Berlin gefällt mir.

Hello. It's Wednesday afternoon around 4.30 and it's beautiful outside. Berlin has been awesome. I'm having a great time and doing/seeing a lot of interesting things. I'll try to get you all briefly caught up since I haven't been able to blog as much as I should. My EU class is pretty interesting mostly because of the 'excursions' we take in the afternoon. In the morning we have lecture/discussion and then in the afternoon we go meet someone in the city that is relevant to that day's topic. So far we've visited places ranging from the European Comission (the institutional body that proposes legislation to the EU parliament) to the Czech embassy to the oldest political think tank in Germany (founded in 1945). It's been interesting getting the perspectives of professionals who are engaging in these issues everyday. It's interesting to then compare what they say to what the academics say. German class has been fine. On Wednesdays for it go on excursions (that was a horrible sentence). So today we walked around an area called Nikoliaverteil (or something like that), which used to have a huge Jewish population. We visited a museum about a man who was nearly blind and helped hide Jewish people in the middle of Berlin during WWII. A pretty amazing man. Berlin's symbol is a bear so we also tried to see the city's 'mascots', two bears named Schmeke and Maxi. Unfortunately, they decided to stay inside today. I think they needed some time to adjust to the warm weather. I know I do. This past weekend I went to Hamburg with FUBiS. I had a good time and I'll write more about it later, but now I need to go on a run so I can get back in time for dinner. Important stuff like that.