Back from Berlin
After 27-hours worth of delays and international travel, I am back in New York!
The internet was broken in my hotel, so instead of posting blog updates everyday, I’ll just give you a quick rundown of the week in Berlin, Germany with Fast Eddie Chambers, Leland and some other friends 
The airport stories
I was going through security at ROC… I had an apple in my carry on and when they scanned it the guy told the other security woman, “”I think it is, uh, uh, uh… fruit?!”
Chicago has the coolest toilets that I have ever seen; they are totally automatic and roll out a new plastic seat cover as soon as someone new steps in the stall and pushes the button.
Heathrow hires a lot of very young and attractive women to work in the airport security centers, a welcome change from the big and hairy security men at most airports 
The plane
The Boeing 777 that I flew on had a huge amount of leg room, it was great! I watched Into the Wild on the plane and it was amazing, I also watched Rush Hour 3, and it was alright.
I am just too big to comfortably sleep on the planes, so I was exhausted by the time that I got into Berlin. I had only gotten 2.5 hours of sleep the night before and traveled for 23-hours (driving, flying and waiting) before getting to Germany and going for a few more hours.
Leland’s flight into Berlin got delayed, since while it was in the air for 1-hour, the flight crew thought that they heard a bad rumble in the engine so they had to make a U-turn and dump out the jet fuel over the Atlantic. He finally got to Berlin midday on Tuesday.
The city
I strolled around Berlin for 4.5 hours and it is a pretty city. I am impressed by how old some parts of the city are but also by how new most of the city is. I imagine that the new construction occurred where Berlin was bombed.
I saw Check Point Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate and the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. The only two things that I did not get to see were the giant Jewish memorial art-maze and the few remaining watch towers along the Berlin Wall.
I was impressed by how safe, quiet and clean the city was. There were almost no sirens, there were hardly any beggars and the few that there were, were in the tourist areas, also, practically nobody honked their horn.
The air was really fresh; you never smelled pollution, saw smog or had a hard time breathing.
The gym
The gym that Fast Eddie was training at was literally adjoining the Berlin Wall. The inside wall of the parking lot is the remaining portion of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall stretches for a few hundred yards and is pretty amazing.
Buddy McGirt was training Eddie and working the gloves with him inside the gym’s ring.
The newspaper
Fast Eddie, Leland, me, Eddie Sr., Big Rob, Little Rob and a few other people all went to the Bild Newspaper’s headquarters and spent some time in the executive’s lounge on the top floor overlooking Berlin. They had two butlers on staff to take care of our every need.
After that we went into the headline room where Eddie was able to write a few headlines for after the fight. The office that we were in was overlooking where the old Berlin Wall used to be.
The drinks
I met Leland, Rob Sr., Dan Goossman, Buddy McGirt, Eddie Chambers and a few other guys at the hotel bar for a few hours and had great conversation and learned a lot about what the industry thinks of Oscar de la Hoya…
The bottled water in Berlin does not taste chlorinated or otherwise processed; it just tastes like pure water and is really good. Most of the bottled water was sparkling and was pretty gross.
Almost all of the bottles that I saw needed a bottle opener to remove the top, very few, if any, were twist off.
The press conference
We had a televised tri-lingual press conference at the hotel which was good fun to photograph. Everything was spoken or interpreted in English, Russian and German.
The photo session
I took Eddie throughout Berlin for a 30-minute photo session. We got a series of serious, tough and funny photos for his press.
The weigh in
The weigh in was crazy, it was jam packed and everybody wanted a shot of Eddie and Povetkin while they were on the scales. I picked up my team pass to get into the fight and everything was taken care of.
The genuine food and meetings
Leland, Rosetta and I met one of Leland’s Wharton classmates at her house in Berlin for some genuine German food and good conversation.
The next day we met another of his Wharton classmates who is a VC in Berlin. His office is across the street from the Adler Hotel, the nicest hotel in all of Berlin and where Bill Gates stayed during our first two days of the trip, and just down the street from the Brandenburg Gates.
The dinner
A VIP by invitation only dinner was hosted for around 50-people who organized the fight. Little Rob (co-manager of Eddie Chambers) invited me along with Leland, Big Rob, Mario (Eddie’s investor and financial planner) and Lenny (Big Rob’s brother in-law). The six of us had a great multi-course Italian dinner, I lost count, but it was probably 8-courses. The filet mignon was excellent, and since Little Rob didn’t want that course, I had his too. The desserts were amazing, I forgot what they all were, but I was told that they were traditional Italian desserts.
The media
There seems to be almost no censorship on the TV and in the newspapers here. There is nudity on the TV and in print and no English words are censored on MTV, which broadcasts mainly in English with subtitles.
The concentration camp
Leland, his wife Rosetta and I went to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, which killed nearly 200,000 people, some 20% of which were Jewish, with the remainder being homosexuals, gypsies, disabled or priests. It was really quite amazing; walking down the same paths as those which countless people walked upon for the last time before being executed is an odd feeling.
The trains
We were not able to figure out the train system (there were no turnstiles, no public transit representatives and no ticket booths at the platform), so we assumed that the trains were free… after making our first journey, we got to the end of the line and found out that a ticket was required and that the fine for not having one was 40 Euros. Fortunately it was no huge issue and we just went on our way without incident and without paying the fine or for the ticket
The hitchhiking
As we were leaving the concentration camp, we didn’t know how to call a cab or how to get back, so while we were walking in the direction toward the train, Leland tried hitchhiking and got an old German man who spoke no English to pull over (Leland speaks broken German, at best) and told him the name of the train station and then opened the door and got in. Leland’s wife was like, “Leland, what are you doing?!†and he said, “Nah, it’s cool, he said to get in,†(the guy definitely did not say to get in…). Leland, Rosetta, me and a stranger got in this guy’s van and all started driving, then after about 10-minutes the guy pulled over, turned off his engine, opened the door and signaled for us to get out. We weren’t at the train station and we weren’t quite sure where we were, but after a bit of a walk and some Vietnamese food, we eventually made it to the train station.
The fight
Eddie didn’t come out as strong as he could have and should have and ultimately lost by decision in the twelfth round. For whatever reason, he just didn’t fight… he didn’t throw punches, he didn’t attack and he didn’t have the passion, so, he lost. Eddie threw around 360 punches to Povetkin’s 900-something.
The return
I was 2-hours delayed at TXL airport in Berlin due to heavy fog and landed in Heathrow literally 15-minutes before my connecting flight was scheduled to take off. If you have ever flown through Heathrow, you should be shocked that my connecting flight took off on time and you should laugh at the thought of even trying to make it through Heathrow airport in as few as 15-minutes… it takes at least twice that long on a good day. The fog was so thick that I literally could not see the end of the wing from the window. The cumulative delays between Berlin Tegel, London Heathrow, Chicago O’Hare and Rochester International was many hours, getting me home at around 12:30am EST (6:30am Berlin time, which I was well adjusted to).
Me
It was nice having Leland and Jan Sanders there to take a few photos of me, since I almost never have any pictures of myself traveling or working
The recap
Rosetta, Leland’s wife, is always full of funny one-liners, a memorable one directed at me from this week was, “You gotta grow your hair longer, you look like a nerd like that!â€
It is refreshing being able to see popular sights and visit memorials and monuments in a country without a dozen armed guards and police dogs all around. In fact, out of all of the embassy buildings, the only one that was blocked and guarded was the American embassy.
The dogs all seem to just walk around the streets and in the buildings without leashes and nobody cares.
Practically no one jay walks over here, there have been intersections at 2am with no cars coming and seven people waiting with a do not cross sign, and the only one who walks across the street is me.
It is funny seeing Mercedes Benz cars and trucks everywhere, in the US they are a status symbol, but over here there are as common as Chevy sedans are in the US. I have seen only one or two SUVs and no pickup trucks during the trip and the only American cars that I saw were two Ford station wagons, a Chrysler 300 and a Chrysler Crossfire.
Boxing photos coming soon
Have a great day!
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