End of the Semester

Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark!

lis greeted me with this cute flag! 

After a week of final exams, yesterday was the last day of my semester, so we had our closing meeting and farewell dinner, and I said goodbye to my host mom.  This morning I got up at 3:20am and made my way to Copenhagen (only a 45 minute flight from Berlin!).

Leaving Berlin was really difficult.  We spent 1.5 hours at our closing meeting discussing/'learning about' the culture shock that we're going to experience when we return to the states.  I must say - through that, I discovered that the BEST thing I've done for myself was to keep this blog!  Not only did it allow me to think through and document my experiences, but more importantly it told you guys about my experiences, so that you at least have a partial understanding of what has been happening with me and how I have changed in the past 4 months.

BUT!  I could not start thinking about the cultural re-entry process (as they call it) just yet!  First, I am embarking on the trip of a lifetime through Europe for the month.  This past week I had a mixture of feelings of (1) really wanting to be home at the lake spending time with my family, (2) really wanting to stay in my comfortable and awesome life in the great city of Berlin with the awesome support system of IES, a few close friends, and my host mom, aaaand (3) wanting May to start so I can explore Europe!

Luckily, Mom knew just what to say and told me that I'm so silly to want to come home, that I've got a whole continent on my hands and that feeling uneasy about the change is okay.  So!  Feeling a little better about that, I left Berlin - but it wasn't a "goodbye" (thank goodness), but just a "see you later":  Here is my schedule for the month:

April 27 - May 2:             Copenhagen, Denmark
May 3 - 7:                        Munich, Germany and Salzburg, Austria
May 7 - 13:                      Copenhagen, Denmark
May 13 - 16:                    Berlin!
May 15 - 23:                    The March   (Berlin; Krakow, Poland; Warsaw, Poland)
May 23 - 29:                    Istanbul, Turkey
May 29 - 31:                    Berlin!
May 31:                           Fly back to the States

A bit of explanation:

Munich:
       A close friend of Lis' Grandfather lives in Bavaria (Southern Germany) near Munich.  We are going to go visit him for a few days, and see his wonderful area.  Lis, Werner, and I are all really excited!  We're going to make a day trip to Daschau, a concentration camp right outside of Munich, and another to the castle Neuschwanstein.  After that we're going to spend 24 jam-packed hours in Salzburg, Austria and go on a Sound of Music tour!!!

The March:
     This is a Holocaust Studies trip which is run by my Holocaust professor from HWS, his wife, and two survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The trip starts in Berlin on May 15, where we will see where the Wansee Conference took place, and other memorial/historic sights around Berlin.  The following day we take a bus to Krakow, Poland.  We will spend several days there visiting camps and historical sites.  On Friday night we will have a huge Shabbat dinner - a highlight of the trip, which sounds so cool.  For the last segment of the trip we will be in Warsaw, Poland visiting nearby camps and sites as well.  It is truly going to be an incredible and life changing experience, since my professor is endlessly knowledgable and we have two amazing survivors with us.

Istanbul, Turkey
     For my last week in Europe, I will be traveling from Warsaw to Istanbul to spend 6 days there with Lucy! I am so excited to finally see Turkey, since the culture has been SO present in my studies, cultural experiences, food experiences, etc., in Berlin.  I believe Berlin has the largest Turkish diaspora, so going to the actual country, which is something I've always wanted to do, will be absolutely amazing.  Better yet, we have an acquaintance from HWS who is from Istanbul, so he will show us around, too!


But don't think that my blogging is over!  I still have to tell you about many things, among which are my trip to Dresden, the tour of the high-end Volkswagon factory (they're made 96% by HAND!), the Stasi Prison, and more.  Luckily, I'll have lots of time on my hands while Lis and my other friends in Copenhagen are in class, and as I travel.  So stay tuned for what will be more frequent updates on my blog, both about past experiences and about my current travels.

Thanks so much to those of you who are still following along with my experience - it means so much to me that you take the time to read (what are rather lengthy) posts.  You guys are the best :) 

Prague, Czech Republic

I arrived (by bus) in Prague on Wednesday afternoon.  Lucy picked me up, and I did some reading (Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There (thanks Lis!)) while she was in her afternoon class, and got a bag of vitamin c gummies because I woke up sick that morning.  After her class, we went to Old Town Square, which is really close to her place.  It was beautiful:

me in Old Town Square

That evening, one of Lucy's roommates joined us for dinner at a cute little restaurant where I got this delicious pizza and ate all but one slice because I was so hungry:

When you go out to dinner here in Europe (and particularly in the Czech Republic) you could seriously sit there for 4 hours, and they wouldn't give you any trouble.  That's nice in that you can relax and not be rushed out, but you have to do all but tackle the waitress in order to get your check.

Thursday morning I was still quite sick so I slept while Lucy was in class that morning.  In the afternoon, we did some shopping on "the shopping street", which connects to Wenceslas Square (you know, 'Good King Wenceslas', the Christmas song?).

Wenceslas Square on a cloudy day

Prague is by far the most beautiful city I have seen yet.  The streets make absolutely no sense, but the city is small enough that if you wander through them, you'll find your way.  They're so narrow - you think you've seen narrow cobble streets - not until you've been to Prague).  I just could not get over how beautiful every nook and cranny of the city was, and these photos don't do it justice.  I wish Berlin hadn't gotten the living daylight bombed out of it after the war, or else I'm sure a lot of it would look much like Prague in that sense.

That night on our way back from meeting up with some other HWS students for one girl's birthday, we stopped at a food stand near Wenceslas to get fried cheese - a very czech food, that Anthony Bourdain recommended.  Let me tell you..... it was AMAZING.

I'm eating my way through Europe.

Friday we went to the Charles Bridge (the big/main bridge in Prague connecting the two parts of the city) and walked across it to the other part of the beautiful city.  From the bridge, you can see the castle, the house where the president lives, and an overall great view of that part of the city because it's on a hill.

On the Charles Bridge.  The castle above, and the waterfront.

We found a cute little restaurant once out of the touristy area.  They didn't have an English menu, but the waiter told us he would translate the whole menu for us if we waited a few minutes!!  It was so nice, and something that would never happen in this part of Germany.  He took our order, and then we waited an hour for our food, trying to surpress our immense hunger.

After lunch, we found the Lenin Wall, which was surprisingly small (especially after walking down the Berlin wall so many times), but cool.  We walked back across the bridge and got another Czech delicacy - a Trdelník.  It is the best thing to ever happen to carbs.  Ever.
It's a pastry that's made by wrapping a long string of dough around a metal rod many times, and then it's  cooked over a fire while it rotates (picture a pig roast).  Afterwards, it's rolled in cinnemon/nut/sugar mix.  You can also get nutella in it.  So with that, I continued to eat my way through the Czech Republic!!

Saturday we did a bit more exploring before my 5pm bus back to Berlin.  It was so nice getting to see Prague, getting to see Lucy again, and meeting all of here awesome flatmates.
On the bus ride back, I had a bit of an issue getting across the border because I didn't have my passport (because the government had it until Thursday [and I left on Wednesday] to give us our visas).  You are supposed to be able to travel via bus or train within the EU with just an ISIC (int'l student ID card) card  and a license, but the bus people weren't having any of that.  Luckily I convinced them to let me on because of a letter I had from my school saying that the authorities have my passport.  We were stopped at the border (because there are no actual border crossings in Europe like we have between Canada - black unmarked BMWs just pull you over at random).  Thank God, after much suspense, the police let me through with the letter and my two forms of ID.  It was a scary experience, and I'll definitely have to let those who advised us on travel that it is not okay to travel without passport back TO Germany, but only from.

But, thankfully, I made it back okay, and have been rushing to unpack, go to the gym (saying no to food is not an option here), and planning out my trip to Paris!  I'm leaving here in an hour, and will be back Saturday.  I can't believe I'm finally going, it's so crazy!

Have a great week!

Hamburg, Germany

Two weeks from today I will be leaving for Paris!!! :)

I'm going to write about my trip to Hamburg in list form, so here we go:

3:30am: Wake up
5:18am: Board regional train to Hamburg, via stopover in Schwerin.

After a couple hours of darkness, we finally got to see the German countryside!  It was so nice to see the wide open landscape, farms, and cute houses.  It reminded me of the drive from home to the lake, just with prettier houses.

9:28 Arrival in Hamburg, where were were greeted by 6 giant posters (a few stories high, each) of David Beckham hanging from the top of the Hauptbahnhof (main train station).  Who can complain.

10:00 A bit hungry, we stopped at a bakery to be German and get some pastries.  This one's called the Kopenhagener - I'll have to consult Lis to see if there's a reason behind that.

10:30 We then visited the Rathaus (town hall), which is one of the main sites in Hamburg.  It's a really small, riverside town which grew (back in the day) because it was one of main ports in Germany.  This town hall finished construction in 1897 and still houses Hamburg's mayor, senate, and parliament (evidently the city has it's own).

Sorry for the poor quality; I could only get the whole building in the shot if I used my iphone! 

11:30 Next we meandered throughout the town and found St. Michael's church - the city's other landmark.  We bought a pass to go up to its observation deck, from which we had great views of the city and the port.

Despite this photo looking like I photoshopped myself in, I was actually there.

After braving this cold we got some lunch - my travel partners wanted to eat Hamburgers (get it..) so I had french fries for lunch.  Afterwards, I had snickers flavored gelato and it was de-licious!!  After eating all of that unhealthy food, we did some shopping and I got a new pair of running/tri shorts.

We then decided that we'd take an earlier train back to Berlin because we were cold and had kind of run out of things to see (since we excluded visiting the museums).

Notably, people in Hamburg are much more friendly than in Berlin, so that was refreshing.  Overall, it was a good day trip.

These next few days will be spent doing copious amounts of work in preparation for midterms, so that when Lis arrives on Friday I can spend lots of quality best friend time with her!

Wittenberg, Germany

Friday our German language professors took us to Wittenberg for what turned out to be the most culturing day of my life.  It was so full of history and so great that my friends and I couldn't stop talking about it for hours!

Brief and necessary history of Martin Luther:  In the early 1500's, there in Wittenberg, he was part of the Catholic church's clergy.  He got frustrated that the church only preached about a God who was full of wrath, and he felt that since God sent Jesus to die for our sins, he no longer has wrath for us; just grace and love.  He was also frustrated that the Catholic church told parishioners that in order to be forgiven for their sins they had to buy slips of paper that said they were forgiven (aka, give their money to the church).  Fast forward.  In 1517, Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Schloßkirche (the church in Wittenberg) his 95 Theses, which stated his ideology and criticisms of the Catholic church.  He was then excommunicated from the Catholic church, but thanks to the invention of the printing press, the Theses was spread all over.  Luther then translated the Bible into German so that the poor could read it too (they didn't know Latin).  Overall, an awesome guy.

The town of Wittenberg is 115 km south of Berlin, so we took a speedy and comfortable regional train there.  I finally had the opportunity to see the beautiful German countryside!! But unfortunately I've been having some health issues and got a terrible migrane right before we got on the train, so I spent the entire ride with my eyes closed/head covered.

When we first arrived we went to Martin Luther's house which had been turned into an extremely well-done museum, definitely the best one I've ever seen.  They'd even preserved his living room from the early 1500's!! It was incredible.

Martin Luther's livng room.

The first translation of Luther's Bible, written in High German in 1534.

After, we went to lunch at the most traditional of German restaurants, and had a delicious meal.  Drinks were paid for by our school, so I figured it was the best opportunity to try German beer.  It was disgusting!! I took one sip and gave it to my friend. I'm glad I got that experience over with, so I can stop being harassed by everyone to try it.

Delicous

Next, we went to the Schloßkirche (Castle Church), which is where all this history took place!  We saw the door on which Luther posted his 95 Theses, and then went inside the church, which was so incredibly beautiful!!!

Inside the Schloßkirche

After this, we traveled by foot all the way to the other side of Germany (well that's what it felt like, but it was just the other side of Wittenberg) to see a public school/piece of art that the architect Hundertwasser redid in 1996.  It was.... quite a piece of art!  Definitely not my taste, but interesting to see.  We were taken on a tour of it by two of its students, so they did the tour in German and English and I was pleasantly surprised with how much German I understood! #progress. The architect even donated an observatory (as in, for astronomy)- could you imagine your high school having an observatory?!

The school was renovated in the '90s because they wanted to get rid of the classic (ugly and depressing) DDR (GDR) architecture, as this was part of Eastern Germany.  The architect basically put a facade over the old DDR walls, inside and out.  Now the school is a colorful glimpse of the present among endless depressing DDR-style apartment buildings.  It was definitely shocking to see.  I could never live in the former east, that's for sure! 

Hundertwasser's 'masterpiece'. 800 students go here.

Yeah, I know! 

After this we boarded the regional train to return to Berlin, and the sun had long since set, so I still couldn't see the countryside.  I tried to read a German version of trash magazine all the way home.  When I got back to my apartment I was making dinner when my host mom (who decided then that she'd mostly just speak to me in German, which is great and should be really helpful!) invited me and my flatmate to go to her Verein party!  Verein is really untranslatable.  It's essentially a club.  They have them for everything - chess, any sport, theater, music, hiking, etc.  You can really only be in one because they're a very big commitment; you have to pay dues, attend regularly, help plan events, etc. They're also for all ages.  Instead of having school sports, children join local Verein for their specific interest.  My host mom is in a dance-exercise verein.  

I wolfed down my dinner, changed, and we went to the party.  We chatted with her for a bit, and then started dancing!  Everyone danced for a while, and then her verein's teacher led some dances - it was like Zumba, in how it's led, but it was obviously not latin dancing.  It was so much fun, and such a great cultural experience. I'm so happy I went!

It was a long Friday (and thus a long post... my apologies), but I don't think I've ever had a day with more culture than that!  

My Journey to Germany

Well, my trip to Berlin went flawlessly!  AirBerlin (if you ever fly to Germany) was wonderful so here's a  plug for them.  We got dinner after we got on the plane - I didn't even need to remind them I needed a gluten free meal, woo! - and wine came with dinner (to help us sleep?).  The flight attendants would speak German to you until you gave them a blank stare and then they'd switch to English, but luckily since I know my food/ordering I was able to speak German them the whole time.  A little nerve-wracking but a good way to adjust quickly!
After dinner we got a little package with a toothbrush, toothpaste, warm socks and an eye mask so I made good use of that and tried to sleep.  That didn't work out too well, so my seat partner and I spent a few hours talking instead.  Turns out, she is a native Berliner who was interning in NYC for the semester, so she took great delight in telling me about everything I must see and do in Europe and Germany, things to look out for, and was generally a delightful conversation partner to prepare me for my arrival!  She was so helpful she even went through customs with me, waited for me at baggage claim so we could struggle our way out of the airport together, and then gave me her information so that she and her boyfriend can meet up with me if I want.  This was the perfect greeting to Germany, and one that I never would've expected after learning about German culture in class.

When I walked outside of the airport it was 7:30am and pitch black outside - that's one thing that'll take time adjusting to; the sun rises at around 8am and sets at 4pm.  I took a taxi to school because of the amount of luggage I had (uncharacteristically unadventurous of me), and it was a swift Mercedes ride to school! The cab driver - of course - only spoke German and thought I did too, so that was fun.

I got to IES (my school) at 8am - 2 hours early.  There was a random (I use that word appropriately here, as he is not from IES and I still don't know where he came from) man standing outside of the building, who then asked me something in German, to which I replied auf Deutsch ".....IES? I don't speak much German, I'm sorry".  He registered this and then proceded to tell me, in German of course, "Well you are speaking really well. Come with me." Confused, I followed his hand motions and German phrases into an elevator and I ended up (thankfully, I suppose) on the IES floor.  I was (of course) the first student there, but they started trickling in after a short time (I use that phrase loosely because I still don't know what time it is.  It's 3:20am here now, actually, but jet lag is the best).