Day 0: German Efficiency

One thing about air travel is the sheer amount of uncertainty. My luggage became separated from me when I missed a connecting flight due to cold, and this caused me no small amount of distress. But lo and behold, it showed up with me when I arrived here in Berlin, so I have nothing to worry about. The first thing about that I noticed about German airports, or at least this one in particular, was that there is no big area with baggage claims. There's one small one right outside the gate, which was immensely helpful. The second thing I noticed, and still cannot get over, is the process of going through customs.
I remember going through customs into the US before, with long lines and questions asked and a stressful experience. This was not so here. After getting my luggage, I went into a small room marked as customs and the exit. There were two customs agents inside, each helping someone. One looked up at me and simply waved me on. I froze. "That's not right," I thought. A moment later he gestures again to the exit and says something in German, which makes clear to me they have no interest in checking my bags or even stamping my passport. So I left, bewildered.
Later I mentally went back and made sure I didn't miss or skip something. The best I could fathom was that at Frankfurt, where I missed my connection, there was a passport controlled area, and a man looked at my passport for perhaps 3 seconds before handing it back to me, unstamped. I don't know if it's considered necessary when in foreign countries to get your passport stamped, but I am definitely here without that.
I arrived by taxi (my German and jetlag both conspiring against me to take proper, and cheaper, public transportation) at the Goethe Institute much too late; they had long since stopped testing. I was worried I would need to find another cab and attempt to ask my way to where I was staying when one of the few remaining employees at the Goethe Institute asked who I was. I said my name and she said (in English, thank goodness) that my roommate was here as well. He'd stayed there to meet me, which was amazing, and as an added bonus he spoke much better German than me, really conversational, and knew how to get some good public transport!
This made me feel much better. He took me to a subway station and helped me get a month-long pass for the subway and other public transport, and helped me find my way to our destination.
We're staying on the 4th floor (5th if you're in America and start counting at 1) of a set of flats in a fairly residential part of Berlin, southeast of the center of the city. My room here is bigger (and better decorated, arguably) than my one back home, and our hostess is very nice, a woman aged roughly 50 or so. The toilets are your standard different-from-the-US-and-therefore-weird variety, and the apartment complex is somewhat old and hot water comes and goes as it pleases, but other than that this place is really nice.