Week 3 Recap

Because I'm writing these a couple of days after the events themselves occurred, I'm beginning to forget what I've told you already and what I haven't. So if I repeat myself, I'm sorry. Also, I found a mistake in one of my posts. The title of the post about Hamburg was supposed to contain a negative, and thus say "Turns out luggage isn't actually necessary to travel." Oh, well. More importantly, let's see what I can remember from the past week. Classes went fine. I had my Zwischenpruefung (midterm) in German on Thursday. It went pretty well. The Hoeverstandnis (listening comprehension) was a bit challenging and the teacher admitted that the vocab section was too hard and took that into account when grading. Right now I'm completely blanking what we did in my EU class, but it'll come to me. I'm sure it was interesting. Friday night I went over to the dorms/student housing/whatever they're called to hang out with some people from my German class over there. They had a small party and interestingly enough there is a bar in the basement of the building. Like a legitimate bar with a small dance floor, some couches, a pool table, and fooseball. That would never fly in Boulder. It was fun. I had a good time. Saturday I slept in and it felt amazing. I did a bit of homework in the afternoon, while many of the other students were day tripping it to Dresden. I decided not to go and after hearing them talk about it, I don't feel like I missed much. Saturday was very low key. I met two other guys at a Kneipe (bar/pub) for a few beers and came home early. Oh, I remeber what we did on Friday in my EU class now. The days topic was strategic defense/defense policy and how that affects the relationships between the EU and NATO and their member countries. So, in the morning we went to a building that housed the German defense ministry and listened to a pretty high ranking official, I forget his exact rank, discuss the issues I mentioned above. The topic was interesting, but he was a bit long winded. We stayed over a half hour longer than we were supposed to and I think he maybe got through half of his slides. But you could tell he was very passionate about what he does and got rather animated when our professors posed some difficult questions to him. Then we went to the very nice cafeteria of a nearby museum to eat lunch and debrief, like we always do after our excurisons. Then we had about three hours until our next activity, which our professors weren't attending with us, so we all dispersed for a bit to pass the time. I walked around with the Canadians a bit until we decided we were tired and needed a beer to re-energize :) Then at five we met at the Chancellory Building (Kanzleramt, I think) for a tour. It was really interesting. We got to see a lot of important parts of the building, where real work is actually done. We had a member of the 'secret service' following us the whole time. That was a bit strange knowing someone is watching you the whole time but it makes sense. We didn't didn't get to see Angela Merkel, though. She had better things to do that day. She was actually giving a press conference with Obama from the Rose Garden at the exact same time we were in her building. Back to the weekend, the important stuff. Sunday I went for a run around the bigger of the two lake/ponds by us and succesfully defeated it. I thought the lake was going to win for a while there. A bit sore today. Need to run more. In the afternoon a wrote a short paper for my German class and then went over to the house of a friend of the Schenkels to watch the Confederations Cup final (a warm-up tournament for the World Cup next summer in South Africa) between the US and Brazil. The US was winning 2-0 at half time and ended up losing 3-2, sadly. A disappointing finish to a very good tournament for the US. Nobody expected them to go that far. Ich bin stolz auf der US-Boys. (I'm proud of them.) The papers here and the announcer always refered to them as the 'US-Boys.' Kinda funny, I thought. It was fun watching the game with Konrad, though, and he gave me some good beer (the Schenkels don't drink beer, only wine, sadly). Konrad and I and his wife, Susan, had a nice conversation after the game over dinner. It was interesting to get some other Germans' perspectives. Today, nothing exciting to report. German class was fine. I'm going to bed early with the intention of running in the morning. We'll see how it goes. I need to write more often so these posts aren't so long. I say that every time, don't I? (The picture on the left is the Berliner Dom, Berlin Cathederal, from the days of Imperial Germany next to the River Spree. The picture on the right is several pieces of the Berlin Wall, but not in there original location. They're scattered around Berlin as reminders.)