Jenkityass Internet

So, as my one fan has noted, I have not updated my blog in a week. This is mainly due to the fact that the internet here is just one step below dial up. A lot of people here used the word "jenkity" to mean something along the lines of "ghetto." I could pay more to have a better provider, but this is already 24 Euro a month!

Anyway, last weekend was, yet again, a blast. We went to Stammtisch (where everyone on the program meets up at a local bar) which was at an Irish pub. It was right by our favorite street, Oranienburgerstraße so we were excited at the prospect of döner at the end of our night. The bar was pretty okay, we all had a good time, but the drinks weren't very strong, and the vibe was a little weird.

I'll skip over Friday night because it ended up being a bust. Oh well! But Saturday night we went to a dance club called Havanah. It has three levels. The first level was salsa dancing and the second one was the same, but the basement level had "black music." That's what they call American R&B and Pop music. We danced the whole night and had a great time! My friends Hannah, Becca, Jacqueline, David, Jason, Matt, Starr and I tend to make a scene at every club we go to, and Havanah was no exception: Hannah was whipping her neck so hard that she still can't move it, two Germans pointed and laughed at us the whole night, and I was eventually barred from entering the VIP section, but I got my revenge.

This week at school has been good, but a little stressful. I made a presentation in my architecture course last night, and proceeded to get ripped apart in front of my class by my professor. I felt bad for myself so I took myself out to a Mexican restaurant. They had real sour cream! It's really difficult to get American sour cream here, because the ones they have in the supermarket all have yogurt in them. It's gross. The restaurant even had live music, which was nice.

Today my German class took an excursion to a markethall where they have tons of different kinds of food. I had begged my professor to take us to a supermarket because I can't find anything I like to eat, and things that I buy keep being slightly off from what I really want. For instance, when I bought oranges the other day, I brought them home and they were dark red on the inside. What? And frozen vegetables all have weird things in them! I thought I was buying frozen broccoli with potatoes, but apparently the "potatoes" were butter! So effectively I boiled butter...It didn't really come out very well.

The markethall has all different kinds of food! They even had spinach, which is a rare find here. I've been to 5 different supermarkets, too. They had a Greek food stand, where I bought hummus and goat cheese, as well as tuna and Greek yogurt. Those are 4 of my favorite items I have not been able to find here! The market also had lots of bakeries, so I got a cinnamon bun. A few of my classmates decided to walk around Kreutzberg (kroyts-burg) after our excursion. Kreutzberg is one of the most beautiful parts of the city, with lots of different shops and beautiful architecture. I even saw caryated figures!

I'm looking forward to this weekend. I'm a diva, and schedule a massage for later today, and then we're going out to a brewery with my program. Tomorrow we're going to a jail as part of a program excursion, and then the rest of the weekend is free! Who knows what I'll do!

I feel like my German is really starting to improve. People can understand me when I walk into a store, and have a conversation. It's really satisfying progress. Part of me now wishes a little bit that I had done the homestay, just for language purposes. But I'm so glad I have my apartment!

Kunstgeschichte

This week has been really nothing special in the way of doing things. I get up and go to class, I come home and try to make dinner, the usual. 

On Monday, since I finished class at noon, I decided to have a look around Schöneberg (shown-e-berg), a popular neighborhood in Berlin. You can really see a part of the old city there, because a lot of older buildings still stand. It's amazing to see beautiful nineteenth century façades next to completely modern and contemporary buildings. Schöneberg is quite beautiful, and full of cafes and restaurants (among outrageous fetish shops...). I stopped at a cafe for an eclair and it was delicious! 

Other than that, things have been pretty low key. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, though. Tonight we're having a potluck (because all of our kitchens were supplied with one pot, making it a little difficult to cook a real meal). Then we're going out to our favorite street, Oranienburgerßtrasse (or-an-ee-en-burger-strasse) to the Oscar Wilde pub; an outing organized by our Student Assistants.

Then tomorrow I have plans to go to Museum Island to putz around, and maybe see the Pergamon Museum (@latergreekartnerds). As students at Freie Universität, we have free access to over 100 museums in Berlin, as well as free public transportation, so going anywhere costs me nothing! I'm going to take advantage of this.

Speaking of Art Nerds, I had a total art history nerd moment in my Architecture of Berlin class on Wednesday. My professor put up a photo of a building by the famous architect Schinkel, and he asked us if it reminded anyone of another building. I raised my hand and said that it reminded me of the Palazzo D'Medici. The next slide? The Palazzo D'Medici, FTW.

Hopefully I'll have more to say after this weekend!

So I left off on Thursday evening, right? Bronchitis? Well let me tell you. After two doses of my antibiotic, I felt like a new person.

Thursday evening was a little boring, I just stayed in and watched American television on my laptop. But I had a big day on Friday, when we had a program wide field trip to the office of the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. It is a beautiful complex completed in 2007 where many government offices are. It's also right next to the Reichstag. The complex lays east/west as a symbol of a unified Berlin, and also contrary to north/south, which was favored by Hitler. We had a guided tour, though we couldn't see much of the building because it was under construction (already!?).

After that I went home and crashed before our official welcome dinner. We had a great time! Becca's friend Starr from school came for a visit and she came to the dinner, too. We had an outrageous meal with Hannah, Tyler, Becca, Starr and I. Essentially every dinner rule ever set forth was broken (and not to mention the glass Starr shattered...). We then came back to the apartments to get ready to go out.

We went to the bar/club Zapata and danced literally until 3AM. We had so much fun and all of us agreed that so far that was our favorite night in Berlin. They played all this American music from the 90's. We got a lot of looks because not only were we the most dressed up, we shouted every word to every song. The highlight of the night was when Cee Lo's "Fuck You" came on, because all 5 Americans in the club went nuts. The Berliners tried to keep up, but just couldn't. It was all very touristtrashchic.

We spent yesterday recovering, and then Becca, Starr and I went out to dinner and got Thai. It was delicious! Just the right amount of spice. Then we decided to have a low key night and go back to the same street Zapata was on, but try to find a more low key bar. We ended up at Silverfish which was similar to a basement dive bar. We were having a very low key night until a EuroTour pub crawl walked in. They were mostly British and Australian people, and two of them had no fear and came right up to our table and chatted us up. Around 1 we decided to call it a night and headed back home.

I guess school is happening again tomorrow, so I'm going to go do some homework. Also, the sun is shining for the first time since...Tuesday? So I might go take a walk while I still can. The sun sets here at like 4 o'clock and by 4:30 it's night. I'm going to go enjoy that!

Bronchitis in Berlin

So I’m sitting here in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, wondering what to do with myself while the doctor comes to see me. I’m trying to think about what I did today, and all that comes to me is that I’m so stuffed up! I certainly have an upper repertory infection, because this morning I coughed something up which must have been remnants of my Christmas tree. The color was a solid hunter green. Hence, I am here, sitting in the doctors office.

There are a lot of things that I’ve noticed that are different here than at home. For one thing, so many doors open out! You have no idea how many doors you push in order to get out of them. At home, you pull to get out, and push to get in. Here you push to get in and then pull to get out. It gets confusing. Another thing that’s hard to remember is that the right cabinet door is the one that you have to open first. The left ones all have rubber strips on them so that they don’t make noise when you shut them. However, I always go to the left cabinet first.

Another, less mundane difference is that nobody picks up their dog poop! Seriously. There’s dog poop everywhere. And there are some pretty big dogs here, and thus, some very big poop. Nobody uses a leash, either! The dogs just walk right beside their owners! They have a saying here in Berlin, “The dogs are well behaved but their owners are not.” Certainly this rings true. But our classroom building does have a certain odor from 110 people walking in and out every day…

Today we took an excursion to a museum by the Brandenburger Tor. We went with my German class to the Willy ____ something museum and it was an exhibit on German culture for beginners. It was in Deutsch, English and Turkish. We had a good time walking around! There was a small exhibit for every letter in the alphabet and it was very hands on. I think the most interesting one was about the accents all around Germany and you could push a button on a map and listen to each one of the regional accents. They were so funny! The one I could understand best was the Berlin accent, which is pretty typical for foreigners. Apparently they have the most neutral accent in Germany.

Finally, a similarity between our two fair nations. Doctors office receptionists here are just as rude and dismissive as they are in the states. It’s nice to feel home.

UPDATE: The verdict? Bronchitis. Antibiotics for the next seven days. There goes my weekend…

Stinky Cheese

So yesterday I went to Ikea with my new friend Conor. I'll spare you the details, because, as it turns out, Ikea is remarkably similar here. I ended up buying a new trash can, a towel, some new sheets, blah blah blah. 

Today was my first real day of classes. I went to class yesterday, and only had to do an oral interview (auf Deutsch, natürlich) and placed into the equivalent of German 102, which is perfect since my last year of 101. And then after my midterm exam, it turns into 201...Hopefully I'll swim, and not sink. There are 10 people in my class! It's amazing. I haven't had a class that small since high school, and my teacher seems nice. I have the class for 3 hours a day Monday-Thursday. We played a game akin to musical chairs, but apparently the German name for it is "a trip to Jerusalem."

Yesterday I had lunch at the Veggie Mensa, and it was a lot more manageable than the giant one. It had better food, too! Today we ate at a Turkish sandwich stand near the mall. Then I had the class I've really been looking forward to: Art and Dictatorship. My professor seems awesome! I think I'm really going to enjoy the course.

Currently I'm dining on a grilled cheese. I bought two new cheeses from the market last night and I opened the scarier looking one just a few minutes ago, and excuse me for what I'm about to say, but it smelled like a fart. Not in an immature way. It smelled like a real life, human fart. Gross. Did I try it anyway? Yes. And do you know what it tasted like? Fart. I decided to go with the second of the cheeses for my sandwich.

For the next post, I'm going to start an ongoing list of all the things I've noticed about Germany that's different than the US. I think it'll be a good read.

Hannibalism

I feel like so much has happened since my last post! I went out with the group on Friday night to Hannibal, which is a low key bar in Kreuzberg (kroytz-berg), where we met our student assistant leaders. It was a lot of fun, and I met a lot of the people on the program. I opted for cocktails (I KNOW, MOM, I'M LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DRINK HERE) because they were all €3.90. One of the girls I was with, Hannah, ordered a beer with sprite in it. Apparently it's a thing here. She couldn't finish it, so I had that, too. A bunch of people in the group decided that they wanted to go to a dubstep club, just 4 transfers away. Sehr schön. I went because it sounded like a good time, but it ended up being a lot of white boys with dreads awkwardly dancing...suffice it to say, it was not my scene. Hannah and I decided to leave together, and realized that not only did we not know how to get back to the apartments, we actually didn't know where we were. We eventually got back with the help of our deus ex machina.

Yesterday I was schlubby all day. Becca came over and we exchanged battle stories from the night before, and then made dinner together...and I'm still looking at a sink full of dirty dishes. I'll deal with that later. We decided to go back to Hannibal last night, and had a great time! It was a lot easier because we made all of our connections and it wasn't as crowded as the night before. We got home a lot earlier, too. Hannah and I went back to Becca's apartment and we made grilled cheese together. It was perfect.

This morning, getting up at 8AM was rough. I blue baseball capped it, so we know what that means. I went on a walking tour of Berlin with our program director, Dirk. It was chilly, and grey and it drizzled a little bit, but I'm so glad I went. We saw the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, and many other famous sites in Berlin. I feel much more acquainted with the city now that I did that. I got some great photos, too!


The thing I noticed about Berlin is how sparse the city center is. There aren't a ton of buildings everywhere like New York. Berlin is absolutely sprawling, too. It's huge! It's 8 times the size of Paris. Nothing is built up, and the tallest buildings I've seen are about 10 stories. Another thing I noticed is that they have a completely different concept of shoveling here. The streets are covered, and I mean covered with ice and snow. The sidewalks are covered in sand, too, which makes for a messy apartment when you come home.

Becca and I tried to go to Ikea on our way home from the tour, because I need a pillow, some towels, and now light bulbs and a new bathroom faucet...whoops. Unfortunately, we didn't even think of this, Ikea isn't open on Sundays! Bummer. We went to Euro McDonalds for the first time today, and they have delicious veggie burgers here! And it was super clean. As Becca put it, "Well, for us, the whole point of McDonalds is that it's disgusting." Untrue here!

Forms and Functions

1/6/11
I didn't update yesterday for a couple reasons. I was completely zonked, and ready to do absolutely nothing for the evening. We gathered as a group yesterday for the first time, in one of the few lecture halls that Freie Universität has, and essentially filled out forms for the whole day. We took a break, and ate at the Mensa, which is the school's cafeteria. It's really great food, and it's highly subsidized, so a large meal there is inexpensive. Though, when I went up to buy my food the woman who rang me up asked me something about the salad I made very quickly in German. I was not prepared for this, so I did that thing where you just smile and nod. The man behind me was clearly displeased, and gave an audible huff, and the woman just totaled the order, and I guess I paid less than I should have...

After a long day, a few of us went to the mall and bought "surf sticks" for the internet. Picture 15 Americans walking into a store demanding internet sticks in broken German. It was presh. 2 hours later (because we travel as a pack) we came home. I was at the point where I thought I would be willing to murder someone to have 10 minutes of uninterrupted interwebz (addiction?). I popped my one frozen pizza into the oven and prayed that the internet stick wouldn't give me any problems. Thankfully a monkey could have set it up, so I was on the internet in no time.

1/7/11
Well today was our walking tour of campus. I found out that there is an entirely vegetarian Mensa, which I was really happy about. We also took a tour of a defunct bunker (the ONE day I decided it wouldn't be worth it to bring my camera!). It was interesting for 10 minutes before I realized the entire thing was filled with mold, and had an allergy attack...Whatever.

Anyway, tonight I'm going out with the program to a Turkish restaurant. I guess they need to socialize us. I was supposed to be in the group that went last night, but I ended up passing out at 10 last night!

If anyone is interested, here is a 20 minute video about my program. I watched it, it's pretty good. http://vimeo.com/10228827. Also, I'm finally attaching one of the pictures I took, but I'm not going to write about it yet.

City Center

1/5/10

Last night I looked for a place to eat. I walked for about a mile to find a reasonable place, and I found a good Italian place. I had a giant pizza for 3.50 Euro. 

So 13 hours of sleep later, I decided to venture into the city center. I went to the most familiar sounding place: Potsdamer Platz. I walked out of the train station to find myself in front of the Ritz-Carlton, and I knew that I had come to the right place. After walking around in the freezing (and I really mean freezing) cold, looking for a place to eat I decided to get Subway. Subway! I’m in one of the most metropolitan cities in the world, with any choice of food at my disposal and I choose Subway. I guess I was just that hungry. The coke tastes like it’s made with real sugar, though, which makes it worth the 1.70 Euro. Whatever. And so far this has been my most expensive meal. I’m worried, though, that I won’t find my way back to my apartment…oh well. 

*Also, pictures to come. Soon. I just need to not be absolutely exhausted. 

Berlin!

Traveling to Berlin was uneventful and easy. I met a few kids from Jersey on the plane, had a window seat with no one sitting next to me, and I took an anti-anxiety pill so I had a restful flight. I awoke to a beautiful Berlin outside my window. It must have snowed last night because there was fresh snow on all the cars. A few of us split a cab to the FU-BEST headquarters, where we got our photos taken (after 12 hours of traveling!) and we had a small orientation. But best of all, we were told that we were going to move in to our apartments, and we have tomorrow off to do whatever we want around the city.

I unpacked all of my things, and made friends with my apartment. I love it! It’s the perfect size. I made my bed (which is meant to double as a couch, but I don’t see that happening). I then, by chance, met up with two other FU-BESTers and we decided to take a look around the city. We were starving, so we decided to take the train one stop north toward the city. Mind you, public transportation in Berlin is free for students, so I’m going to get used to the transit system really fast.

 We stopped off at a Turkish deli, and, of course I had no idea how to order. On top of all that, all three of us are vegetarians, and on top of that, we had absolutely no clue how to order! I spotted “Falafel” on the menu, hoped it was a direct translation (ha!) and decided to order that, and a Heineken. All that was about 4 Euro, and it was delicious and filling. After that, I decided I had had enough exploring, and decided I should get back to the apartment.

I moved around the furniture, hung up my clothes, and crashed hard. I fell asleep for two hours, thinking that I had set my alarm for only one. I awoke and it’s dark already at 6! I took a beautiful, hot shower and brushed my teeth, ready for the day at the crack of 6:30 PM.

So here I sit. In my apartment, where I can choose to clean the sink in the bathroom, or scrub the toilet. I am sitting in my apartment in Germany, where I can use as many italics as I like, and keep the light on if I don’t feel well, and listen to my music and make a cup of tea, all by my self. I can keep the door open if I feel like being friendly, and I can keep it closed if I don’t. It’s wonderful.

New Year, 2011

This is my pilot post for my new travel blog. This is for my friends and family to see what I'm up to during my time abroad. This will also serve as a travel diary for me, because I'm terrible at writing daily. The goal is to post a new picture every day which will serve as a prompt. With a little self discipline I can reach my goal!

I'm leaving for Berlin, Germany on Monday, January 3, 2011, and I figure that now is a good point to start documenting my journey. I'm going to be studying at Freie Universität, and hopefully picking up German along the way. Today started the mountain of laundry I've been putting off since Thanksgiving and I dug my suitcase out of the depths of the basement. I put my socks in, and called it a night. Maybe tomorrow will be more productive...but I have a sneaky suspicion that I'm going to be up at 5 on Monday morning, desperately willing the dryer to dry those 12 pairs of jeans a little faster.

Anyway, Monday can't come fast enough. Until then!