The jorney begins

I was waiting for this day since 1 year. After long preparation, visa application, room search and packing I'm sitting in the airport and waiting for my flight. This flight will bring me to the country of thousand opportunities in other part of the world. Incredible, more than 9000 kilometers (5600 miles) is San Francisco from Berlin airport away.

My flight will take 14 hours. I was never so far away from home.I don't know what is expecting to me but I hope to be very satisfied with thejorney. To meet new interesting people, learn country and people living here, learn something in my profession and extend my point of view.

Leaving comfort zone

I want to leave my comfort zone and learn new things. The disadvantage of the comfort zone is that you do all daily things automatically, you don't recognize details and don't feel surrounding environment. To get rid of this situation you should go to the places where you weren't before anddo things you never done. In this case your brain will work intensively and you will recognize details much more better than before. However the truly wonders happen outside of comfort zone.

These were my thoughts, when I was sitting in Berlin airport. As my flight was at 6:00 a.m and it is necessary to be in an airport at least 2 hours before international flight and there aren't any public transportation inBerlin at this time I was forced to spend a night in the airport. I've considered several options before: to take a hotel near the airport hadn't any sence  because checkout should be at 3 a.m ; to take a taxi couldn't bring additional advantage because it should pick up me also at 3 a.m from my home.

Night at airport

So I decided to spend a night in the airport.It wasn't as bad as accepted. I just needed to spend 4 hours until checkin. There were many people, which made the same decision and tried to accommodate themselves as comfortable as possible and tried to go to sleep somehow. As I took a middle-day sleep before, I wasn't so tired and as known internet kills time perfectly.

But nevertheless I should mention that the stay in Berlin airport is never comfortable for sleeping. It was really difficult to find a bank to seat and available banks were metallic and very hard. I learned that other way ispossible when I saw Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

However, the time was gone somehow quickly and I stayed in a queue for checkin. Tip: Try to checkin online, you can save a lot of time staying in the queue. The queue for people checked-in online was 10 times faster than for people who  haven't done it before. I checked-in via flight company app on my phone 10 minutes before check-in was opened.

Schiphol (Amsterdam)

So, I sat in a plane flying to my intermediate stop Schiphol airport Amsterdam. The whole flight took one hour including starting and landing. It was so short that I wasn't really able to recognize it. I just mentioned that stewardesses distributed snacks and drinks, collected garbage and after that pilot called to fasten our seat belts because of landing.

Schiphol airport is really large and beautiful. There are so many gates,shops, cafes. The gates are situated far away from each other so special escalators are used, which bring you not up or down, but into the distance. For people who cannot go so far away e.g. handicapped or old people there were special cars bringing them to the destination.

I had 2,5 hours until my next flight to San Francisco and I hadn't heavy luggage. So I decided to inspect the airport. I was really surprised to see agreen waiting area in the airport. The airport administration tried very hard to make the state in the airport as comfortable for passengers as possible. They created a green corner where everybody can take a rest.All wands and environment are decorated with forest motives. In the middle of the corner there are many trees and flowers. There are relaxing sounds immitating birds singing. For children there are physics corner wherethey can inspect physical phenomena like Faraday's cave, interference, inertion etc. The armchairs are  so comfortable that you falling asleep as soon as you sit down on one of them. Everywhere is free wi-fi and charging sockets. It was really a pleasure to take a rest in such place.

San Francisco non-stop

A plain to San Francisco was much more bigger than to Amsterdam. Every row had 10 places and not 6 as before. There were so many people that theyshould entry to the plain by two entries. Before I was worried how will I stand an intercontinental flight taking 10 hours without stops. But it was really not a problem. I enjoyed my flight, I used a great entertainment program offered by flight company.

Every chair has its own screen, where guest can select between several good movies, tv programs, games, programs special for children and flight tracking system (with special feature for children "are we there yet?").

Some geographical observations

I was surprised that the flight was over Greenland and Canada. If you look on a map and draw a straight line between Berlin and San Francisco you will see that this line only crosses Atlantic ocean and the USA, but actually it isn't correct. The straight line between Berlin and San Francisco will really cross Greenland and Canada. Moreover Greenland is not so big like it seems. The reason is that the Earth cannot be displayed on flat paper without distortions. So the political map moves all distorctions to oceans.

The flight took 10 hours but it was never dark. On the flight tracking we could see the part of the Earth where is the night but our plain could not reached it. Every time we were closed to the dark part of the Earth, it moved away from us. I filled that it was constantly the same time. It was difficult to recognize when should I sleep, so I switched my watch to the Californian time and tried to sleep by it.However, the whole flight thanks to the crew was very comfortable and passed really quickly.

Arrival

Finally, I arrived to San Francisco international airport. After arrival formalities and luggage pick up I started to look for a bus shuttle, which I ordered before in Berlin.The shuttle brings passengers to their hotel or home doors directly. It costs 26$ for the first person and additional 10$ for every other person. The shuttle contains 9 passengers and brings them to their hotels dependent on the distance. I was lucky and all passengers had their hotels in Palo Alto and other cities of Bay Area.