“Jonzi Moment” Berlin (Part 2)
So for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting my pint-sized grandma, Jonzi, you all are missing out! She’s basically the most adorable person I know and she famous for her “special moments” which typically involve some sort of chaos and here was my moment.. ENJOY.
Charlotte’s dad is in charge of an international hotel chain in Berlin and he was able to get us free segway rentals for the day, so Charlotte, her boyfriend Linus, his friend Max, and I all headed out to explore Berlin. The boys raced off as soon as we got them while Charlotte and I stayed behind so she could tell me about the different buildings. Well the sidewalks are 300x the size of the sidewalks in Firenze, but with the vendors and massive amount of tourists – there’s not much room. Segways work by leaning forward to accelerate, leaning to the left to turn left and so on. We went to pass a group of tourists before a light pole approached and just as I was about to pass, one of the tourists stepped left and I instinctively moved left which made me hit square into the light pole and go flying! Now I’m not talking about a few inches – I superman flew a few feet. The huge crowd turned to see the commotion and a few old men came up trying to help me, but I couldn’t understand a word they said since they were speaking German. At that moment, Charlotte rushed over and responded back to the man (in English) that I didn’t understand German which only confused the poor old man more. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was so embarrassed that I rushed to get back on the segway to only make it down one more street where I eventually threw up – and I have thrown up MAYBE 6 times in my whole life. I was mortified. (I only ended up with a few bumps and bruises)
Later that night at Charlotte’s parents’ house, we told them the whole story where instead of being embarrassed, we could not stop laughing at how far I flew. In the middle of laughing with everyone, I realized that was the first time in a really, really long time that I have laughed that hard and that genuine. Finally the stress from life and school has disappeared and in that moment I realized my trip of a lifetime has just begun! In the end, I had a great time in Berlin and I was really sad to leave. We ended the trip by vowing to never let another 2 years go by before we see each other again.
