We didn't make it!!

Whilst I was in Berlin one of our first visits that had been arranged for us by our tutor was at an agency called Hello Me. We went as a big group and spent about 30 Euros getting to a destination that we had been told to get there for at 14.00. In total there was probably about 10 of us perhaps more that met up outside a building. There were no signs or buzzers to go through to the agency that we found a little weird, however, we got in the building and starting walking up some winding stairs. When we'd all got to the top we rang the bell and a lady came to the door and explained that we had come to the designers house and not the actual studio!! We were all mortified and made our way quickly back down stairs. We started looking at different routes of how to get to the agency. We made our way across a busy road in the pouring rain hoping that there would be another bus running by to take us there, we found that the only bus that was running had already been and gone at 9.00am. I was not prepared to spend any more money on transport as I didn't think I needed that much money and had already spent most of it getting to a place that wasn't correct. Most of us decided to head back to the hostel and save money for our other visits we had planned. I don't necessarily think that this was our fault but in all fairness we should have checked that the information we were given was correct before we went and looked in to taking the tube where it wouldn't have cost us as much. I must admit that I am useless at map reading but when there's a will there's a way.












I had arranged a portfolio visit with my friend Chloe Hollinshead at Smack Communications. We knew that it was about 15 minutes away from our hostel if we were to travel by car. So together we had decided before we even went to Berlin that we would split the taxi fare equally there and back. We had spoken to one of the designers at Smack Communications previously whilst in the UK. Her name was Susan Schutze. She had planned for us to be at their studio at 14.00 on the 19.11.2010 which happened to be the day that we were leaving. As we had previously spent so much money on getting taxis here there and everywhere we had only a limited amount of money left and because we had problems at the airport when we arrived in Berlin as our transfers didn't turn up, we decided to not take chances and save the remaining money in case our transfers weren't to turn up again.

Out of this I have learned that I need to be more organized and not only to let other people down but to not let myself down. Also to sort out transport before leaving. I put a lot of it down to being in a foreign country where I found the German language to be very difficult to understand. But I have taken this as a learning curve and will organize myself properly next time.