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.)

Hamburg Pictures (check post below)

-Looking down the main port in the harbor

-Myself and fellow FUBiSers on the boat trip

-Hamburger Rathaus from the back

Turns out luggage is actually necessary to travel

This post is a bit out of order, but I'm just getting around to it. It's a really long story and I don't think I can manage to do it justice with the written word, so let's just set the scene for last weekend by saying that I arrived in Hamburg last Saturday with only the clothes I was wearing and my wallet. (If you want the full story, I'll tell you in person sometime.) We arrived in Hamburg a little before noon and had some time before our walking tour of the city, so we decided to explore the nearby street festival and get some lunch. All of a sudden, the sky opened up with sheets of rain and a bit of hail. We ran inside the closest building for protection and food, which turned out to be a good choice. I had a hamburger for lunch. It seemed like the most appropriate thing to eat in Hamburg. Rain stopped for a bit and we met up with the tour group and it started raining again, so we went it the Hamburger Rathaus (Hamburg Town Hall). It's a really cool looking building. Much more interesting than the one in Berlin. The rain fizzled out and we continued our tour through the city, seeing several big churches, a really interesting neo-gothic bombed-out church, a bit of the harbor, and so forth. Pretty good tour overall. Afterwards, a group of us walked over to what we thought was a tea museum but was really just more of an expensive tea house, changed our minds and went and got a beer instead and a bit of dinner instead. I had some of the best Jaegerschnitzel I've ever had. After dinner I stopped buy the grocery store to pick up some toiletries and upon returning to the hostel, I took a shower and promptly passed out. Everyone needed a bit of a nap after the early morning. (We had to meet the bus at FUB at 6:45am after a Friday night. That's tough for us college students.) I woke up around eight as everyone was getting ready to go out, got up, and went as well, made it to the bar, remembered that I hadn't slept at all on Friday night, immediately got tired again, went back to the hostel and went to bed. It felt really good. Kind of disappointed I didn't get to see a bit more of the Hamburgian (?) night life. Oh well. Sunday morning we had a boat tour of the harbor which was really cool, because we got to go up really close to some of the container ships and see how big they actually are. We saw the yacht that Roman Abromavich (Russian oil tycoon/owner of Chelsea FC) is having built to the tune of $300 million dollars, complete with a helicopter landing pad and mini submarine. Just the important stuff. In the afternoon we visited BallinStadt Musuem, which is kind of like the Elis Island of Germany. It's where all the people who emmigrated out of Germany to the US and other parts of the world left through. It was pretty fascinating to see. Had a bit of time in the late afternoon to relax a bit before catching the bus back to Berlin. I got home around 11pm and went to bed. All in all, I had a good time in Hamburg. I wish I wasn't so tired and had some clean clothes to wear, but sometimes that's just how it goes. Anyways, I know this post is way out of order, but maybe later today (I don't think I can go out agian tonight. I need a regular night of sleep) I'll post again about what I've been up to this week. Gotta get you all caught up!

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.

Week 3 Begins

I'm getting ready to start my after section of class. I just wanted to write a quick note. Time here is flying. I can't believe I'm already a third of the way done. Last Friday we went out to a nice restaurant that I guess was actually mentioned in 'The New York Times' in an article about hidden restraurants in Berlin. It was really good. This weekend I went to Hamburg with FUBiS. I had a good time. It was nice to see another city. I'll definitely try to write more tomorrow. Class is starting :)

Berlin Pictures

The Reichstag from the Bradenburger Tor (columns on the left)
View from my window/Path up to the Schenkels house
My desk at the Schenkel's

Week Two in Berlin

Berlin, 4:25pm - Hello. Hope everyone had a good weekend. I had a pretty good one myself. I’ve found myself a pretty good group of kids to hang out with. It consists of Lena (an art history grad student at Columbia originally from Tokyo), Dianna (also an art history grad student but at Berkley), Megan (CU bio major), Nick (CU business (?) major), and Dillon (also CU, we’ve taken German together for a couple years), and Evan (goes to some school in Oregon I think; does a great Russian impression). On Friday we met up with some other people and went to a neat bar/club in Neukölln that was pretty small. It was mostly outdoors and right next to the River Spree so it was a little cold, but I bet on a warm night it’s a lot of fun there. They had a DJ spinning, a dance floor, some couches and chairs. Neukölln is a poorer area in general and is kind of shady in parts. A lot of Turkish immigrants live there. The western edge near Kruezberg has been re-gentrified a bit and has become sort of hip. The area is colloquially known as “Kreuzkölln” but not everyone likes that term. Some societal struggles/issues. But anyways, like I said, it was a little cold so we went to another bar in Kruezberg. It was kind of chic for my taste, but interesting to see another place. The real interesting thing is that there’s not really a dress code per se when going out in Berlin. Almost every place everyone dresses really casual. It’s more about looking cool than dressing up or showing off. Also, the true clubs in Berlin don’t even really get going until one in the morning. People head home around five. I don’t know if I could handle that. Maybe one weekend I’ll have to give it a try. Saturday I slept in which felt really good and then went back to all the places I had previously seen but had forgotten to bring my camera to. I also spent a couple hours trying to find the Sony Center so that I could use their free Wifi. After an exhaustive search I finally found it and used the internet until my battery died. I then visited Potsdamer Platz, Bradenburger Tor, the hotel Michael Jackson held his baby out of (I didn’t make a special trip to see this, I just happened to pass by it), the Reichstag, a Holocaust memorial that was really interesting, the radio tower, Checkpoint Charlie (kind of disappointing because there’s not really anything left there anymore), a bit of the Berlin Wall, the Marx-Engel statue, and probably something else I’m forgetting right now. Saturday night we didn’t do too much. Just went to a small Kneipe (bar/pub) and hung out. Sunday was a beautiful day. I went for a run in the morning and ate lunch with the Schenkels in their backyard. I then went over to my friend Lena’s apartment to use her internet. We did our homework all afternoon then got a late dinner at a Mexican restaurant near by. My meal was actually quite good (or maybe I just miss Mexican food that much). Her meal looked like it was good too. I had German class all day today. I’m headed back to the Schenkels soon to do my laundry. The FUBiS program worked a deal with a gym near by, so I’m probably going to go check that out later. After that, a bit of homework (sans computer) and then early to bed.

Interesting tidbit of the day/Transportation etiquette: whenever Berliners get on a U-Bahn or S-Bahn train, they always sit in the corner of the benches first. Not once have I seen someone sit in the middle when they are the first person on the bench. Hmm. Also, to open the doors at a stop, you have to press a button. The button lights up once you can open the doors. If you’re the first one off and you don’t press that button the moment it lights up, you’re going to have some angry Berliners running up your backside. So, sit in the corners and press the button IMMEDIATELY.e