radiating down my lower arms. I threw up in the shower. But beyond the nausea, the back pain, and feeling like I need a couple good naps, I feel fine. No cough, no stuffy nose, no aching lymph nodes or fever or headache.

Accordingly, I’m currently on the train to Warsaw. I’m just going to rest and hope I feel better tomorrow.

But let’s talk BER, aka Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg „Willy Brandt“, the huge German airport which only opened in 2020 after massive delays and cost overruns. I’ve never actually left from there and I’ve only flown into it a couple times, so I haven’t actually experienced it until this trip. But this trip I flew in and couldn’t meet my friend for several hours, and I was sufficiently discombobulated that I didn’t trust my ability to navigate to a nearby café to wait. So I figured I’d stake out a place in the airport and kill three hours.

BER is a very weird place. It seems to have been designed by people who are largely unaware of how people use airports.⁴ What I wanted — what I frequently want in an airport — is comfortable seating and nice restaurants where I can hunker down for a while if my flight’s delayed. Instead, for some reason, the people running the place seem to have stocked their airport entirely with snack bars. Two kinds of snack bars, in fact: those without seating and those with cheap, flimsy seating.

I eventually found my way to the food court, located in what I assume was the main hall. The main hall was this vast space which maybe was supposed to be grand but mostly felt spare and vacant, like if Albert Speer had been a fan of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.⁵ The scale was totally wrong. Having been stuck in a too-small seat in a too-small aluminum tube for way too long, you don’t want to be dumped out into a vacuum. You want something comforting and comfy, something to restore your humanity. You won’t find that at this airport.

I’m sure all the wide open spaces and broad, sleek hallways looked great in the architectural renderings, but they sure didn’t feel inspiring to wander through. They felt empty, and what furniture was there felt cheap and chintzy, sub-Ikea quality.⁶ The whole thing feels like a massive disappointment, given how much the place cost and how long it took to open. I found a bench with an electrical outlet, got a currywurst, and left as soon as I was able.

Next: Warsaw to Berlin
Prev: St. John’s (YYT) to Berlin (BER)

Footnotes

¹ And advertised everywhere

² Technically you could show up the morning of the 15^th, but it’s strongly discouraged. I get that game play doesn’t start until Friday but if you expect everyone to be on site on Thursday then your larp starts on Thursday, and you should be up front about that.

³ I am not convinced I would have signed up for three nights in a trailer at the larp site, as opposed to two, had I been aware of it going in. Particularly not while I feel like I’m on the verge of throwing out my back.

⁴ Not entirely wrong; part of the problem is it was designed to try and siphon off connecting flights from places like Heathrow and Schiphol, which meant the stores should cater to travelers rushing from one gate to another. But by the time they opened they realized they were too late and the hub airports had all consolidated, so their models were all wrong.

⁵ I left today from the Berlin central train station and there was a kind of similarity there, but the train station had a sense of dynamism to it, with walkways on different levels and escalators whisking people up and down and all over the place. I liked the train station.

⁶ I’m guessing the budget for furnishings was slashed horrifically after the first couple billion in cost overruns.