Berlin Seminar

We had our end of year seminar in Berlin the past few days. We all arrived around 2 on Wednesday, and it was great to see everyone again. I missed them a lot. We stayed at the Teikyo University hotel thingy, which unfortunately was about an hour outside of Berlin, so it was hard to get to. We had to switch street trains a lot, and walked for awhile in a forested area past some camping grounds. I felt like I was in girls’ camp again. That day we just had a seminar to tell us basically what we would be doing in the next few days.

On Thursday, we got going around 8 or 9 and went to the Cecilienhof, where the Potsdam Conference took place. We got a tour and learned some interesting stuff, like that Stalin was terrified of airplanes and Truman gave the OK for Hiroshima from there. Afterwards we had free time to go around Potsdam and/or Berlin, but to go to the bus/tram station we had to go through the park. Which happened to be an FKK park. Which means Freikörperkultur park. Or, nude park. Or, its-okay-to-walk-around-wearing-nothing-while-innocent-children-run-around park. That was definitely an experience that my exchange has lacked, but I really would have been okay without it. We decided to go to a castle in Potsdam that some people say is a smaller version of Versailles (it’s not, really…), called Castle Sanssouci. It was really pretty with lots of landscaping and statues, but I’ve seen better ones. We didn’t go inside, but headed toward Berlin. In the Hauptbahnhof, we decided to eat, which was a bad idea, because there are lots of scammers and thieves. I ended up buying lunch for one such scammer, before I realized that was a bad idea. But whatever. Someone just got a free lunch. I wanted to go directly and see all the typical sights in Berlin, but others in my group had already been there, and wanted to check out a store they had heard about. It was called the Kaufhaus des Westens, or some such (Shopping Center of the West, roughly). It was in the posh section of Berlin, and had a lot of high-end brands, like Rolex and whatever else. At the top was a grocery section that had American food, which is why we wanted to go. But it was really anticlimactic for several reasons. 1, they didn’t have a good selection; 2, it was way overpriced; and 3, we are going to be back in America soon anyways. I probably would have been thrilled to find that 5 months ago, but… No. By that time we had to start heading back to the hotel to get there in time for another seminar. A lot of us were late, and Gerd (our main teacher) wasn’t happy, but we seriously left on time. It’s just the public transportation out to that area isn’t good.  We just planned for the next day.

Thursday we had to wake up at a ridiculously early hour to eat breakfast at 5:30, and leave by 6 to go to the Reichstag with all 300+ CBYXers. We had to pass through security, and I got patted down/scanned with a metal detector baton thingy for the first time (new life experience, check). Once we all got in, we took our seats to watch a meeting of the Bundestag. First at 8 we were told about the history of the building, and at 9 it began. We were lucky in the fact that we got to see them really going at it with a heated topic, gay rights/marriage. The way they debate and discuss is rather different from how it’s done in America (as far as I’m aware). As a speaker from each party would give his/her speech about it (speaking rather freely, which I found cool), the other representatives would cheer, clap, boo, or yell at them. It was rather amusing actually, and I was so distracted by all that going on that I don’t even know what was said or decided. Then the topic changed to something boring and a bunch of the representatives just left. We left soon after as well to go to a conference room and speak with other party officials. We were able to ask them political questions and get answers (sort of), as well as let them know how awesome we find the program. My group did that in rap-form. Most of us just snapped the whole time, but it turned out really cool, I thought. Another group read a poem aloud. Around 11, the American ambassador and the president of the Bundestag came and spoke to us. The stereotypical differences between Germans and Americans were really apparent between those two men. President Lammert was so formal and correct, while Ambassador Murphy was really open, friendly, smiley, and amiable. They spoke to us about the importance of our program to the relations between Germany and the US. Murphy quoted someone at one point (and I wish I could remember who) saying “Exchanges turn ‘nations’ into ‘people’,” which is so true. Before coming here, the thought of Germany was an abstract idea of all the stereotypes and history of Germany that I knew; just some country across the ocean. But now I feel personally connected to them; I feel like I know them because I have lived here for the past 10 months and have come to understand how they tick and who they are and what it’s like to live here and how they are and aren’t different. Germany (and all the other countries, for that matter) isn’t just some country across the ocean; there are people there, just like us, and we should do what we can to help each other and improve relations. We can all benefit so much from working together and understanding each other. Anyways, after all that we ate lunch. I got to meet some other people and talk to them about their programs. I’ve already been looking into doing some sort of internship or scholarship to study more abroad, but for a shorter time. Around 1:45 we headed to the US Embassy, which is right next to the Brandenburger Tor. My group was the first to go in, which meant we got first dibs on all the American sodas and donut holes!!! You have no idea how excited we were to be (technically) on American soil and have American foods. I swear the grass smelled like America. Seriously. I went around telling everyone to smell it. It’s different. And I’m not crazy, because a number of people agreed with me. There was a dance party in the courtyard, but my feet hurt from wearing heels, so I chilled with some friends and enjoyed watching. After awhile, Murphy came back and said a bit to us, and the embassy workers also spoke and told us about what they do and about possibilities to work with them. We were given free time in Berlin from 6-10, and my group did some touristy stuff. Lots of pictures, Brandenburger Tor, Checkpoint Charlie, Rathaus, Berlin Wall pieces, and the Fernseherturm. We also went to the Ritter Sport Chocolate store and souvenir shopping. We were able to get a short impression of Berlin, which is quite a big, modern city. I wish we had more time there, because something I have learned is that just being a tourist in cities doesn’t cut it. You miss so much if you can’t really get to know the area and what it’s like there and the people. But I really enjoyed it, and am really glad I got to go to Berlin. Now I have less than a week left in my exchange and I’m FREAKING OUT. It’s like I suddenly don’t know what to do with my life anymore, even though I already have plans to get a job and go to college. Everything I have come to know and have experienced in the last 10 months is about to end. While I’m excited to get on with my education and be back in the land of Oreos (which I have missed so much), I’m going to miss here a lot. I have been able to see and learn and change/grow and do so much, and I would like to continue doing so for a little longer. Just a bit more time would be great. But I can’t do that, and so I’m just going to have to make the best of my remaining time here.

Rain Needs to DIE.

This post is actually about my Pfingstferien. But rain needing to die was a thought I repeatedly had during it. Pfingsferien was a two week break from school for Baden-Württemberg, so I did a bit of travelling. My host mom was in China, my host sister in America, and my host dad is too sick/weak to really take care of himself, so we went to visit his sister in Regensburg for a week. To be honest, they are old. So it wasn’t exactly very exciting, but I enjoyed myself and saw Regensburg, which was really pretty. The Donau river and all the other rivers that flow through the area were beautiful. It rained on a number of the days that I was there during that first week, but on one of the nice days I went on a bike ride with my host dad’s sister through the countryside. It was gorgeous, until it suddenly got cloudy and started to rain, but whatever. I got cake at a small, local Biergarten before that happened, so I can’t complain. On another day we also went to a traditional Bayrisch (Bavarian? I don’t know the English words for stuff anymore) Biergarten thingy that served Bayrisch food. I got a Schweinebraten with a Kartoffelknödel. Um, just Google it. Then I was in Nürnberg (Nuremberg) for a day or two. It was a cool city to see with a lot of history. Practically everything in the inner city was leveled or severely damaged in World War II, which is a shame. It never ceases to amaze me when I go to cities and learn about how much they were affected by both World Wars, and how much was destroyed. That’s just not something you really understand from history class until you see it. But I’m glad I went, I enjoyed it. Plus, I went to this place that serves original Nürnberger Würstchen with fresh baked pretzels, and it was SO GOOD. I have never had such a good pretzel and I swear I’m going to figure out how to bake them before I die.

 

           

  

 

That was the first week of break. Not very exciting. Kind of like me second week, where we were in Stuttgart. Though I did go to the Wilhelma Zoo! That brought out my inner child. I still think the zoo in Omaha is better, but I may just be biased. Though, the Wilhelma was really prettily landscaped and they had a lot of cool monkeys. And I got ice cream.

On Friday at the very end of the break, I headed to Prague, in the Czech Republic. It is trips like this when I wish the weather channel would not lie to me. When I packed, it said it would be partly cloudy in the 60’s. It’s good it was raining it Stuttgart when I left or else I wouldn’t have brought an umbrella. But I was still woefully unprepared for 40-50 degrees and NONSTOP RAIN. NONSTOP.  Well, okay. I arrived around 5pm and had three hours to wander around until I could meet up with Valerie, my friend on this venture. In those three hours the weather was nice enough that I actually could take off my jacket. 3 hours. I didn’t want to sit around in those three hours, so I went to find the middle of the city. Which I did without getting lost, which I consider quite a feat, because Czech is a crazy language! I have no idea how to pronounce anything I saw on a map (I won’t even say read on a map because that isn’t possible). I have heard that Prague is like a fairytale city, and I can understand why. There are so many towers and churches that look like they were either built by Dracula or Cinderella (take your pick). The architecture there was just really, really cool. I think there are buildings built in the style of every era since 1000AD (or some such ridiculously ancient date). And some have multiple styles on the same building. For example, the cathedral on the castle grounds has a Gothic front and back, I think the side is Baroque or Renaissance, with a tower top made out of copper and there’s a clock. And some of the statues on the Gothic front have dudes in tuxedos, but whatever, right?! That happened because that church took 600 years to build. The famous church in the Old Town Square took 100-200 years to build, and that’s why the towers look funny in comparison to each other and the bottom part of the building. There has just been a lot of stopping/starting of construction, or reconstruction to fix buildings, so there are some weird things. Like a random Greek styled entrance on the side of a Baroque building, or facades that cover an ancient archway, but which you can still see through a window of said façade. …

Anyways, on Friday we met up and went to our hostel, and we began on Saturday. Unfortunately, that’s when the rain started and didn’t stop ALL DAY. Luckily I had my rain jacket and an umbrella, but I don’t think my feet have ever been so wet for so long in my whole life. By the end of the day, my lower six inches were soaked. And I promise I wasn’t jumping in puddles. It was crazy. But going beyond the miserably wet state of my feet, I had an interesting day. We did a free walking tour around the Old Town area and the Jewish District and learned a lot of very interesting things. For instance: the astronomical clock was the first of its kind, which made Prague unique, and only the creator knew how to make it, but then the government at that time got scared that he would build one for another city, so they blinded him. In revenge, he committed suicide by jumping into the clockwork and it was broken for the next 100 years until they figured out how to fix it. And there is a tradition of throwing people out of windows when they are very angry about the government or some issue, like early clashes between Catholics and Protestants (there may or may not be pointed stakes at the bottom). The Jewish District of today (which is now the more wealthy and desirable area of town for shops) was a Jewish Ghetto for a very long time because it was the undesirable land. It was several meters lower than the rest of the city and when the Moldau River flooded, the area basically became a swamp. So naturally anti-Semitists forced the very high Jewish population to live very cramped there. For hundreds of years there was a large Jewish community, but after the Holocaust, not many survived, and of the ones who did, not many returned, so the Jewish community today is very small. In my opinion, the most interesting surviving part of the original Jewish Ghetto is the Jewish Cemetery. They were forced to use only a small piece of land to bury people, and with such a high concentration of people, they naturally ran out of space very fast. So they just kept layering more dirt on top when they ran out of space and moved the tombstones to the top layer. They estimate that in the 9-12 layers, there are around 100,000 people buried, and the earliest (that they can read, many tombstones are illegible) is from the 1400s. Crazy stuff. Later we were told about the “most haunted” church in Prague. The legend goes that a long time ago, a thief wanted to steal some of the treasures in the church, so he snuck in during the day and hid, so that when everyone was gone he could take what he wanted. In the act of taking a necklace off of a Mary statue, the statue came to life and grabbed his arm, preventing him from getting away. In the morning, the priests “rescued” him from the statue’s grasp by cutting off his arm, and after they had cut it off, the statue let it go and went back to its normal position. So you know what they did?!  They kept the arm and hung it from the ceiling as a warning to all thieves. I don’t think that story is true, but what is gross is there is a skeletal arm hanging from the ceiling! Who does that, seriously? Probably the same people who decorate the interior of a church entirely with human bones! (I didn’t go there; I just heard that that church was an hour outside of Prague). Honestly. For dinner that night, we went to a place that served Czech food, which was a lot like German, I thought. We went back to the hostel a bit earlier because the weather was just too miserable to withstand much longer.

 

Sunday we got going a little later because we slept awhile. But that’s the day we went around the Jewish district and saw all the synagogues (we didn’t on Saturday because that’s their Sabbath and everything was closed). Cool stuff. Then we did a tour of the castle area at 2. We learned some more history and stories, but not as many “interesting” ones as Saturday’s. The most interesting thing that I learned was that J.K. Rowling used to live in Prague and taught English there and led some tours in the castle area. One of those areas was the Golden Lane (I think that’s what it’s called), which is a street of adorable, tiny houses/shops. This was pretty much (part of?) her inspiration for Hogsmeade/Diagon Alley. There’s even a legend from that street that there’s a house that only certain people can see (Leaky Cauldron, anyone?). I’ll stop being a silly Harry Potter fan after I mention that Norbert the dragon came from a person. We got a really nice view of the city from the castle area, and the area itself was really beautiful. I already mentioned the cathedral, which we unfortunately couldn’t go inside. There was an armor exhibit with all shapes and sizes, which brought great amusement. The weather that day was tolerable; there were long periods without rain (YEEEEEEEEEEES) but then it would randomly start to pour really hard. It had been raining so much that the river was flooding a TON. Enough to call in the army, which we saw. A bajillion cars with flashy lights and trucks with soldiers peering out the back passed by. At that point we didn’t know the river was dangerously rising, so we were getting all sorts of wild ideas. After dinner (Mexican tacos… in the Czech Republic… pretty good… and there were refried beans! Which I was thoroughly excited about) we were tired of being wet and went back to the hostel.

Valerie had to leave extremely early in the morning, which was further complicated by a number of metros and trams being shut down due to flooding (the worst flooding in about 10 years). After she got on her way, I went back to bed. I had planned to go to a museum, because I had lots of time till I had to go, but the still-miserable weather made me too lethargic. I really liked Prague, it reminded me of Vienna a lot, but it was really hard to enjoy because of the rain. I’m still glad I went. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I did and learned this break. I only have about two weeks left till I go back to America and that thought is weirding me out beyond all reason. I don’t know if I should rejoice or cry. But I still have a bunch of things to do till then, so I’ll decide later.