Awkward & Natural

Apologies

2010-12-11T17:02:00.000-08:00

This blog has fallen by the wayside. 3 days until I'm home.... I'll tell you stories then. With hand motions and exasperating inflection.

The Countdown Begins

2010-12-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

Numbers are the name of the game today. I've got:
1 final left
2 days until K getting here
3-4 days of excessive partying in celebration of finishing finals (I'll be posting about that, never fear)
5 days until I have to deal with the Hausmeister, resulting in...
30-40 Euros to pay for the spare key that I lost (it fell on my carpet, crept under and disappeared about 3 months ago)
3 Christmas presents left to buy
5 days until I really need to think about packing
6 days until my apartment needs to be cleaned
and 7 days until I board the plane back home.

In the words of every high school kid on That 70's Show: What a long, strange trip it's been. (or something to that effect)

Dead Week and Schnee!

2010-12-05T23:40:00.000-08:00

(I'm going to apologize ahead of time for how boring this post is. But don't worry, come Thursday, once finals are over I've got some really fun things lined up, so it will start being more worth while to read this!)

What a crazy week. From term papers, to finals, to crazy weather, to Christmas markets, it's been one hell of a busy week! Monday started out wonderfully because I didn't have Deutsch. About 6 of the 10 people in my class were on an expedition for their other classes, so Deutsch was canceled! However, the day did not maintain this level of awesomeness. History was surprisingly good. We didn't even discuss the reading, or do a wrap up the history lecture or anything, just dove straight into a movie. The name of it completely escapes me at the moment, but I'm sure I could ask someone in the class and find out if you're really interested! It focused on the issues migrants, specifically Turkish migrants, face as second-generation migrants. Unlike in the US, a 2nd generation migrant in Germany is still considered a migrant, not a citizen. The movie was incredibly dark... definitely not something I would suggest my mum watch! It also had a love story, but in a dark sort of way, in which you don't want anyone to tell you if they end up together or not, because it doesn't really matter either way. I don't know if that makes sense, but it works for me!

Film, aka the bane of my existence, was again long... Though we did get out 4 minutes "early." Meaning 19:41, not 19:45. We did a little lecture, heard a presentation, then watched the film and had a guest lecturer. He was incredible! I literally learned more, and was better engaged in the 30 minutes he spoke than I have been all semester in that class! It was painfully obvious to all those involved that my professor was trying to prove himself or impress the guest; it was like watching a puppy begging to come inside. Then we got to fill out evaluations. I am always happiest to fill out an evaluation when I actually have something critical or exemplary to say about the professor. In the nicest way possible, I definitely gave that evaluation a piece of my mind.

Tuesday morning was my Deutsch Sprechen final. It went pretty well. J (a completely different J from the previous one) was my partner, and he's a little better than me, so he was able to pick up if I started stumbling. We had three parts: W-frage (i.e. where are you from? What's your name, etc), Past tense (had to ask each other what we did last summer, last week, etc) and then Treffen (making plans, we had to choose a slip of paper and ask the person if they wanted to come with us to do whatever was on the paper, and then make plans to do it). It was all over within 20 minutes, and I feel pretty good about it! After that, I was exhausted from waking up early all weekend, so I went home and napped for a while.

Wednesday was the actual Deutsch final. It was also the coldest December 1st Berlin has seen in years. Absolutely, completely, utterly freaking freezing. It was barely even snowing too. Just cold. Anyway, armed with my 4 layers of clothes, I set out to take my final. It went pretty well. I felt far more prepared that I did for the midterm, though I'm sure there were still a bunch of little mistakes. In any case, I'm feeling pretty good about that class, and just my over all German speaking ability :) After that, I grabbed some lunch with C and P, and then headed back to school to nap before my next class. The next class wasn't really that interesting, so I'm going to skip that.

And that leads us to today! Well, probably a few days ago once I actually post this. I woke up early, yet again, to have Frühstück with my German teacher. She had our whole class over to her apartment, and we made an amazing Frühstück! Bagels, croissants, eggs, muffins, coffee, mimosas - a great way to start the day! It also helped that it snowed about 4-6 inches the night before, so everything was white and beautiful! The temperature had gone up from -10 Celsius to about -7, which was a surprising difference. Breakfast was so much fun, and Tanja was such an incredible German teacher, it was honestly a little sad when we had to leave. But, J (a different one again) was waiting for me, so I headed out to H&M to meet up with her!

J and I headed to Schloss Charlottenberg to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt there. Neither of us actually knew how to get there, and yet we managed to find our way quite easily. Once we got to the Charlottenberg S-Bahnhof, I went to check out the bus directions, while J ventured to ask the driver. Apparently after she asked him, he very seriously took a drag of his cigarette and told her "Kommst mit mir" (come with me). Haha... creeepy. But, he was right, and we were supposed to take that bus. It was absolutely gorgeous when we got to the Weihnachtsmarkt! The Schloss (castle) was so beautiful, especially with all of the snow, and the market was shockingly bigger than we had expected.

We wandered around for a while, checking out all of the random booths, me continuing my search for the perfect gift for about a million people (so far Alexanderplatz is my best bet for gifts) and J just wandering around with me. We got some drinks - I got Hot Bailey's (amazing!) and J got Eierpünsch (we're assuming since it translates to "eggs punch" it's a german version of eggnog...?) which was actually quite tasty, and tasted nothing like egg nog. I bought a pair of earrings that I have been searching for for years! They're normally about $30 for a pair back home, minimum, and these were only 8 euro for a pair! Such a great deal! We also made friends with an American girl who was working at one of the booths. She was fascinating. She was born in Bergen, moved to Texas, speaks 5 languages, summer's in Norway, spent a year in Madrid, moved to Germany to find a job, just got accepted into the peace crops, and has a semi-boyfriend who is only semi- because why would she want to date a Spaniard when she's in Germany? Shouldn't she be dating a German? Absolutely fascinating. And made J and I feel dreadful about the fact that we only speak English and a little German (and a tiny bit of French and Spanish). After standing there for 20 minutes, the cold finally got to our toes and we headed home! We went around the corner to grab some dinner at the new Italian place that just opened up on our street. It was delicious, and B and D joined us which was delightful!

Now I'm off to bed. Once again, I've got to get up early tomorrow for some kind of mandatory FU-BEST meeting. I am going to get so much sleep on Friday night... and if I don't... well I probably won't be functional enough to competently take, let alone pass, my finals. So, here's hoping that I get to sleep in soon!

Never see what you expect to see, rather expect the unexpected.

2010-12-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

This title is far more existential sounding that the following post will be.
Oh, also sorry for posting this a week late... I've been having some internet issues lately!

On a Note completely unrelated to the rest of this post, the reverse culture shock has begun, and I think it's going to be much worse than the culture shock was (because I didn't really have any). I'm making mac n cheese for dinner tonight, acquired from a friend who received it in the mail. While looking at the directions, I fully prepared myself for the struggle of trying to comprehend Deutsch directions, as well as figuring out how much 250 ml is. Google translate on the ready, I prepared to make my dinner, and wouldn't you know it? The directions were in English (obviously)! That was a major shock. I'm not used to being able to understand things. My life for the last 4 months has had a relatively constant level of confusion, and I kind of like it that way! It makes things more fun :) Guess I'm going to have to prepare myself for reading menus in English, actually being able to understand waitresses and cashiers, and being able to read everything around me. I don't think I can possibly explain to excitement that follows understanding a waitress, ordering coherently, or reading a poster completely auf Deutsch. It's going to be a little disappointing not having to put the effort into every day things.

Anyway, more on that later, I'm sure. Today wasn't as much of a tourist success as the last few days, but it was still pretty freaking incredible :) I again woke up early to work on my history term paper. It's all finished and turned in now, thankfully! No more term papers! Now, only finals... Okay, back to the interestingness! So, after I finished my paper, J and I headed to the Pergamon. A bunch of other people were thinking of coming, but were either too tired from the night before, or had already been, or just weren't even up yet. It was pretty freaking cold, and for some reason we made the executive decisions to trek all the way to the museum from Freidrichstrasse. You can switch trains and take the s-bahn one stop further, but it seemed to make more sense to just walk. Absolutely freezing.

We did, however, happen upon the museum island flea market, that I completely forgot was going on! Because we didn't get there until around 3, there wasn't much to be seen, but it was still a pretty fun stroll looking at all the old books and jewelry. I almost bought Freud's psychanalysis book, in the original German, but 1)Mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut, at least not good enough to read that! and 2)It was a relatively new version, and not an awesome, antique looking book. Oh and 3) It would just be extra weighted in my already weighted town bags for flying back home!

We finally got to use our museum cards, which was extremely exciting, especially because it meant not having to spend any money that day! We seriously had no idea what to expect. We're both history majors, so you'd think we would realize that "Pergamon" implied ancient Greek and Roman stuff, but we really didn't think about that until a friend told us about it. So we walked into this place with absolutely no expectations. And here, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking of what we walked directly into after turning the left corner of the entrance:

This was absolutely amazing. It actually felt like
we were in an ancient city! And the lighting
on the ceilings made it seems like natural
sunlight. It was incredible!

After climbing the stairs, we decided to veer to the left, and check out the super duper ancient stuff. This was again, not at all what we expected. Here are pictures of the next two rooms we walked through:

As we walked further back, we moved further back in history. It was really cool, and there were so many interesting things to look at. We didn't know where to start. There were rooms on either side of the hall, and these rooms led to other rooms, and these rooms led back to the hall, and it was very easy to get turned around! I think we covered everything, though we never did venture down the stairs in one room.... perhaps we missed something awesome.

On our way back to the Grand Alter, we passed by a staircase leading to an exhibit on Islamic art and history. I was so down to check it out, but J was being lame and didn't want to go... so we cut across the Grand Alter, and checked out the right side of the museum (the right and left here are being judged from being at the top of the stairs in the Grand Alter, for those of you who have been). As we walked into the next room, it was surprisingly less extravagant than the last few big rooms we'd walked into. There were a bunch of people looking at us as we walked in, so I turned to J and said "I bet we just walked through something awesome."

And we had.

However, as we ventured into the next room, and apparently the rest of the museum, you know, with all the Greek and Roman stuff, we were stopped by a sign informing us that some artifacts were being moved to the Altes Museum, and so the display was closed. Seriously? I mean, I know we knew nothing about it until 4 days before, but I definitely wanted to see some Greek and Roman stuff!! We did find another exhibit about "The Silver Horse." After trekking up tons of stairs, we discovered the strangest exhibit of our lives. We had no idea when or where in history the artifacts had come from, and since the entire exhibit was aud Deutsch, it was a little difficult to decipher anything. From what I could tell, the Silver Horse was belt buckle. What a disappointment!

Anyway, now that we were a little disappointed, we decided to check out the Islamic art stuff, because we didn't fell like we'd spent enough time in the museum at all. Such a good idea. The exhibit was beautiful! There were so many amazing jewelry and pots and boxes and corner decorations (<-- that is seriously the best description I can give them). And, similarly with Versailles, there was also some modern art interspersed with the ancient artifacts. Unlike Versailles, this art work was inspired by the ancient artifacts, and actually flowed with the exhibition. Again, these damn rooms leading into other rooms had us completely turned around, and we got lost trying to find the stairs back down stairs! What a hoot!

After that we decided to head back to the apartments because it was a little too early to get dinner, plus then we'd have to spend money :) I, of course, was drawn in by the allure of the Crobag directly on our S-Bahn station and got myself a wurstcroissant, aka the most delicious thing in the world, ever.

That was pretty much it for touristy stuff this weekend. Today I studied for my Deutsch final at Balzac for a while, and then me, J and B rented a movie and watched that. B has become increasingly frustrated with J and mine's love affair with German TV, specifically with terrible romantic comedies and Spongebob. So, instead of seeing what the number one Spongebob episode of all time was (they'd been counting down from 100 all day), or watched Patrick Dempsey in yet another incredibly terrible romantic comedy, he made us watch a movie with some culture to it.... not cool. haha, Though we did almost rent Cold Prey (the English translation of Fritt Vill, the terrible Norwegian movie we saw in Oslo).

Visual Stimulation

2010-11-27T05:01:00.000-08:00

I think my internet should be running fast enough to load pictures! Wohoo!

Super excited for my Glühwein!

At KaDeWe... you can't really tell, but these chocolate Mr. & Mrs.
Klaus are sexy. The chili chocolate ones were scandelous.
It was exciting :)

Food! Yum!

Champagne!

Dinner!

Who knew you could fit this many people in my tiny apartment?

Schnee!!!

Ok, that's it for now! Off to the pergamon :) And this time I've charged my camera

Operation Bucket-list

2010-11-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

Operation Bucket-list is ago. The past three days have probably been the most amazing time I've had in Berlin. Maybe it's because the snow has been coming and going. Maybe it's because I'm finally feeling safe and secure with the people here. Or maybe it's because I know I need to make the most of my time, with less than three weeks left! In any case, I don't care why, I'm just so happy to have had so many successful days in a row! Let's start at the beginning, shall we? After all, it is the best place to begin :)

On Wednesday, I woke up to find several facebook statuses about snow! I was so excited I jumped out of bed (how often do I ever jump out of bed? Pretty much only if there's a spider in it!) and ran to my window... And was severely disappointed. Californians have a different definition of snow than most people. White stuff was falling from the sky. But it was melting as soon as it hit the ground. And it was less flakes, more teeny tiny hail. But that's pretty much where the disappoints ended. I got to school, and watched Glee (the Britney episode!) to relax myself before my presentation in Totalitarian. The presentation went pretty well, so I was stoked about that. After class, a bunch of people were headed to a Weihnachtsmarkt for their German class excursion. I decided to tag along because I hadn't been to one yet. It was pretty awesome. The snow was falling (though still melting right away), there was so much delicious food and smells and cute little booths. My family will be shocked to here that I ate Hähnchenleber mit Zwiebel for dinner... chickenliver with grilled onions. And it was amazing! Oh, I also occasionally eat mushrooms too. We left when the cold got to us, and headed home. A couple of people were planning on going out clubbing, but me and J decided we didn't want to have to stay out until 4 a.m. (because the s-bahn doesn't run from like 1-4 on weekdays) so we decided to watch a movie. 500 Days of Summer. I absolutely love this movie. It's so beautifully shot, and Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt are absolutely amazing. I wish I owned this movie (*hint*). Lately there have been a lot of movies that I want to watch again because I think I'd have a new appreciation for them both aesthetically and conceptually, a product of my new music interests, and personal changes. So, when I get home the following movies will be watched: Love Actually, Eternal Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated, Pan's Labyrinth, um... apparently I'm drawing a blank, but there are definitely others! Anyway, that was Wednesday :)

Thursday! Thanksgiving! Being British, one would think that Thanksgiving isn't that big a deal to me, but because we've been celebrating it in our family since we moved to America, pretty much as an excuse to have a family dinner more than once a year and for my sister's birthday, it's just been something I've grown accustomed to. And hearing about everyone going home for it has made me a little homesick, so I threw a little thanksgiving potluck for my friends. It was such a great success! We went to KaDeWe (pronounced ka-day-vay) to try to find a turkey. We hadn't really thought it through before the actual day, and of course all the turkey's were frozen :-/ But, KaDeWe didn't let us down. I think we easily could have spent an entire day wandering each floor of this huge department store, but we stuck to the food floor. There was so much good food, and a lot of American stuff like Oreos and peanut butter. We finally found the meat section, after walking past the delicious cheese, fish and pastry stands several times in a feeble attempt to find the meat. They had roasted duck and chickens. Naturally, we got a duck and two chickens. Such a good plan! Then we headed back to start cooking!

I, of course, hadn't cleaned my room, or done my dishes, so with people coming over at 7:30, I only had about 3 hours from when we got back to clean, shower, cook, bake, and organize. It was a little stressful, but K came over around 6 and she started making delicious pies right when I was done in the kitchen, so that was good! We had the most amazing food: mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, party potatoes, veggies, duck, turkey, gravy, pies, cookies, glühwein, champagne, beer, snowman poop (it's an oreo based delicious thing that's impossible to describe), potato buns (amazing!!), broccoli casserole. There were about 14 people who came, which was probably all my tiny little apartment could handle. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and we all agreed that all the food was incredible! After that, we headed to K's room (this is a different K. Not all the initials represent the same people. It's super tricky that way) and played some beer pong (or wine pong if you're me!). After that, I just went to bed, and left the mess for the morning!

The next morning, Friday, I awoke to a delightful surprise... and a less delightful surprise (ok, really I woke up to K knocking on my door to get her camera). The delightful surprise: Snow! This time it actually was covering the ground... it was so lovely :) The not so delightful surprise: I had lost my voice. I don't know how. I'm not sick, and yet I sound like a combination of a 70 year old, pack a day woman, and a pubescent boy. Not very cute. This happened last Thanksgiving too, perhaps it's just a new tradition. Oh well. My room still smelled like chicken, gravy and wine, and it was snowing outside, so I was pretty much a happy camper. I set about the arduous task of cleaning up, which turned out not to be too terrible, and then began writing my last term paper! Originally, I was going to just stay in all day and write the paper, but I decided to live it up, and get as much done by 2 as I could, and then go out and do touristy things. A perfect plan :) I got about 6 pages done, and the B, J, J and I headed out to the Berliner Dom (that's the cathedral that I've been obsessed with since my second day here, and yet haven't actually gone inside). We were originally going to go to the Pergamon, but B had already been, so the Berliner Dom it was!

It was so incredible! Honestly, the most beautiful church I have ever been in. Way better than Notre Dam, and yet receives so much less appreciation. The Crypt was amazing... a crypt full of Hohenzollerns, awesome! Freidrich Wilhelm II's tomb was definitely the most interesting. It was a casket that had then been put in a metal or concrete casket, had obviously been buried, and then moved to the crypt. It looked like at some point a bomb had gone off and exploded the concrete/metal outer casket, and yet the inner casket remained beautifully intact. Not something I can describe aptly enough, but unfortunately, my digital camera was out of batteries, and my film camera was a little too loud for using in the crypt without getting stared down by the guards! Unfortunately, the actual Dom was closed for some reason, so we couldn't go up and look over the city :( Hopefully it will be open when K gets here, when we'll be going here! (Apparently I know a lot of K's, J's and B's).

After the Dom, we decided to check out the Weihnachtsmarkt at Alexanderplatz, as it was right there, even though our original plan was to go to the one at Schloss Charlottenberg (another bucket list item!). This was the most amazing weihnachtsmarkt... I can't even describe. It had so many interesting things... Medieval clothing, the cutest little tavern you've ever seen (which sold Kirschbier... cherry beer, warm, surprisingly delicious. It's like glühwein, only sweeter), a booth selling drinking horns, an amazing photographer (I think I'm going to go back and buy one of his prints... it was amazing). We wandered around for a couple hours, watching the ice skaters, and getting really excited when santa showed up in the sky in his sleigh (complete with firework rockets for when he took off!). Oh, and they had one of those swing, spin around rides... I coerced J and B to go on it with me even though it was absolutely freezing out. So worth it. It definitely just made my day all that more amazing. For the rest of our explorations, none of us could feel our hands or butts, but I would definitely do it again in a heartbeat, especially if it's snowing! Eventually, around 6:30 the cold got to us, and we decided to grab some dinner. We headed towards Hackescher Markt, and found an Irish Pub which looked tasty. I, of course, got the Fish & Chips and an Irish cream coffee. Just the right thing to warm me up on a chilly evening :)

Now I'm back home, strenuously trying to finish this history paper so that I can have another touristy day tomorrow (definitely going to the Pergamon tomorrow), and then buckle down on Sunday and study German like there's no tomorrow! I've got my oral portion on Tuesday, and then the written final Wednesday! I can't believe our German classes are already over... that means this coming week is my last week of regular classes, then finals week! So crazy! Well, here's hoping the amazingness continues tomorrow :) Hope you're all having as wonderful a holiday weekend!

Oh, p.s. sorry for all the text! Pictures will be coming soon... once my internet decides to take less than 5 minutes to load a page!

In which my mind begins to resemble that of a corn maze

2010-11-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

I've put a lot of time and thought into what I'm about to write. So much in fact, that it is completely beyond organization. There are so many things I want to say, that no matter how much I try to organize it all, something always pops up that needs to be said, that should have been said, but hasn't yet been said. Such is the maze through which I shall now try to direct you; and yes, it's one hell of a corny maze. Turn back now if you do not wish to be lost amongst the corn.

We'll find our way eventually, I promise.

These last three months have been incredible. And not just in the positive connotation. In every single connotation you could think of. Looking back on blog posts from the beginning of this incredible journey, I don't even recognize myself or my words. I feel like I have become completely different from who I was then. I think these changes have been mostly for the better; positivity has replaced those negative tendencies that used to make up a large part of my personality. That's not to say that these changes have been robust, or even obvious to anyone except me, but they are definitely there.

About a month into the program, I made the decision to be completely independent. To live for the first time solely for myself. Unable to run to my parents house on the weekends if things got too intense; free of obligations to people other than myself and my professors; completely capable of acting for myself without having to worry about other people. In this process of creating my new independent self, I know I hurt at least one person, for which I feel terrible; however, I do not think the growth I've experienced would have been possible had I not done what I had done. At the time I did not know what I was doing, or why. But I know now, and I know that it was the right decision at the time.

It has been difficult having this much independence. It is almost too much. But it has allowed me to change in ways I never thought I actually would. My reading this week actually describes the situation perfectly: psychoanalysis alone is not enough to transform a personality, changing the environment will yield much more efficient, lasting results. My environment here is absolutely nothing like the environment's I have lived in my whole life, and that is why it was the perfect time to take a break away from obligation to other's, and turn instead towards my own needs and desires.

In the process, I have discovered the importance of friendship, and what it really means to be a friend, and to have friends. I know this sounds silly - after all, doesn't Disney brainwash us about the power of friendship from the age of 3? - but it is just not something that ever really clicked for me. I've been a member of several "groups" of friends, and have always ended up hurt and alone due to some arrogance or stubbornness on the part of either myself or the others, typically a combination of both. Instead, I turned my attention towards completely focusing on romantic relationships. The thought process here was that if I lost my friends, at least I would always have my paramour. This proved disastrous to past relationships, especially my most intense, longest lasting one, however I could not identify that as the problem until a month or so ago. It is absurd to put all of that pressure on a single person. They cannot be your only confidant, or the only person you see regularly besides those you live with. When they leave, you have to have other people to turn to. As much as we never want to admit it, one way or another, everyone leaves (wow... ok, don't take that to be as morbid or depressing as it sounds, I'm just trying to be realistic).

It's possible that these tendencies away from establishing good friends came from following my parents' example. Now before you get mad or upset parents, you too have changed. Over the last few years, you have become much more social and begun to develop amazing friendships with people, and I can tell how that has had a positive influence on your relationship, as well as your overall happiness in life. So now, though I am doing so on my own, I am essentially following your good example. I've finally begun to learn that it is okay to be alone, and that if you do begin to feel too lonely, there is no shame in calling a friend to watch a movie, or make dinner. I've spent a lot of my life being afraid and feeling awkward. There is always that voice in my head telling me not to call someone I met recently because they probably find me awkward, and any further encounter with them would only prove to extend the awkwardness. I've since discovered that this is ridiculous.

When I first embarked on this independence mission, I took it too far to the extreme. I made no effort to contact people, and instead resorted to being completely alone, and telling myself that I was happy to be alone. But I honestly do not think that anyone can ever be happy to be completely alone. We all need people. Even if it's just to have something to go to the grocery store with. It's actually a psychological fact that if a person is removed from human contact, especially positive human contact, they will slip into a depression that can result in antisocial behaviors, as well as other psychological issues. Fortunately, I made friends with amazing people.

Having the independence that being thousands of miles away from home has made me finally realize that friends are some of the most important things in the world. They are there for you when you need them and when you don't. They allow you to fulfill almost all of your needs, without putting too much pressure on a single person. And when you are in a relationship, they make it so that you do not just sit around waiting for the other person to come home. Friends are what make us independent, because they accept us for who we are and there are no feelings of obligations which you often get from family, and romantic relationships. There is no drama if you forget your anniversary, because there are no anniversaries. They allow us our independence because they keep us sane when we are alone.

So, my conclusions from this corn maze (yes, we have made it to the center, I hope you enjoyed the corn along the way!) are that I need to maintain this level of sociability when I return home. I need to be okay with being alone. I need to not allow a romantic relationship to become the main focus of my life. This means not ditching or ignoring my friends just because someone now occupies my time. I need to make time for both, something I have never been very good at doing. In any case, the main lesson to be learned is that I need to not be afraid to meet new people, make new friends, or even just make better friends with the ones I have. There's no sense in fearing that people will find me awkward; I am awkward, and that's something that is never going to change. I'll never make any friends hiding alone. This conclusion is getting confusing. Perhaps I shall stop here. Congratulations if you actually made it to the end of this tremendously personal musing. I think this was mainly so I could finally get all these thoughts to stop flying around, and actually be written down somewhere. So, thanks for coming along for the ride :)

(I think that last line was me switching metaphors - we've now left the corn maze and arrived back on the road of life - don't worry though, there's still lots of corn to be had!)

Just a few pictures of amazing people:

Sometimes we all like to get a little awkward

Bittersweet.

2010-11-20T02:10:00.000-08:00

With only 25 days left in Berlin, it seems kind of crazy that I've already been here for three months (it'll be three months in three days)! I'm looking forward to going home, but at the same time, I do not want to leave. I've honestly never felt so torn in my life (okay, that's not true, but it's a strange feeling). I've grown so much here (which I'll post about later), and I'm a little scared that when I go home it will just return to business as usual, and the changes will fall away and fade back to normalcy. I know a couple other people on the program are feeling this way too. In any case, 25 days means: 4 days until my last presentation, 9 days until my last term paper is due, 12 days until my German final, 16 days until my History and Film finals, 18 days until my totalitarian final, and 19 days until Kelsey comes to visit! I'm only really excited about one of those things, can you guess which one? It's a lot of stressful stuff to cram into a few short days, but there's also lots of time for more fun things too! And the 6 days that I'm here with Kelsey are going to be chock full of epic awesomeness :) Anyway, I thought it might be nice to take a positive look on this rather bittersweet time, and figure out all the things I'm going to miss about Berlin, but also all of the things I'm looking forward to back home!

Things I'm absolutely looking forward to:
- seeing friends and family (seriously, everyone would kill me if this wasn't the first thing I listed, haha. But I am really looking forward to seeing everyone!)
-In n Out, the Goose, Su Hong, Country corner, Saturn - I desperately need a delicious burger, amazing chow mein, a club sandwich and a fried egg sandwich... I've been craving these since I left!
- washing machines!! - I think handwashing all my clothes is starting to destroy some of them :-/
-warmer weather - it's definitely an experience living in cold weather, and I like the new fashions it inspires, but seriously? all negative temperatures for the next 3 weeks? Definitely looking forward to being in the 50's!
-Target - I just have not been able to find a store comparable in cost and awesomeness
-living in a house with people, and not being essentially isolated - we pretty much live in a dorm, and having a studio apartment has been good for some self development, but I like saying "hi" to people when I come home, and watching movies with people without having to call them
-driving? - maybe... I kind of like public transit, but that's probably just the public transit here, because it's, well, reliable
-making more of an effort to travel around back home, even if it is just to sf and la more often
- going to urban/bunnies with Lauren - we made such a habit of doing this, it'll be nice to get back into that routine :)
-my amazingly comfortable bed! - the bed here is also a couch, and it's hard as a rock, the pillow can fold into about a 2 square inch ball, and it kills my back. Looking forward to my marshmallow cloud bed :)
-wifi - specifically: fast, reliable wifi. I don't think I need to go off on another rant about how terrible the 02 stick is (though I easily could if you'd like!)

I'll definitely be grabbing a few of these on the way

back from the airport :)

Things I'm definitely going to miss:
-awesome public transportation, and being able to drink on said public transportation - you've always got a reliable way home! As long as you look up when the last train runs...
-watching tv/movies auf deutsch - it helps my comprehension so much, and makes it feel like I'm not wasting my time by watching TV
-all my friends - they're all so wonderful, and in a month we're all going to be hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Easily contactable by phone, but we all know that's not the same
-how cheap grocery shopping is - when was the last time you bought a weeks worth of groceries for $15? I just bought a can of soup for less than a euro... if memory serves, generally soup is like $3.50!
-the smallness of my deutsch class/how awesome tanja is as a teacher - I don't think I'll ever have a German class that only has 10 people, or has a teacher who teaches quite as well as Tanja does
-Balzac - my go to coffee shop in Berlin. They make a soy iced mocha that is almost as good as Mike's. And now that Mike no longer works at Borders, I won't have a go to coffee place to go back to :(
-seriously, food is so cheap here
-always something to do - you never have to go far to find something to do. And after 3 months, I've still got a sizable bucket list left
-so cheap and easy to travel - Germany has the most (or almost the most) boarding countries, so a completely foreign culture, cuisine and history is often only 4-6 hours by train away!
-tasty, tasty chocolate
-I get a lot more creative with my baking/cooking here - which is weird because my selection is actually much more limited... maybe that's why?
-all my classes being seminar's - I will always pick going to class once a week for 3 hours over two or three times a week!
-H&M is everywhere!! - though the quality isn't actually as nice as it is back home, oddly
-All of the little bakeries with such delicious food - Mainly all of the CroBag's at the s-bahn and u-bahn stations... yum! Best blaubeer muffins in berlin :)

Ignore the terrifying looking woman! Look at all the

tasty treats! The sandwiches, wurst croissants,

and blaubeer muffins are to die for :)

So, apparently the main things I'm looking forward to, and am going to miss are food. Guess I really do think with my stomach :)

Well That's an Unfortunate Development.

2010-11-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

Unlike I had hoped, this ridiculous head cold I acquired on Tuesday has not gone away. I should have known it wouldn't when I woke up feeling worse yesterday than I had the day before (and the day before my body was so run down that I continuously fell asleep in class for the whole two and a half hours... even when we were doing group work!). I don't feel as awful as I did yesterday, probably because I actually forced myself to eat something last night, but there is just no way I'll be able to go to Prague. It's struggle enough getting up right now to go to German! And I know I could go back to bed, and that Tanja would be okay with my not being there (since she saw me and P in our sickly wonder last night for our German dinner excursion), but the last time I missed German I got so far behind! It was the day we learned prepositions, and prepositions are difficult auf Deutsch! Fortunately, everything I had booked for this trip was really cheap, so I'm not losing out on too much money, and I should only be charged for one night in the hostel (about 9 euro), so it's okay.

However, I did promise my friend back home that I'd go to Prague and take some pictures of the bridges for him. So here's a bunch of pictures of Prague from Google, and we can all just pretend that I took them, and that I actually went!

ooooo

aaahhhh

ooohh

Schönes Wochenende! Hope y'all have a better one than me :) (Though really, who doesn't like an excuse to stay in bed watching German TV all day?)

Why yes, I did get lost somewhere in Amsterdam.

2010-11-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

Listen to this song, if you don't get the reference :)

We got back from Amsterdam last night, after spending a few glorious days in the enthralling city. It was an absolute blast! We caught the 2:40 train out of Hauptbahnhof, and got to Amsterdam by about 9. The train ride went by so quickly, possibly because I was researching and outlining my term paper for film (which was due today). Packing sammiches was definitely a good idea because we were on the train straight through dinner. Once we got to the hostel, we dropped off our stuff and began exploring the city! M had already been to the city about 3 times before, so we just let him lead us around for a bit. We stumbled across the "I Amsterdam" sign, and then headed out to a pancake house/ sports bar (strange combination, I know). It was pretty fun, but the music was incredibly loud, so I couldn't really talk to anyone. After that we just strolled around. M got us lost, but then found us again. And we found out that the Heineken factory/brewery/museum/whatever you want to call it, was only a couple blocks away from the hostel! As was the Van Gogh Museum, and a couple of other museums.

The next day, J woke up at 8:40 to get the hostel's free breakfast. The rest of us stayed in bed until 11:30 when she finally got annoyed at us enough to kick our butts in gear! We grabbed some bagels at a cafe down the street (it was weird, they toasted the bagels, but just to the point where they were warm, not toasted, and therefore tasted kind of stale), and then headed over to the Anne Frank house. This was absolutely amazing! When we read her diary in 6th grade, I think I probably read it about six more times because it just fascinated me (apparently my interest in this realm of history has existed for longer than I thought)! It was incredible to actually be in the annex, and see where they lived, and the real conditions they lived in. Each room had a few quotes from the book, and with each quote a flood of memories came back from the rest of the book. A-mazing!

After the Anne Frank house, we headed to Dam Sqaure, the center of the city, to meet up with K and explore around some more. We found a hilarious condom store - apparently there are 96 different sizes of condoms! haha After some more exploring, we found our way to dinner, and then headed back to the hostel to change. While we were exploring, we got some flyers about a pub crawl happening that started at K's hostel, s we had to get changed before going to that. We explored around the Red Light District for a while - that was quite the experience. Not as attractive as you'd think they'd be, though there were some attractive ones. The pub crawl took us through the red light district, and it was just a complete blast. With all of the drinks included in the overall price of the crawl, there really was no need to buy our own drinks (or at least, not for me), so it was definitely a good decision. I've always wanted to do a pub crawl!

The next morning, we slept in again. haha... waking up for class at 9 every day is really starting to take a toll on everyone! I only have class at 9 two days a week, and it's still killing me! We headed out to grab some breakfast, and I got the most delicious hot chocolate. Well, the hot chocolate was alright, but the whipped cream was just amazing! It was so dense and tasted like it was relatively real, and not from a can. We met up with B, who had been in the city but with other friends, and when everyone else went to the Van Gogh Museum, we explored - meaning got lost - around the city. I didn't want to go to the Van Gogh museum because I don't really like that kind of art, and it was a 14 euro fee... Nein, danke!

We walked around for quite a while, just strolling and peering into random stores we came across. He wanted to go to Dam, and I don't think he realized that it was an area of the city, not just once specific place. He's not quite the person to go on adventures with - tends to get a little stressed out, then repeatedly tell you that he's not stressed out, but constantly check the time and wonder aloud as to where we are. I personally love getting lost in cities. As long as you don't end up in a sketchy part of town, it's such a great adventure. I think I probably would have preferred to explore alone, but oh well. We just have different ideas of what exploring is! Once we found our way back and met up with the rest of the group, I broke off and joined Kw, D and M to do a tour of the Heineken factory/museum/brewery/thingy. They were already there, and I got completely lost trying to find it...

Fortunately, after being followed by a creeper for about 10 minutes, I found it! The boys had already started the tour (my frustration from being lost on a time crunch got to me, and I told them to just start without me), and had my ticket. At the point of the tour they were in, they couldn't come back down to get me in. Thank God M had his "who's your dj?" shirt on. I told the ticket guy that I was with the guy in that shirt, and he laughed and let me through :) The first half of the museum was alright... history of the company and that kind of stuff. Then we got to the ride portion - I had no idea there was going to be a ride! - where I finally caught up to the boys, and got my ticket and wristband, which got me two free beers :) The ride was one of those interactive platform things, and it took us through the process of making beer... pretty sweet! Then we moved to the next room, and got a surprise free beer! The rest of the tour was really cool. Lots of random Heineken stuff, like commercials from the '80's, and a giant foosball table. And then the bar where we got our final two beers :) Yum!

After the brewery/factory/museum/doo-hickey, we went to grab some dinner and then meet up with people. It got a little complicated with meeting up, but we finally found each other, and spent the rest of the night exploring around the city. Br, J and I, of course, decided to stay at this one cafe while everyone else went out to a bar (I'd just ordered a hot chocolate when everyone else decided to leave, terrible timing!). Then we grabbed some ice cream and other tasty treats and headed home. We wanted to go to bed early because we had to get up early for our train, but people kept streaming back into the room until about 1 a.m. When we woke up it was time to head for the train station. I made sure to get some delicious Stroopwafels before we left - they're amazing, but I honestly cannot describe them - and spent the first 2 hours of the train ride writing 7 pages of my term paper. Then my battery died :( Fortunately I had enough time to finish it up after we got home! So, that's about it for Amsterdam - next week Prague!

Oh, one more thing to say about Amsterdam: If the Dutch are so tall, why do they make their stairs so short, in both height and length. Seriously! My feet barely fit on the steps!

Germany A-Z

2010-11-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

So part of our requirements for my German class are to go on bi-monthly excursions with the class. So far we've explored Ikea, gone on a scavenger hunt around town, and have been forced to ask for directions auf Deutsch. This week my class headed out to the Willy Brandt museum where they were having such a cool exhibit! The basic concept of the exhibit was to present an A-Z of what it means to be German. Each letter had it's own little display related to the word it represented. Before we went to the actual exhibit, we met at Starbucks (my first time in a Starbucks in months... their blueberry (or blaubeer, if you prefer) muffins are no way near as tasty as Balzac's, although Le Crobag definitely has the best. But I digress. We met at starbucks and began listing all of the stereotypes we had heard about Germany and Germans before we came here, and then a list of what we'd discovered since getting here. You know the usual stereotypes: they drink a lot of beer, they are angry and cold people, they wear lederhosen, and they're all blonde. My German teacher made us realize that most of the stereotypes Americans hear about Germans are based on the Bavarian section of Germany because that's the area that the US occupied after WWII. Something I'd never thought of before!

Fortunately, this isn't how the Germans dress.

Anyway, after making our lists, we headed over to the exhibition. It was probably one of my favorite exhibitions I've been to - just absolutely playful and fun! We each paired up and had to choose our favorite letter, then present to the class what that represents about the German people, and why we chose it. My partner and I chose J - Jugend (Youth). I honestly think I liked this one because the display consisted of condoms, piercings, pink hair extension and a disco ball. It rocked! haha But seriously, it was a really interesting part of the exhibit because one usually thinks of the Germans as being very traditional, adhering to strict order and values, but the youth has so much freedom. It's like there's a youth movement that began with the most recent reunification and has continued to just provide freedom from the strictness of past generations. Though this too has it's down sides. The display said that about 30% of the youth essentially never speak to their parents, even when they live at home, because the divisions and differences between generations is just so large. It's easy to understand when you think about the fact that some of the parents grew up on the East side of the wall, and now they're children are living in a very unified, cohesive society. These generational differences are obvious everywhere, especially with language. Most older generations know very little English, whereas the younger generations were definitely affected by the total Americanization that infiltrated Germany during American occupation and the Cold War.

My German teacher, the ever so wonderful Tanja, picked D for her letter - Deutsch Sprechen (essentially speaking German). We all laughed at her at first, but then she pointed out something we'd all missed. There was a sound board with all of the different regions of Germany and their individual dialects and accents. We all knew the Berlin accent (the most obvious example is that Berliners pronounce Ich (I) as "ick," where as elsewhere the "ch" noise comes from the back of the throat, and kind of sounds like hissing. OK, that's a terrible example. I don't know how to explain it) but Tanja told us that she has a friend from Bavaria, and when she speaks her usual language Tanja can't understand a word she is saying. It's a completely different dialect. All Germans are forced to use "high German" in school, so it is cohesive throughout the country, but it's really cool that there are still different dialects in such an industrialized and Americanized country (ok, that might sound kind of weird. I mean that it's cool that traditional languages are still spoken and haven't been modernized out of society).

I have pictures from the exhibit, but I can't put them on the blog yet. I'll get on that either tomorrow, or when I get back from Amsterdam on Sunday! Unfortunately, it's supposed to rain the whole time we're in Amsterdam, but that's ok. We'll still have a blast. The best part is that our hostel is literally across the street from the Van Gogh Museum!

Bis Sonntag! (oder später)

Dancing Hippos

2010-11-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

The title actually does have something to do with the post. They just happen to be separate events. See, I'm starting to be creative with my titles again!

This weekend was pretty spectacular. We stayed in town, and M was wonderful enough to organize a whole weekend full of awesomeness for us! Ever since Scandinavia, none of us have wanted to organize things for fear of repercussions (whoever organized things had to deal with the pressure of figuring everything out, and worry about people being dissatisfied.) We started out on Thursday by going to an Irish pub, Oscar Wilde. It was pretty fantastic... real Irish food, which just made me crave English Breakfast so badly. I think F and I are going to go back there one day during lunch and order the Irish Breakfast, to remind us both of home (oh yeah, F is British too). It was a pretty fun evening spent drinking Guiness and watching Liverpool come back with a hat trick from Gerrard!

Friday we essentially had two nights, it was crazy! We started out playing beer pong and cards in my friends room, which eventually got the cops called on us for noise (seriously? it was ridiculous..) Fortunately, that happened about five minutes before we were about to leave anyway, so it didn't really effect the evening too much! We then headed out to Weekend, a club that's on the 12th floor of a building with a panoramic view of the city! It was pretty sweet... the music left something to be desired. I can handle techno and electronic music, but this was just absurd. The same beat repeated over and over for at least 3 hours. And every once in a while there wouldn't even be a beat that you could figure out how to dance to! In any case, it was still fun :)

Saturday, J and I headed out to a museum we had to go to for class. We spent about an hour and a half trying to find the damn thing, even asking some women at a different museum where it was. Even with J's pretty decent German, we were subsequently given directions to the DHM, Holocaust Memorial, Topography of Terror Museum, and the GDR. We were looking for the German War Resistance Museum. Eventually, we found it. It was pretty cool, but only one room out of the 15 or so had English subtitles, so most of our time was spent practicing our German (I could make out maybe 2 or 3 sentences per paragraph!) After the museum, we stopped off to get some groceries and headed home. I decided to pass on going bowling because I'm trying to save as much money as I can! Also, I was really tired, and didn't want to change out of my PJs :)

Sunday, that would be today, we went to the Zoo!!! Now, I don't think I've ever been to a Zoo before. At least not since I've been old enough to remember it. I was really excited! We saw my two favorite animals - Lions and Pandas! And some giraffes, leopard cubs, gorillas, orangutans, crazy nocturnal animals, rhinos, zebras, tons of birds (they had pigeons in a cage... weird), seals and sea lions, hippos, penguins, and a whole bunch of other animals. It was awesome! We spent about 3 hours there, until it closed. Then I headed to Balzac (a coffee shop) to study, which is not that much fun.

This coming Thursday, we are headed out to Amsterdam! And then next weekend, I am hopefully going to Prague! I might have to go by myself to Prague, which would definitely be an adventure, but seeing as I can't find anyone else to go with me, I suppose I could always make it a fun adventure! I'm also no longer going to Vienna after the program :( I tried changing my flight, but the latest one I can get is December 15th, or else I'll miss Christmas! But, this has inspired me to figure out all of the things I need/want to do in Berlin since my time is winding down so quickly! So I sat down tonight with my Berlin book and read it cover-to-cover. And thus evolved my list:

Museums:
Pergamon
Neues Mueseum (modern art)
Holocaust Memorial/Museum (cannot believe I haven't done this yet!)
Museum of Contemporary Art
Jewish Museum
Photography Museum

Food:
Barcomi's Deli (German food meets NY deli)

Clubs:
Cookies
Doughnuts
(apparently I like food named clubs)

Other touristy stuff:
TV Tower
Flohmarkt @ Arkonaplatz
Jumbo Second Hand (vintage store)
Turkish Market
Antikmarkt @ Ostbahnhof

Only a little over a month to get it all done!!

Sometimes

2010-11-05T11:14:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I feel like a success. Sometimes I feel like a failure. I can't figure out which I am today. Perhaps I'm just uninspired.

Cookie Dreams

2010-11-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

Anyone who's known me for more than a couple months, or meets me during so existential crisis or another, knows that when I'm stressed or depressed, I like to bake. Not in the Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High sense of the word, more of the Paula Dean style baking. Yes, that does mean lots of butter, but really it means lots and lots of sugar. The thing I love about baking is that it's about 30-40 minutes where I only have to think about one thing, and it's something that I can do with almost no thought whatsoever. It's like meditation - time for my mind to wander where it will, and for some reason when I'm baking, my mind only wanders of positive thoughts. It's time just for me to reflect on life, or to not think at all. There really is nothing more relaxing than throwing on some Damien Rice, Norah Jones, or Eminem (depending on how stressed/angry I am) and just baking.

My go to stress-baking recipes are triple chocolate chip cookies, and cupcakes with a citrus frosting. If you've read my last post, you'll know that right now is a pretty stressful time in the semester. The entire month of November is essentially the most academically challenging month of my time in Berlin - it's when every single one of my term paper's are due! If you thought midterms were stressful, just try experiencing that kind of stress (if not worse) every other week, for the next four weeks. Not exactly the most relaxing of thoughts. Fortunately for me, and those around me, I've just discovered/created a new recipe that is definitely going to become one of my staple stress-baking recipes :)

Now baking in Germany is not the easiest thing in the world, as I think I've said before. I'm sure the average German person doesn't have nearly as much trouble baking as I do, but that's because they know the names of ingredients, measurements and also probably have the correct measuring devices. They also probably don't use this fake brown sugar stuff I've been using (now I know I've mentioned this before... boy, I hope I'm not repeating myself too much). Fortunately, since I've come to Berlin, I've experienced enough stressful moments to have gotten my German baking down to a mindless science!

These are my terribly accurate measuring utensils.

This is why every batch of cookies comes out different.

Given the utterly exhausting day I had yesterday (seriously, studying or doing something for school - yes, even when moving from one location to another - from 9:00 - 23:00), and the persistent nature of the nightmares I've been having for the last two nights, it was essentially a given that I would need to bake something today! Unfortunately, Mondays are my worst days. I've got class until at least 19:30, and as my film professor started off class today saying that it was going to be a long one, it was likely that I wouldn't make it home until 20:00 at the earliest. After falling asleep during one of my favorite movies (M), and feeling the nausea of exhaustion rearing its ugly head, I made the executive decision to leave class after the film. This was an excellent choice on my part because it got me home in time to make dinner at a reasonable time, and had enough energy to make cookies!

After spending some time to J to discuss our Totalitarian papers, I got to work baking. It did just the trick, and has left me feeling completely relaxed and refreshed. My new Nutella recipe is absolutely amazing, and the drizzling of melted Nutella on top is just delightful! They also go quite well with a small glass of Bailey's :)

Eating the batter is always the best part

Judging when the cookies are done is so tricky here!

If you leave them in just a moment too long, they

go rock hard

The final, delicious product

The Recipe (My German quirks to the recipe are in parentheses):

1/2 cup of butter (eye-balled because they don't sell butter in sticks)

1/2 cup of (fake) brown sugar (a little over half a tea cup's worth)

6 Tablespoons of sugar

1 egg

1 Teaspoon vanilla (or on package of vanilla sugar, because they don't sell extract here)

1 Teaspoon baking powder (at least that's what I think this stuff is...)

1 1/4 cup Flour (a tea cup and a bit's worth)

A couple of spoonfuls of Nutella, mixed in at the end - it's best to mix it well after every spoonful, and judge for yourself how Nutella-y you want the cookies!

1) Melt the butter and fake brown sugar together, then add to the sugar (just combine, don't melt, if you're in America)

2) Add egg and vanilla

3) Slowly combine flour and alleged baking powder to the wet stuff

4) Once you've got a good looking cookie dough, start mixing in Nutella until you think it's ready!

5) Bake for ?? minutes at 350 degrees (180 Celsius) -seriously, I have no idea how long to bake them for. I just eye ball it. They should still be a little spongy in the middle, and just about to get hard on the rim. Take them out before the rims are too solid, or else they'll turn into rocks (this isn't the case in America)

Morning Suprises.

2010-10-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

I have my first term paper due this coming Wednesday. How prepared am I for this paper, you ask? Nicht soviel. The paper consists of an analysis of two novels (Darkness at Noon and Brave New World), as well as developing a definition of totalitarianism and discussing its prevalence in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. These are essentially four questions that could each, easily, be answered in their own 10-15 page papers.... but we have to find a way to cram concise answers to each question into one cohesive 10-15 page paper. I finished reading both of the books when I got back from Scandinavia, which was two weeks before the paper's due, so I figured I would be good. But then time just happened to sneak up on me! I started a brief outline for it on Wednesday, but couldn't really go into too many specifics because of a lack of materials. And then Thursday just turned into a fail of school productivity, but a success of personal productivity (and those days are always so rewarding). Friday we went to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin. It was one of the FU BEST excursions, and was probably the only time they've actually let us go off on our own. It was wonderful! I got more of an intense feel from Sachsenhausen than I did from Auschwitz purely based on the fact that I was only with two other people, and not crammed into a group of people. So yay for Fu BEST finally letting us explore on our own, and not forcing us into embarrassingly large tour groups! After that, I grabbed some lunch with some people, and took a nap. Then a friend had a party... and I slept in a little too much on Saturday than I should have! I was still able to get a lot of work done on my paper though, and ended up with a 5 page long outline, full of quotes and all sorts of good stuff! I had to go see a movie for my film class that night, and stupid s-bahn construction ended up getting me there late.... which means that I have to see the movie tonight. So, just a brief recap, tomorrow I have due: field report for history, field report for cinema, outline for cinema research paper, and Term paper for totalitarian due Wednesday. And because of some rather stupid personal decisions, I've got to cram this all into today, Sunday. Which means, going to a museum, writing about said museum, writing at least 8 pages of my paper, outlining another paper, going to a movie, and writing about said movie. Oh, and did I mention the museum takes an hour or so to get to and from? This leads me to the point of this procrastinatory blog (yes, that's a word I just made up). I woke up this morning (from a terrifying dream, I might add) to find that it was not 8:45, as I'd set my alarm for, but in fact it was 7:45! Sweet ignorance about day lights saving awarded me with an extra hour to get everything done today! I couldn't have been happier when I figured it out :) Unfortunately... it's now 16:45, the film starts in two hours, and I'm nowhere near as close to being done with my to do list as I should be. In any case, I'm still glad I got that extra hour :)

Post Script: Today is one of those days where I have so much to do that writing 12 pages of a 15 page paper means I don't get to check it off my list, thereby making it seem like I've done absolutely nothing all day.

Shedding Skin

2010-10-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'd like to thank my amazing parents for sending me a care package :) For those of you who have actually read most of my posts, you'll remember how distraught I was at the concept of surviving these 4 months with only 7 pairs of socks. Well, my lovely parents heard my passive pleas and sent me not just a few, but 36 pairs of socks! My excitement is indescribable. They also sent me two pairs of gloves (one is the kind that are fingerless and flip into mittens!), a really cute scarf and a hat. And as you'll remember from the Scandinavia posts, I lost Hatty recently, so I was pretty damn excited to get a replacement :)

So before I go onto a more personal, self-reflecting musing, I'd like to share a quote from one of the books I'm reading that has inspired this self-relfection:

"At time I have the feeling that one emerges from what has been written as a snake emerges from its skin. That's it; you cannot write yourself down, you can only cast your skin. But who is going to be interested in this dead skin? The ever-recurring question whether the reader is ever able to read anything other than himself is superfluous: writing is not communication with the readers, not even communication with oneself, but communication with the inexpressible." - I'm Not Stiller - by Max Frisch (pg 284)

This book has, among other things, really gotten me thinking about these blogs. Who am I posting for? And what do I want, or even expect, to get out of it? Why blog when I'm in pretty stable communication with my friends and family back home. They've heard all this stuff before, they don't need to read it in a formal, gossip-less format. Am I just writing to remember the trip? Isn't that what all the pictures are for? Am I writing because it gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment when I see my statistics. It can't be this, because most of the time my statistics just make me wonder why I'm even bothering to write something that hardly anyone is reading. But perhaps it's not important that people read this. Perhaps the important thing is that I am having these experiences, and am growing and changing into a completely different person, and in order for me to be able to continue growing I need to shed the skin of my experiences as they come. This isn't the normal kind of personal growth that comes slowly; this is high-speed personal growth. Almost every experience I have here forces me to question and put into perspective aspects of my life: what I think makes me happy, or sad, what I really want to do with the rest of my life, my commitment to certain people and things, my relationships with everyone around me, and most importantly my own attitude and personality.

I don't know if the people here are also feeling this way, or this is perhaps the result of my own overactive self analysis. I know that this is probably the happiest I've been in a very long time, and that's without any qualifying statements. Usually when I'm incredibly happy, I always have to qualify it with something. Especially in relationships. "He's the best guy I've ever dated, especially because [insert negative quality of an ex-boyfriend here]." But here, I'm just happy. Even when I'm sad. I was thinking about it the other day, and when I'm sad here, my coping mechanisms are completely different than they are back home. I've yet to tell whether this is for better or worse, but it seems to be working well. One thing that I've just been shocked over is how well my friends respond to my depression. When you tell most people (or so has been my experience) that you suffer from depression, they look at you like you are a leper who is going to come into their lives and destroy their happiness. People just don't know how to handle it. They roll their eyes and tell to "get over it." They don't understand that some days you just can't get out of bed. But the people I've met here are so understanding, and don't roll their eyes. I feel comfortable telling them when I'm depressed because they ask me if I'm ok, if I want someone there with me, and to tell them if I need someone to talk to. It's unbelievable.

The men who I hang out with are also having a profound impact on my view of relationships. Hearing them discuss their present and past relationships has made me realize just how much crap I've put up with with former boyfriends because I thought that the things I found fundamental to a relationship, apparently weren't because I never received them. That isn't to say that my relationships have been terrible, most of them have made me incredibly happy, it's just that they've never been how I always imagine relationships were supposed to be. Like the relationships my guy friends have (and yes, I've heard negative sides of their relationships, so I'm not just looking at this through rose colored glasses). I tend to lose myself in relationships, and as a result, end up giving more of myself than I'm willing to give, making concessions and compromises that I don't want to make simply from fear of being left. I compromise who I am to make the other person happy. And that's not how relationships should work.

Some of the books I've been reading, and a few experiences I've had here, have actually been changing my concept of monogamous relationships. I don't even know if they are possible, at least without little hiccups along the road. It's like in 7th grade, when you have two best friends, and everyone tells you that you can't have two, you have to pick one. But you love both people, they just each bring different things to the table that fulfill your personal and emotional needs. There's no way you could ever pick between them because one person could never fulfill all of your needs, and you would never want to ask a person to try to. I think it's the same with relationships. People who try to make their significant other the bearer of all their needs just aren't in healthy relationships. This isn't to say that polygamy is the way to go, just that perhaps it is necessary to have different people to fill different needs. You can't just depend on one person. And you can't ask one person to be your everything. You would never want to feel the weight of the pressure that that puts on a person. And if you spend your life trying to find a single person who can aptly fulfill all of your needs, you will either never be happy, or end up completely remolding a person into the person you want them to be. This is a topic I haven't had too much time to digest, hence the disorganized thought pattern. I'll muse more about this again I'm sure.

Not all of the changes I've been experiencing are as romantic, or outwardly based. I've been seriously reconsidering and debating what I really want to do with my life. The plan has always (for the last 3 years) been to complete my degrees in History and Psychology this Spring, take a year off to work, and then start a PhD program. But I don't know if that's really what I want. Well, I know it's what I want, I just don't know if I'm capable of accomplishing it. If I even want to make the effort for something that I could potentially fail at. It's not just a little bit of effort that goes into getting a PhD, it's one of the biggest commitments I will likely ever make. Speaking with people on this program, I'm beginning to realize how completely ill-prepared for grad school I am. My gpa isn't amazing, I have no extra curricular activities, I've done no internships or jobs that have anything to do with my career path. If I was up against someone in this program for a spot in a PhD program, I can almost guarantee that they would get it and I wouldn't. I think part of this has to do with the school I chose to go to. I picked UCSC because the history and psychology programs were more in tune with what I want to study than UCLA's. I forgot to take into account the environment of students at UCSC. It's not the most serious school, there's no competition, general apathy surrounds the school. It's hard to thrive, or want to thrive, when you are surrounded by so much apathy. I've also got emotional issues that always interfere with my school work. Granted, they usually interfere with the work from courses that don't interest me, but it's still a major concern. You can't get a PhD when every few months or so you experience a huge depressive state that practically immobilizes you. I'm beginning to think that I'm just not cut out for this career path.

Or maybe I'm just too young to want to do it. I'm only 20, I'll be 21 when I graduate, and there's a whole wealth of experiences and things I haven't seen or done. I don't know if I want to lock myself down into a certain school or city for 7-9 years. Maybe I want to work on an archeological dig, or become a journalist, or work for a museum, or take the time to really embrace my photography and try to make something happen with that. I want to do all of those things, but I can't help this nagging feeling that if I don't start my PhD young, it will be too late. I'm also terrified that actually trying to make a career of photography would fail miserably, no matter how badly I want it. I feel like I'm floundering. I always have a plan. Always. And now I just feel lost. I know once I figure this all out, it will be amazing. I'll pick what I really want to do. And if it turns out that that's not what I want to do (like picking UCSC over UCLA, for example), then I'll survive and figure out a way to do what I really want. But until I reach a conclusion, I'm left here floundering. A planner with no plan or direction.

As stressful as these changes are for me right now, I know that once I fully shed the skin of these experiences I'll come out a better person. It may sound from this that I am tremendously depressed and lonesome, but I'm not. I'm just trying to make sure that when I finally do make changes in my life I'll know where they came from, and why I decided to choose that path. Like I said, I have an overactive mind that likes to analyze every aspect of my life. Self reflection is just not something I can avoid. And I'm sharing it here to help me work through it. As the reader, I expect you'll take away what you want from this post, and will likely not grasp what it is I'm really trying to say. But that's ok, this one's for me, not you.

Even More Adventures in Scandinavia!

2010-10-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking that I'm spelling Scandinavia incorrectly. It's a hard word to type. Anyway, welcome back to the adventures! If you haven't read part one, go do that now. Because I said so. Not because you need it to understand the rest of the trip. Mainly because part one was my favorite part.

Tuesday Oct 19th - Our first (and only) full day in Bergen! There was no real set plan for anything we were doing in Norway or Sweden, so the first day in Bergen started out with trying to figure out what to do. Our Hostel was at the base of a hiking trail that went up to the highest point in Bergen, and we were going to do that, but then it was rainy and gross out, so we decided not to. The rain also made me not take my camera with me (it's not as if I can just put it in my pocket), so no pictures from this day - my apologies! We decided to take this train thingy up to another part of a mountain, and it was awesome. I was still a little moody from the day before, but that quickly subsided! The train was awesome... I can honestly say I never thought I would take a train up a mountain - and I mean up, as in practically vertical! Not just going around the mountain! At the top it was gorgeous, and I was so sad to not have my camera, as it had stopped raining now. We were all running around exploring, and suddenly we'd been hiking around for an hour! I was really enjoying myself and wanted to hike (well follow the paved path) down to the bottom, but apparently it was a 4 hour hike, and other people weren't down. I was totally down, but caved to the peer pressure and we took the train back down. Then we strolled around and found a cool Viking museum, but it closed 15 minutes after we got there, which was a total bummer! We found a restaurant, and decided to treat ourselves to an amazing fish dinner, so we made a reservation for later that night. Then we strolled over to a little pond and hung out there for a bit until we saw an art museum and decided to go there. It was a great museum - it had a Munch exhibit and a few Picasso's. I saw one painting that I've been inspired to recreate, so look forward to that coming soon (look up Trine Folmoe's "Back" to see it)! After the museum we headed back to the hostel to change for dinner - no one got dressed up, we just put more clothes on! The dinner was absolutely delicious! I got Salmon (shocking!) and it was sooo good. Honestly, the best salmon I've had at a restaurant, except for maybe the Teriyaki Salmon from the Elephant Bar, but that was a completely different type of dish. I spent about 20 minutes trying to decide between ice cream or Bailey's and coffee for dessert, and finally decided to get ice cream, then get Bailey's at the bar. It was a great decision. We headed to a little Scottish bar, where we caught the second half of an Arsenal game (yeah, they kicked ass), then headed back to the hostel. On the bus, J and I got the giggles about something silly like vacuums, and then couldn't keep serious while we were playing ping pong... it was a great evening :) (Apparently this post is super long because I don't have any pictures... haha or something like that)

I stole this picture from Br's facebook. That's me, Br and J

at the top of the mountain we explored

Me and J chilling with a troll.

The painting I'm planning on recreating

Wednesday Oct 20th - Our last day in Bergen. Our flight to Stockholm wasn't until 9 p.m. so we still pretty much had the whole day to explore, which was good! We checked out of the hostel, and they were kind enough to let up put our bags behind the desk while we went for a hike! We hiked up the mountain that the Hostel was on (the one we couldn't do the day before), and it was intense! I don't think all the hiking I've done in SC had rightly prepared me for this hike. Hiking in SC is really more like taking a stroll through the woods. This involved climbing over rocks, up frozen streams, through marshes, not being sure if you were on the path, slipping on frozen streams, and finally making it to the top. The first 10 minutes I was absolutely miserable. It was freezing (it started snowing about 3 hours after we finished hiking... that cold), it was hard and it was challenging. And we were on the easy trial. After the initial suckiness though, it got a lot better. The view was spectacular, and rumor had it there was a lift at the top that would take us back down! M, D and I got separated from the rest of the group and went around the back. I think we got off the trail for a bit, and ended up hiking through half frozen marshiness. This is when I discovered that my "water proof" boots, were not quite water proof. My toes have never been so cold! When we finally made it to the top we discovered that the lift was not open that day. Cue the 5 stages of grieving.... Finally, one acceptance had set it, and everyone else had made it to the top, we decided to go down the faster, harder and steeper way. Only because it was faster. I'm definitely glad this wasn't the way we came up because there wasn't really anywhere to stop and look out, unlike the slow way. It was so steep that the only way to get down without killing yourself was to hold a rickety pole... only a little terrifying! At one point, we had to hike down through a running stream - again, the whole apparently not water proof shoes thing became an issue. We made it to the bottom completely in tact though, and I have to say it was a great way to start the day. Exhausting, but absolutely amazing! After that we headed back to the Hostel, gathered our stuff and headed into town. We stopped by the fish market, and apparently the plan was to eat there. Br, J and I were not down with this plan because it was absolutely freezing, and we wanted to be inside somewhere! So we split off from the group, and found a cute little restaurant that wasn't too terribly pricey (for Norway...). We ended up staying there for a couple hours, which was a little shocking. When we got there, our conversation was a little stagnant, but after we finished eating we suddenly found ourselves fully enthralled in conversation (we started talking about psychology and I couldn't help myself!). Unfortunately, because we lollygagged so long, the waiter assumed he could take his time with us, and it took forever to get the check, even after we asked for it (we were on of three groups in the entire restaurant). This normally wouldn't be a problem, but we could see that it had started to snow, and really wanted to go out and run around and play in the snow. By the time we paid, the snow had stopped :( It was apparently the first snow of the season too! Anyway, after that, we met up with everyone else, and headed to the airport. Much to all of our satisfaction, it started snowing on the bus to the airport, and we got to play in the snow once we got there! Then we boarded our flight, and were off to Sweden! One of the flight attendants looked like a stripper, and I was completely convinced he was going to start stripping during the emergency procedures presentation. Sadly, this didn't happen :( We landed at about 22:30 or 11, and took a train into central Stockholm, and then wandered the streets until we found our hostel. Once we were settled in, we all promptly passed out (i realize that every time I say that it sounds like I'm sugar coating things and passing over crazy antics, but really, we just went to bed).

Gorgeous view and icy paths

All of us on top of the mountain!

The view from the top of the mountain

Snow!! I was terrified of getting on a plane in the snow...

Thursday Oct 21st - Our first full day in Sweden. And I stayed in bed all day. I initially got up with everyone else, but I was feeling really stressed and exhausted. My money had all but run out, and I felt terrible asking my parents for more. I was also just exhausted from being around people for so long, with almost no alone time. It's kind of hard only talking to the same 8 people for a week straight. I could feel tensions starting to form, and I knew if I went out, I would just be grumpy and a downer, so I headed back to the hostel after checking out the Royal Palace and read and napped until everyone came back a few hours later. The hostel had free pasta, so I didn't have to pay for my dinner, which made me feel a lot better about the money situation, and I decided to go ahead and let myself have a good time - forcing away the depression. We had purchased some alcohol at the airport, so we playing a few drinking games at the Hostel before heading out. This was a good decision because then we couldn't feel how cold it was (and believe me, it was cold)! We ended up going to a couple of bars, and then to a club where Br and I apparently danced for forever. I really do have this problem where whenever I start dancing, I can't stop for hours. I feel like I should warn people who dance with me that it might be a long time before we stop, haha. Apparently for a while we were the only ones on the dance floor too, which is pretty hilarious. I had no idea, I was in my dancing zone :) After the dancing stopped, we headed back to the hostel and promptly passed out. Just kidding! We sat by the docks for a while (where I lost my hat, Hatty, who we found on the last day after he'd been snowed on. We gave him a funeral and buried him in the ocean), and talked and then went back to the hostel, where crazy antics were happening. And then finally, we promptly passed out.

Friday Oct 22nd - Our last full day in Stockholm! We started out by going to the cafe next to the Hostel for breakfast, which was delicious! And then we just sort of meandered around for a bit. We met up with Kr, who was coming to Sweden for two days, and then strolled down a big shopping street. Lh, Br, J and I got distracted by touristy stores and lost the rest of the group (yes parents, I did get you presents!). It was really fun, lots of silly hats, moose memorabilia, candy and scarves. We met up with part of the group, and then got separated again! Br, J and I tried to meet up with them, but for some reason our phones weren't working, so we went off on our own to a little cafe and got the most delicious chicken pesto pasta ever! And it was pretty cheap! After that we decided to just go back to the hostel and hang out for a bit. It really was too cold to really do anything, and it wasn't snowing, so therefore not worth it to be outside. We got some meatballs and rolls for dinner, and made an amazing pasta dinner (seriously, the only things we ate this whole trip - except for the occasional fish dish - were pizza and pasta. Pizza was the cheapest thing in Norway, and pasta was free in Sweden). At this point everyone was pretty haggard from the trip, and so we had a pretty laid back end of the trip. We stayed in and played trivia, which BR was awesome about and made for us! Then we all promptly fell asleep (getting sick of my saying that yet?)

Br & J on a bridge in Stockholm

J, L and Br looking ridiculous in their awesome Sweden hats

Awesome Candy store... and so cheap too :)

Saturday Oct 23rd - The last day! We woke up early.... too early. We had to leave for the train station at 10. People started packing up at 8. I was perplexed, and didn't know the plan, so I got up with everyone else... and then realized I could have slept an extra hour. Not cool. In any case, since I was up, I headed to the cafe and got a sandwich for later that day. Then Br, J and I wandered down to the docks, where we found Hatty, and had a funeral. We ran into M, BR and K, and apparently M had seen Hatty the day before, on the docks, covered in snow, and thought it might be my hat. It was very sad. Anyway, we strolled on over to the train station, and took a bus to our airport. The bus ride was 80 minutes long, and our airport was sketchy as hell. But we made it home alive! The rest of the day wasn't too interesting... we took the S-Bahn home, I randomly ran into a girl I used to work with who was just leaving Berlin after being here for 2 days, and then I took the most glorious shower of my life. Later that night, Br, J and I watched Snatch and drank wine. Twas a nice relaxing way to settle back into live in Berlin.

Adventures in Scandinavia!

2010-10-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else noticed that I've just completely stopped being creative with my titles? Oh well, they get the point across. Just a fair warning, this is going to be one hell of a long post. Perhaps I'll split it into 2 posts.... we shall see. Well, let's get started, shall we?

Friday Oct 15th - M, D, Br, L, J and I arrived in Oslo around 14:30 in the afternoon. M and D were supposed to get there a few hours before the rest of us, but they hilariously accidentally booked their tickets for Oct 15th, 2011. Bahaha. Anyway, when we finally made it into the city center, we decided to stroll around for a bit, and grab some lunch/dinner. We found a place that seemed pretty cheap (converting things from Krona is really difficult. 50 kr is a really good price for something, but most places are about 80-140), and had the best waitress ever! She was so helpful, and spoke perfect English. She gave us a big long list of all the things we had to do seeing as we only had 3 days to do it! After our delicious pizza dinner (literally all we ate for the entire week was either pizza or pasta) we headed out to explore a little more before meeting up with Inge, our host. We randomly stumbled upon a royal procession - the King, Queen and Princess were headed to a Hotel where they were having a banquet for the Swiss King/President (I don't know what the Swiss government is). Lady Gaga was having a concert while we were there, and I think we were all secretly hoping that the blocked off road and police were for her entrance, but alas.... Then, we continued walking and stumbled upon a movie premiere! The movie was called Fritt Vill III, the third in a horror movie series (J, Br and I went to see it on our last night), and we were standing right next to the red carpet, a death metal band was playing (the lead singer was playing the cello while screaming into the mic), and they were handing out Batteries - a Norwegian energy drink. It was pretty epic. After that we had to go meet up with Inge. He was so cool! We stayed at his amazing house about 45 minutes from the city, with an absolutely amazing view! He was hardly ever there though, which was a bit of a shame, though getting drunk texts from him in the middle of the night, telling us he wouldn't be coming home was pretty amazing. After we got all the information we needed, we decided to just go to the house and relax for the rest of the night. We got some beers, played Risk and stared out at the view on the balcony. It was an amazing first day.

J and I being stoked about our Batteries!!

The view from the house we stay in

Saturday Oct 16th - So the next morning we all slept in a bit, and made an amazing breakfast with Inge when he rolled in around 11. The night before we'd been joking about him being a serial killer, so it was really nice to actually talk to him and determine that he wasn't a serial killer. He had lots of cool things to tell us about Norway, and has lived one crazy life (sailing to Africa, then South America and finally landing in the Bahamas where he lived for 4 months - badass). Then we headed out into town to explore around before meeting up with the final 3 of our fellowship (Br if you're reading this, yes I totally stole that from you because it's excellent). We found some statues that we, of course, climbed all over, and then strolled down the pier. There were about a billion bra's hanging from the power lines, and we couldn't figure out why until someone pointed out that it was national breast cancer awareness month (and even if it's not, we're just going to say it is). We walked all the way down the pier and found ourselves at an incredible fortress. It was absolutely beautiful! All the orange leaves and the bright sun (even though it was super cold), that's just something you never get in California. Autumn is definitely my favorite time of year, and it was so amazing in Norway! After the fortress, we headed to the Opera House, which Inge had told us about that morning. At first, I was a little ambivalent, but then it turned out to be amazing! You could climb all over it, and we were there at sunset - it was marvelous! After that came a lot of aimless wandering, searching for a place to eat (ok, I guess that doesn't mean it was aimless). Br, J and I split off from the group and got Indian food... it was so good! I got the Lamb Paneer and a honey pudding thing... it was so good. Br and J have been really close this whole trip, so it was nice to get to know them better, and now I've apparently become part of the trio (this is mainly because the rest of the group walks too fast, and we can't/don't want to keep up). And I think after that we just met up with the rest of the group and headed home.

Climbing on statues

The view from on top of the fortress

The Opera House that we climbed all over

Sunday Oct 17th - Sunday started off our last full day in Oslo, and what better way to start a day than by randomly finding a waterfall right by your bus stop? We had about half an hour before our bus got there, so we played around and took pictures for a while, twas delightful :) When we finally got into town (it was vacation, we weren't about the head into town at 8 am) the other 3 of the fellowship - who were staying somewhere else - had already been around to all the things we had done before they arrived, and went back to their apartment to make lunch, while the 6 of us headed to the statue park (a suggestion from our awesome waitress the first night). It was lovely, the trees were all shedding, the light was gorgeous, and it wasn't even that cold (for Scandinavia). The statues were a little weird... we determined that they were statues of what people would do during the apocalypse. And apparently a large, phallic orgy of people will pile up in the middle of a park. Oh and men will start kicking babies (Don't worry, I'll put pictures of these). D, J, L, and I lost Br and M, so we headed out into a non-statue-y part of the park and compiled a huge pile of leaves to play in! It was great, our pile was huge and everyone was having a great time jumping in and throwing leaves everywhere. M and Br finally showed up, and almost ruined the pile, but then decided to be nice and let us finish it first. After the park we met up with the rest of the group and strolled around town a little more. We got coffee and some food from a little restaurant on the docks, with the worst waiter ever, and sat playing cards under the heat lamps for an hour or so. Then we explored the docks again, only this time at night, and Br, J and I decided to go see Fritt Vill III. It was great. One of those scary movies that scares you while you're watching it, but makes you laugh afterwards. The rest of the group went to an ice bar.... oh wait, no, they did that when we went to Indian the night before, just kidding. I think they just went to a regular bar, and then back to H, BR (yeah, this isn't getting confusing at all...) and K's apartment to make dinner and watch a movie. After our movie, we met up with them, and then we all headed back to Inge's place and promptly passed out.

Checking out the river/waterfall we discovered

Phallic statue of an orgy

Baby-kicking man

Playing with our leaf pile

Monday Oct 18th - The next morning we had to get up bright and early to catch our 10:30 train to Bergen. Yeah, that's right, we woke up at 8... shocking, I know. We said out farewells to Inge and thanked him for having us, then headed down to the train station. Because I had to change my travel plans for break so suddenly, my train reservation wasn't with the rest of the group. I had to sit in the last car on the train all by my lonesome. It was actually quite nice to be alone for those 8 hours. The whole trip I'd barely had enough time to process everything that had happened, and where my emotions stood, so it was really nice to just sit back and think for a while. I only wish I'd brought my iPod with me. I realized that I need to start taking school more seriously (ok, I know some of you are laughing at me for saying that), and start getting involved with things on campus/start taking classes for fun. Everyone on the program seems to be having a great time at college, and I don't know if it's just that I don't like UCSC or what, but I just can't relate to them about that. So I decided that when I get back to school I'm going to sign up for a dance class and maybe a photography/graphic design class (I'll probably have to take it at Cabrillo though) so that I can have more things to keep me active and meeting people. I also discovered some new thoughts on romantic relationships thanks to two books I've been reading that have really gotten me thinking (Brave New World and I'm Not Stiller, if you were wondering). M joined me in the back for a bit, but when the train stopped and it was snowing, we both ran to take pictures and play in the snow. Then we got yelled at and separated (apparently when they say a "short stop," they mean it). We finally got to Bergen, and headed to our hostel at the top of a mountain - don't worry, we took a bus. Once we checked in and got settled, we headed to the store and got some stuff for dinner, ate dinner, played some games. I need time to adjust from being alone for so long (especially when the me being alone involves me seriously thinking about and analyzing my life), so I got a little anxious and went out for a walk. It was cold and dark, haha. Probably not my best decision ever, but whatever. It was necessary. I don't think anything else too spectacular or noteworthy happened that evening, so I'll just say: and then we went to bed.

All of us with Inge

I would have taken a better picture if the stupid people
hadn't yelled at me to get back on the train

The View of Bergen from the Hostel

Ok, and I've decided that I am going to split this into two posts. Because, really, no one would read something twice this long. I'm surprised anyone has actually made it this far down! :-p

Blisters On My Fingers

2010-10-12T04:33:00.000-07:00

Day one of midterms is over... Thank God. It's now day 2, but I don't have any midterms, so it's a catch up/study/buy warm clothes day! Monday was quite possibly one of the hardest days to get through. I had German from 9-12, which was fun. We reviewed for our midterm, and our absolutely amazing teacher Tanja agreed to cancel our excursion for Tuesday so that we could use the time to study. This worked out so beautifully for me, as I don't have any class on Tuesdays, so canceling the excursion meant I could sleep in after a really rough day! After German, it was off to get Döner for lunch. Delicious! Then coffee and a quick review of my history study guide.

The History midterm was not what I had expected. He had given us 8 questions to study, and was going to ask 4 and have us answer 3. When J, K and I were working on the study guide, we narrowed it down to the four questions we were certain he was going to ask. He ended up only asking one of the ones we thought he would. Fortunately, our little study group worked wonders and I was able to hit on all of the points we had discussed in the group for the three questions I answered. It took 2 hours and 15 minutes to finish the three essays. Four pages (A4 pages that is), handwritten, front and back. I quite honestly never want to use the phrases: "Treaty of Versailles," "German Society," "political instability (and other denominations of the phrase)" or "Weimar Republic" ever again. I don't think I've ever written three papers that had so much in common. Also, my pencil has little grippy ribs on it for increased grip-ability (obviously), but after writing for that long, the grip just rubbed against my fingers and made them raw. I guess it's been a while since I've written that much by hand. And so, I now have little blisters on my fingers.

This proved to be a slight disadvantage when I got to my Film midterm 45 minutes later. At that point me brain was completely fried, the coffee had warn off, and apparently I was slightly delirious. These things happen. We watched clips from the four movies we've watched in class, and then were supposed to pick one or more of the movies to analyze in terms of historical context and style. At least I hope we were supposed to discuss historical context because that's all I wrote about. I'm not going to lie, I'm only taking the class pass/no pass, and I absolutely do not care about film analysis. I find it to be far too subjective, and feel that a film has so many people putting so many different things into it, that it is impossible to ever really analyze it to any legitimate extent. But that's just my feeling. I still managed to spit out 2 and a half, hand written, front and back pages, so I'm sure that alone will ensure me a C... which is all I need for a Pass!

It was a pretty rough day, so I was excited to hear that a group of people were going out to dinner, and were potentially playing beer pong after. It sounded perfect. I didn't ask for details and just went out and met the rest of the group. It was a different group of people than the people I normally hang out with; there were two or three normal people, but I'd never really hung out with the other people before. It was really nice going out and getting to know more people. As much as I love my little group, I like to branch out every now and then. We were apparently headed to an American restaurant that had 6 Euro steaks.... sounded fantastic! Until we got there (after a good half an hour of getting lost). Turns out it was 6 Euro per 100 kg. With a 250 kg minimum (ok, not sure if I want to use kg here or g, so my apologies. You catch my drift through). I was so hungry and tired from the day that I was fine with spending a little extra money on dinner... but no one else was. We ended up going to an Indian restaurant down the street. It was delicious! I got Mutton Saag (Spinach Lamb curry) and a Hefeweißen, my new favorite beer. It was probably the most delicious lamb curry I've ever had! And the whole meal only cost 8.50 Euro... a whole lot better than a 15 Euro steak! It was a really great way to spend the evening after midterms from hell!

And now, it's pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the week. I don't have any midterms today, so I'm using the time to start research on my history research paper (on the nazification of the educational system) and going out to buy some long sleeve shirts (apparently, I only have 2). Then tomorrow I've got a midterm for Authoritarian at 4:30. It should be pretty easy. It's only 10% of my grade for the class, so there's not too much pressure. Plus he said it's going to be a relatively general analysis, and not focus on specific readings, so I'm just going to review the basic concepts tonight and tomorrow, and I should be fine. Then Thursday morning is the German midterm. I'm a little nervous about this one just because it's German, haha. I'm good on vocab and verb conjugation. I still need to study "his," "their," "your," "our," etc. I'm just nervous that I'm going to make a bunch of little mistakes that will add up. Fortunately, Tanja's pretty understanding about the little mistakes and doesn't ever mark us down too much for them.

I think after everyone's done on Thursday, we're going to head over to Grunwald, a forest just outside of Berlin. It should be pretty fun and absolutely gorgeous! The leaves here are turning, and while it's dark and depressing when I get up at 6:45, by 7:15 the morning Golden Hour has come in, and there is just nothing more beautiful than a golden sunrise coming through golden leaves. I tried to take some pictures the other morning, but it was 34 Degrees F and my fingers froze! I will definitely be bringing my camera with me :)

Then Friday it's off to Norway! We're getting to Oslo Friday afternoon, then staying until Monday when we take the train to Bergen. We're in Bergen until Wednesday, when we head over to Stockhom. Then we're staying in Stockholm until Saturday, when we return to Berlin in the afternoon! It should be amazing. I'm going with an incredible group of friends... and if they can make dirty, smelly, expensive Paris amazing, I can only imagine how great this trip will be :) Our hostel in Bergen is at the base of an amazing hiking trail, and we may be able to see the Northern Lights. There's also a really nice, relatively cheap Spa/Sauna/Pool place in Stockholm that I'm going to see if I can convince people to go to. I won't be bringing my computer with me, so hopefully my 17 GB of memory on my camera will be enough!

A Great Way to Spend the Day...

2010-10-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

...Before being consumed by midterms.

Somehow, it's already time for midterms. I have absolutely no idea where the time has gone! I'd like it to slow down a bit as it's going a too fast (Where's my Dr. Horrible with his freeze ray?). Regardless, just because I want time to slow down, doesn't mean it will, so I have to get cracking on studying for these midterms. Monday will be the worst day as I have German (just class, no midterm), then a midterm in History, followed by a midterm in Cinema! After Monday the week will get easier: an excursion to Kreuzberg with my German class on Tuesday, a midterm in Totalitarian Wednesday afternoon, and my German midterm Thursday morning. Then it's off to Norway on Friday (more on that in an upcoming post)! I'm not too worried about these midterms, but either way, I still need to spend the next two days studying my butt off to make sure I'm ready. I decided to take the day off yesterday, though, and get myself nice and relaxed before becoming a hermit. It was a really great, Berlin-filled day :)

M, D and I started out the day by going to the Museum für Naturekunde, or the Natural History Museum. It was absolutely awesome. They have the world's largest mounted Brachiosaurus brancai skeleton... and it's huge! The first room in the museum is the dinosaur room, and the history nerd in me just got so excited! There are so many cool dinosaur skeletons and fossils, it was amazing. Then we moved into the Earth room, which had a lot of interesting stuff about plate tectonics and rocks and a really cool giant globe that had a TV mounted to it, which would spin around the globe and show how certain parts of the world formed. It was awesome! When we were in that room, we met up with K and two of M's German friends. We also checked out the hominid room, which isn't a permanent exhibit so I was really happy to see it. Human evolution is so cool to look at. Unfortunately, they didn't have a skull of my favorite hominid: Australopithecus Robustus

These guy's jaws were so large that their chewing muscles were strong

enough for them to eat almost anything. Badass.

We also got to go into this room that was filled with specimen in formaldehyde jars, which was really creepy. There were several jokes made about finding human arms in a jar, or what would happen if the animals all suddenly came to life. It was hilarious, but got that voice in the back of my mind a little scared! There was also a really cool room with a bunch of taxidermy animals, with hippos! And then we watched a video thing on the creation of the universe. It was in German, so we couldn't understand too much, though M did attempt to translate... and failed miserably, but succeeded at being hilarious.

After the museum (which we didn't get a chance to finish, so we will be going back!), we headed down the street to a fro yo place called Yoli (I think). It was so good! I got the regular yoghurt with raspberries and this "brownie" stuff... It was like melted chocolate with little crunchy balls in it. It was absolutely delicious! Then we strolled around town, and made our way to part of the wall. It was where no man's and was, and was right next to a cemetery. We didn't stay too long, which was probably a good thing, as the memorial to those who died trying to cross the wall probably would have brought us all down a bit. We headed towards a park (which we ended up not going to), all the while discussing the implications of the wall, and how the German girls felt about it/what they were taught in school about it. After a while of wondering, we stopped at a coffee shop and warmed up with some coffee and hot chocolate.

A word about the weather: when we left that morning, it was gorgeous out, so I wore a skirt. Turns out this was a terrible idea! The weather stayed nice until about 3 blocks before the coffee shop... and then it suddenly dropped about 4 degrees (Celsius). I was absolutely freezing! Fortunately, M and D were cool with going back to the apartments for a bit before continuing our lovely day. K and the German girls went their separate ways, and we headed back home. About an hour later, we headed back out and went to Alexanderplatz on a mission.

The mission was burritos, and it was a complete success. We went to this place called Dolores (based on the giant map of San Francisco, it was presumably named after Dolores Park), and had delicious burritos and Mexican beer. The restaurant has a Chipotle feel to it, but is nothing like Chipotle at all. I hate Chipotle - I always feel so rushed, and I just don't find the quality that great. I much prefer La Hacienda or Taco V - so I was a little apprehensive when it was described as similar to Chipotle. But I'm so glad I went. The burrito was delicious! And the Guacamole was easily the best I've had in Berlin (or Europe for that matter). Plus, Mexican is sooo good. And so worth the ridiculous price for imported beer.

It's Chipotle-esque because you go down the line picking from a

list of options what you want on your burrito. But it's about

a thousand times fresher and tastier!

After Dolores, we headed out to a bar called Aufsturz. A bar with 100 beers! It's similar to 99 Bottles in Santa Cruz, what with the having an absurd number of beers, but they have way more random beers, and unfortunately no rewards or system for trying each beer. But that's okay... it was still amazing. I got a Mango beer, a Passion fruit beer and a Pear cider (apparently I was in the mood for fruit!). The passion fruit was absolutely delicious, but this is probably only because I love anything passion fruit flavored. We met up with K and the German girls, plus a few more German girls, and stayed there for a few hours trying different types of beer. One of the German girls got a cherry beer, and it was absolutely disgusting! It smelled like cherries, which was nice, but had one of the worst after tastes ever!

Aufsturz Bar. They had some really cool paintings on the walls.

They were very new age meets Picasso in style.

Around midnight, we decided to leave. I was exhausted and didn't want to spend anymore money/be hungover for studying today, so I went home, and the rest of them headed out somewhere. If they'd gone to a club, I would have gone (I can always find energy to go dancing! Plus I never buy drinks at clubs because I'm too busy dancing), but I think they were just going to go to another bar, and I didn't have the energy to sit around (oh sweet irony). The train ride home was relatively uneventful... until I got off and started walking home. A Nigerian man who'd also gotten off the train asked me something, and I thought he was lost, so I decided to try and help him out. Turns out he wasn't lost. He'd lived in Berlin for a few years, and walked me home. He kept asking me for my number, and to go on a date. He walked with me all the way back to the apartments and got incredibly rude and abrasive when I told him that he couldn't come into the apartment building with me, nor would I give him my number or meet him for coffee tomorrow. Needless to say, I think next time I'll just stick it out with the group instead of opting to go home alone at 1:30!

So there you have it, an amazing way to spend a Friday in Berlin. Complete with culture, good food, great company and fruity beers :) And now it's onto the studying.... I'll be posting details about my mid-semester break plans soon!

Another Unexpected Expectation for the Journey

2010-10-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

While I was completely mentally prepared to be homesick, and miss random things like my dog, In N Out, and Su Hong to go, there was something I never really considered I would miss: Photography. Sure, I take more pictures than the average person when we go out on excursions, but that's not really the type of photography I like, or am necessarily all that good at. I miss developing a concept, setting up a scene, fiddling and getting frustrated over lighting, posing and shooting. I especially miss the editing process, where the concept usually fully comes to light. Now, there's a huge debate going on in the art photography world right now about whether a manipulated image can truly be considered "art photography." When I first started, I was completely of the opinion that any manipulation completely degraded the essence of photography. But now I see that manipulation can add so many elements to an image, just as long as you don't over do it. Fortunately, I'm not skilled enough at photoshop to be able to manipulate my images to any substantial degree, and therefore hardly ever receive comments about my work not being true photography. But I digress.

Now that I am in Berlin, there are a whole host of reasons and excuses for not focusing on my photography as much. I don't have time, my time would be better spent out exploring the city/world/being with friends who I have a limited time with. I don't have much inspiration because there is so much going on that my mind doesn't have the time to stop and consider the concepts I'm presented with. I don't have a very good location (this was evident in the dorms too, but I still managed to get a few good conceptual shots done there), nor do I have access to as many props as I once had. I also just don't have the energy. I don't think people realize how much work (both mentally, physically, and time wise) goes into the execution of a conceptual self portrait. I prefer to spend my down time relaxing, and while photography is often relaxing... it's not necessarily how I want to spend my free time.

Still, even with all these external factors, I still miss it. If I do find some inspiration, you bet I'd get out and do it, but as it is, the main thing that is holding me back is a total lack of inspiration. Perhaps this will only be temporary. Hopefully a few things about myself will only be temporary and only last my time in Berlin. Don't get me wrong, I'm having an amazing time here, but I can tell that I've become a little selfish lately - which has resulted in hurting some people I really care about. But, I'm in Europe, and will likely never have an opportunity to do whatever makes me happy without fear of repercussion ever again. As much as I don't like how I'm acting towards some people from home, I feel like I need to take this opportunity to do what I want, and what will make me happy, without having to worry about how it will make someone else feel. I'm neglecting people and photography. But, hopefully - and I'll be making a strong effort to change this - it will only last my time here. It's a completely different world, and I need to assimilate to it, which means somethings have to fall by the wayside.

I did not foresee this post turning into something a little existential, but I suppose that's what you get from stream of consciousness writing with no editing :) I have found inspiration once since arriving in Berlin. And I did a shoot that I'm quite proud of. In case you don't follow my flickr, here is the lone conceptual piece I've created in the last month and a half:

Slipping Into Serenity

(Details can be seen here)

Pictures from Poland

2010-10-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

Delicious pastries at this little bakery at Krakow's train station

My super tasty breakfast sammich. Only 5 zl (that's about 1.50 Euro!)

P thoroughly enjoying her breakfast sammich

Nothing says breakfast quite like a delicious cream pastry taco :)

Our van to Auschwitz... it seemed a little sketchy

Walking towards Auschwitz

A map of the camps.

The cell blocks

A memorial urn filled with some of the ashes found by the liberators.

The replication of the extermination process

Glasses taken from the victims

Shaving brushes.

The firing wall. The windows of the surrounding cell blocks were covered

so that the inmates wouldn't know what was happening, but obviously

they were able to hear the screams of the victims as well as the shots.

The crematoria

This is where the depressing pictures end!

Gorgeous sunset over the river at the top of the castle

Castle ruins

The Cathedral at the castle

So many horse drawn carriages!

At the restaurant.

Delicious wine!

Our tasty Georgian dinner... still can't believe it only cost 6 Euro!

At Boogie Cafe for dessert

Creepy ass Warsaw train station, where we froze to death and

were harassed by drunken Polish men.

Crazy Adventure to Poland

2010-10-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

And the realization of an important expectation.

My trip to Krakow and Auschwitz can only really be described as an adventure. Some aspects were absolutely delightful, while others were sketchy and terrifying. Still others were depressing, exhausting, and hilarious. It was quite a crazy 44 hours!

We started off Friday with a trip to the Bundeskanzleramt (the Chancellor's office) as part of an excursion with the FU-BEST program. It was pretty interesting, and the architecture of the whole building was amazing. Open and transparent, fully representative of what the German government is trying to accomplish. Then we had about a 4 hour break to prepare for Poland! Our first real train left at 18:30, and arrived in Krakow at 6:36. Yeah.... 12 hours. With 4 train changes. I don't know what we were thinking!

The first train went fine, but then we realized that they weren't announcing the train stops, and the signs on the stations were suddenly in Polish! Apparently, it only takes an hour and a half to get to Poland... We had to go based on our ticket times, and get off the train at the time it said, and just hope it was the right station. And those Polish stations.... The only word to describe them is: SKETCHY. Or, for added emphasis, sketchy as fuck! I didn't get any pictures of them, but trust me... they were sketchy. And this is when we learned that neither P or myself knows a single word of Polish (well now I know that Tak means yes). Also, random fun fact for people going to Poland: you always have to pay to use the bathroom (and they don't take Euros there). And it's not just some machine that you drop a coin into like Germany.... no, in between the two sides of the bathroom there is a little living room set up where one of two people sit and wait for you to finish your business, then harass you in Polish until you hand them money. And I'm not kidding about the living room set up... they legitimately have couches and TVs and microwaves. I don't understand how it's cost effective...

Anyway, moving on (this is going to be a loooong post btw), as me and P are sufficiently freaked out, and wishing we had a big, strong, burly man with us, we board our final train of the night. An 8 hour train from Krzyz to Krakow. It didn't sound too bad, but then we realized that we hadn't made a reservation, so we had to search the whole train for a car to sleep in. We tried so hard to find a car all to ourselves, but this guy and his daughter were following us. He kept being like "where are you staying in Krakow? Come stay in my house with me and my daughter," etc etc. His daughter was so cute, but me and P kept exchanging looks of "Do you think he's kidnapped this girl? Should we alert someone?!" We ended up losing him when he stopped to talk to a conductor, and found ourselves a car to ourselves. Unfortunately some people joined us at the next stop, so not too much sleeping occurred. Also, on the 8 hour train ride, the conductor came around every two hours to check our tickets. Like seriously... you've already stamped it three times... I'm relatively certain it's still valid!

Anyway, after probably only accumulating 2 or 3 hours of sleep on the train (most of the time was spent trying to get this Polish woman to stop sleeping on me), we finally arrived in Krakow! Again, how the hell do these Poles know when to get off the train?? Around the time we were supposed to get off, we were plastered to the window, hopelessly searching for a sign. I finally saw one that said Krakow, and figured we'd be safe getting off there. Let me tell you, Poland at 6:30 in the morning is absolutely freezing!! I think it was about 6 degrees Celsius when we got there! We also discovered that the woman at the Deutsches Bahn ticket office had sold us the wrong return ticket... one that left Krakow at 2:30 in the morning! We struggled in broken English to change the tickets, but ultimately failed. We decided to give it a rest, and grab some breakfast. We both got delicious sandwiches, and P got a tasty pastry thing (pictures will come in a separate post).

We then spent about an hour or two roaming around Krakow train station desperately searching for the PKS (the bus that goes to town where Auschwitz is). We found the GDS or something, and figured we could hopefully find the PKS from there. Needless to say, this was painfully stressful and exhausting (even for someone running on a normal amount of sleep). Eventually we figured out we had to look for a bus headed to the town, and that the sign wouldn't say "bus to Auschwitz" - seems logical, but we just kind of assumed that's what it would say). Finally, we caught a 9:20 bus (well large van), and were able to sleep for about an hour of the hour and 40 minute bus ride. Then we got there. And it was absolutely intense.

We bought our tickets (even though the website said it was free...), and watched a 10 minute movie about the history and liberation of Auschwitz. It was a really good movie and had a lot of really moving clips and pictures that I hadn't seen before, especially about the liberation and discovery of what had been done there. Then we joined a group and started the tour. We went through about 6 blocks where the inmates lived, and each block had different exhibits in it. One on the living conditions, one on the means of deportation, one on extermination, one on the arrivals, one of the prisons, I think there was more, but this is most of what I can remember. I'm not going to go into too many details about it because it's such a sensitive topic, but there were three things that really stood out and affected me.

1) One room was full of the hair that the Nazis shaved off the women and used for textiles for the German army. The room was about 15 feet long, and the exhibit took up the whole wall and probably went about 6 feet back. And the hair almost reached the ceiling. Some of it was still in pony tails that had been cut off the women's heads. It was incredibly moving
2) A sculpture of a representation of the extermination process. It starts with people piling into the "showers," then the gassing, and finally the crematoria. I actually saw this originally at the DHM, but seeing it at the location where it actually occurred was so intense.
3) I didn't realize that this last part was going to be on the tour, and I wish I'd been prepared for it. We actually walked through one of the crematoria. It had 6 ovens, as well as the tracks that were used to transport the bodies. You could feel the death. It made me want to cry.

Anyway... onto less depressing things! We made it back to Krakow, and decided to explore the city for a while. We found these crazy mannequin things in a courtyard - some ING thing about the truth about insurance. Twas weird. Regardless, if we hadn't gone to explore it, we wouldn't have found the second half of Krakow train station, where we were finally able to change our tickets to 10 p.m. ones! It was like a weight had been lifted :) We continued strolling around Krakow and absolutely fell in love! We determined that we no longer hated Poland, ran into a random concert in the town square, saw so many horse drawn carriages and ate amazing gelato. Krakow is pretty much exactly how you imagine a European town will be. It's absolutely adorable. We wandered up a hill and found ourselves at a castle overlooking the river right at sunset. It was tremendous!

Once it started to get dark we decided to grab some dinner. We headed to this Georgian restaurant (mainly because it was the cheapest, but nicest looking, place we could find). It was called Gruzinskie Chaczapuri Restaurant, and it was delicious! We got some wine, and pork steak. I have no idea what pork steak really is, but it was surprisingly tasty - and I hate pork! It was marinated in Georgian spices, which are delicious, and came with this sauce that tasted a whole lot like currywurst sauce. After that, we headed to Boogie Cafe and got some tasty dessert. We had another hour or so until our train, and since it was getting cold, we decided to just head back to the mall/train station for a while. We loaded up on water and bread for the trip, and finally got on our train.

Two really nice Polish girls joined our car, and thank god they did! Apparently the woman who changed our tickets gave us the wrong information. It told us to get off at the third Warsaw station, not the middle one... but our next train left from the middle Warsaw station, and didn't even stop at the third! The Polish girls were headed to Warsaw too, so we just followed their lead! And so commenced our 2 and half hour lay over in Warsaw. From 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m. Warsaw is not a closed train station, so there is no way to avoid the middle of the night freeze. We were sitting at our track about an hour and a half before the train got there reading when three random Polish guys came up to us. One of them took our picture, and we tried to ignore them but they started to harass us. Again, where the hell was our big, strong, burly man?! (Or, you know, a few of them...) One of these guys was actually kind of nice, and spoke English really well. He could tell how uncomfortable we were and tried to get the other guys to leave. The other two were creepy as hell. They were obviously drunk, and as P would put it "one of them looked like Gollum!" They eventually left (after telling us not to be scared because there were cameras everywhere), and we booked it to the McDonald's to wait the rest of the hour for our train.

The final train! From 6:30 to 13:16... and such glorious sleep! We had reservations, and therefore a whole car to ourselves! The conductors still came around quite often, but we were able to lay down and sleep in 2 hour intervals. It was absolutely glorious! We were so happy to be back in Germany where we actually understand some of the language and can make out the sign posts... oh, and where the train announce the stops and the bathrooms are sooo clean and don't have creepy living rooms :) Berlin really has become home to us.

So yeah, that's pretty much Poland in a nutshell! Absolutely insane! The day I got back was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall so a group of us headed over the Brandenburger Tor and the Reichstag to celebrate with the Berliners! It was a great end to the weekend :) Pictures will come sometime in the next few days! Oh, and everything, including hostels, is now booked for Norway and Sweden in two weeks, so look forward to updates on that!

p.s. sorry for any typos. It's late here, and as you've seen there hasn't been much sleep in the last few days!

Comings and Goings

2010-09-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

I finally have a few moments to write a blog, so here's a little update on all the comings and goings of life in Berlin. This week hasn't had too many extraordinarily exciting things happen, but it's still been amazing. We went out to a club on Friday, and it was absolutely amazing! It was in an old post office (or train station, not sure), and had three different dance floors. At first, it was pretty lame because none of the DJs were very good, but then we found a room with a bunch of people and an ok DJ. He kept doing 30-45 minutes of great music, then 30-45 minutes of terrible music. Around 2 am we were about to leave, but then he started a really good session, and we ended up staying until about 3:30. One thing I've been slowly learning is that I really need some flat boots to wear out to the clubs. Wearing boots with heels is horrible. Dancing for 3 or 4 hours in heels is not good for my bad knee. It's even worse for my worse knee :)

On Saturday we went to the best Doner place in Berlin. For those of you who don't know, Doner is one of the most delicious things in the world. It's one of those foods where you seem how it's made and think to yourself "That's disgusting." And then you eat it.... and suddenly it's the only thing you ever want to eat.

Doner meat log - gross looking

Durum Doner (how I always get it, but you can get it in bread too) - Absolutely delicious

Most Doner comes with onions, lettuce, that purple lettuce stuff, and assorted vegetables (tomatoes, cucumber, etc). But the Doner from this one place had roasted potatoes, and roasted vegetables on top of all the other deliciousness. And, they put all the sauces on it, not just one. I didn't get one because I'd already eaten dinner, but I wish I had. I can't wait until we go back there again! After that we headed to Oranienburger Strasse to meet up with some German people my friends met. Oranienburger Strasse more than lived up to it's reputation - as soon as we walked up from the S-Bahn platform, there were just prostitutes standing around. I was not expecting it to be so obvious. The funniest part of it all was that they all had fannypacks on, presumably for their money. It just seemed such a strange combination - possibly one of the least attractive things ever (a fanny pack) and a presumably attractive sex goddess. (My apologies to the more sensitive readers!)

Que Pasa, where we went to meet the German girls, was pretty fun. But just a word of warning to anyone who might come to Berlin: do NOT order a classic margarita from Que Pasa. I think about 5 or 6 of us ordered them, and it was the single worst margarita I've ever had. They mixed the salt into the drink... and rimmed the glass with salt. As LH put it, it was like drinking sea water. So bad. Fortunately, the Long Island Iced Teas were delicious enough to wash the horrible salt taste out of our mouths!

The rest of this week, I've had school, so I haven't been going out too much. Though last night (Tuesday), a group of us went out to a Mexican restaurant, Maria Peligro. It was delightful! I haven't had Mexican food in so long (like 3 months), and I was so excited because this was relatively legit Mexican food. At other places in Berlin, the guacamole is some strange puree of avocados, but not here! I got the fish tacos, and they were amazing. Everything is relatively cheap (about 5-8 Euro per plate), and they have 2 for 1 margaritas during happy hour. I'm pleased to say that this margaritas were infinitely better than the others. They had just the right amount of salt on the glass, and none in the drink! Tonight, after class, I believe we're going to play poker in someones room, which should be fun :)

Oh yeah, and the goings. P and I just bought our tickets to Poland today :) We head out on Friday 1/10, and come back Sunday 3/10. Our tickets were only 95 Euro each, which is less than people's tickets to Munich :) It's going to be a crazy trip. We leave Friday afternoon, arrive Saturday at 18:00, are headed straight to Auschwitz, then are hanging out in Krakow for the rest of the day, and heading back to Berlin at 23:30, arriving at 13:15. It's going to be crazy! But I'm so excited :)

And then for mid-semester break my plans have completely changed. Originally I was going to go to England and visit my family, but some issues came up, and now that doesn't sound feasible. Instead I'm joining a group of friends and we are headed to Norway and Sweden! Two countries I never even thought of visiting, but am really excited to. We're spending 5 days in Norway and 3 days in Sweden. It should be absolutely amazing. More updates will come once I figure out where and when I'm going places. Oh, and there will be so many pictures from Poland, so look forward to that (except no pictures are allowed inside Auschwitz)

Bus Ride to Paris

2010-09-27T05:52:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is the stop motion that I made on the bus to Paris. Yes, it was so deliriously boring that I made a stop motion of it. It was pretty much the only thing to do. Music is "The Woods" by Portugal, The Man.

Changes Lead to Challenges

2010-09-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is another one of those "my feelings" posts, so go ahead and skip this if all you're looking for is details on how awesome Berlin is (though there will be lots of those in here too).

When I first moved to Berlin (just over a month ago!), I was so homesick. Everything was new, different and terrifying. I became dependent on the internet because it was my only connection to my friends and family back home. Connecting with them made me feel less alone. It gave my days some sense of normalcy. But it also proved to be a hindrance. Now, I realize that people from home are the main ones reading this blog, and are probably a little offended, or hurt by my saying that, but it's true. I was so wrapped up in trying to feel normal that I never even tried to make Berlin become my new normal. I was so reclusive the first two weeks, and instead of attempting to make friends and feel at home, I chose to spend my free time talking to people from home and going on solo excursions. And as much as I enjoy the occasional solo excursion, there's just no way I could go 4 months feeling lonely and missing home. And then came France.

The France excursion completely changed my outlook on everything about studying abroad. I had absolutely no alone time (except for my one solo excursion), extraordinarily limited access to the internet, and new exciting things to do every day/night. I found an amazing group of friends, as well as made some really good ones who tend to lie on the periphery of the general group, which is just how I like to have friends. I was essentially forced to fully embrace the awesome-ness that is studying abroad. And I couldn't be happier. Since we came back from France there's hardly been a dull moment (those mostly come when waiting for the train in the middle of the night). I've been having such a blast. Here's just a few of the amazingly fun things I've done this week: Trip to the Film Museum (which has so many fascinating rooms, and is uber modern), going to 12 Apostles and splitting a ginormous pizza (at least 3 feet in diameter), going to the stock market bar (where the prices are based on demand), and going out dancing until 5:30 in the morning. It's truly been one of the most amazing weeks.

This wasn't our pizza... but it's exactly what it looked like. So good

However, having this much fun means that I don't have the time I had before to keep up with people. Hence the sudden drop in my blog posts. It's proves challenging for me now to prioritize my time. Currently, Berlin and my friends here are my top priority, which means my friends back home are falling to the wayside. And this isn't because I don't love them, or want to talk to them, it's just that I'm trying to have the best time I can here, and I don't want anything holding me back. I know people back home will understand this (hopefully), but I feel bad because my first few weeks here I was making such an effort, and now I'm making almost none whatsoever. I just don't want anybody taking it too personally. From now on, most updates about my life will be coming on the blog (unless you're my parents, in which case you get your own emails :) ). So don't take it personally if you don't hear from me for a while, I still love you, I'm just busy falling in love with Berlin.

Notes on the French Excursion

2010-09-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

I thought I would have more time to go through and write really detailed blogs about each day in France, but I'm back in Berlin now, which means lots of school work and now a more exciting social life. Therefore, I'm just going to post the little bullet points that I made about every day in France. I probably forgot a few things, and if you want more details about certain things, feel free to ask :)

Day 1 – bus trip

- So long. 9:15 – 11:36

- Sitting at front of bus awesomeness/terror

- Too many stops

- Gorgeous country side

- P forgets her name is P

- M and Br join the front

- Stop motion

Day 2

- Boat tour

- Gorgeous weather/sunburn

- Walking to Champs Elysees

- Eating at that Italian place

- Going up Arc de Triumph

- Strolling to the Eiffel tower

- Drinking at the Eiffel tower

- Grabbing gross dinner followed by delicious crepe

- Going to a fail bar, then finally going to a club and dancing for 2 hours!

Day 3

- Left for Notre Dame just in time to catch a little bit of the sermon while wandering around the cathedral

- Wandered around a bit, made our way to the Catacombs, but decided it was too expensive and too long of a line

- Headed towards Napoleon’s tomb, which is gorgeous! Saw the tomb then strolled through the World Wars museum. Got in for free for being an EU member

- Delicious Pho with P and L

- Solo walk around town… sketch area. Random man, probably trying to pick pocket me, asks if I'm a painter.

- Delicious Crepes with P and L

Day 4

- Chartres --- most boring tour ever. Don’t care about stained glass windows

- Exploring around Chartres rocked. Delicious Indian food lunch (the cheapest real meal I had in France)

- Don't remember what happened when we got back.

Day 5

-Versailles – huge, lame ass Japanese art everywhere, ‘sploring the gardens

- going to a club, only a few of us getting in, walking around paris at 4 in the morning in the rain

Day 6

- Cathacombs, my leg dies

- Miss out on the Louvre

- Real French dinner at Bastille, so tasty

Day 7

- Leave for Caen, so much better than Paris, at this point we all know to sleep when we get on the bus

- Caen-Normandy Memorial Museum, lame movies that I slept through, taking the city bus home instead of walking

- Falling in love with “menus” – tasty Salmon pasta dinner

- Exploring around Caen with M in the middle of the night, finding hooker ally

Day 8

- Omaha Beach – gorgeous!

- Caving and eating McD’s for lunch because the line at the other place was too long

- US cemetery at Colville-sur-Mer, really emotional

- Exploring the blown up bunkers

- Back to Caen, more delicious French “menus”

Day 9

-Bus home…. Everyone sleeps for the first 5 hours, so much better than the first bus over

General stuff

- France is wicked expensive, Paris smells awful, would have much rather stayed in Caen longer and missed a day or two in Paris

- Finally finding myself a great group of friends, beginning to feel more at home now that I have good friends. Beginning to feel less homesick, but still craving delicious Chinese food

I'll be posting some pictures and my stopmotion of the bus ride in a day or two!

Paris Excursion

2010-09-08T15:26:00.001-07:00

On Friday (10/9) I leave for France for a week! The entire program is headed out bright and early on Friday morning, and we won’t return until the following Saturday (18/9). This means I won’t be posting for a while, as I have no idea what the internet access will be like. But, for now, here’s a brief little overview of what we’ll be doing!

Friday – Sunday:

Leave for Paris, arrive Friday night. The only program things we have going on during these days is a boat tour along the Seine, which sounds delightful. Otherwise it will just be adventuring around the city!

Monday:

Head to a tour of the Cathedral at Chartres in the morning, return to Paris in the evening.

Tuesday:

Head to Versailles in the morning, return to Paris in the evening.

Wednesday:

Free day to explore!

Thursday:

Leave Paris for Caen in the morning. In the afternoon we are visiting Caen-Normandy Memorial Centre for History

Friday:

Go to Omaha beach in the morning, plus an opportunity to visit the D-day beach, followed by a tour of a few more D-day related places.

Saturday:

Head back to Berlin in the morning, return in the evening.

So, if you find yourself missing me terrible, and wondering what on earth I’m up to on a given day, there you have it! I’ll have my computer with me so I can upload pictures each night, but the internet is very iffy, so it may be a few days before I have any more posts/pictures!

Self Discoveries

2010-09-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

While the main point of this blog is to fill people back home in on my goings-on in Germany, it is also a place for me to work through any emotional issues I may be facing. I tend to be a person who needs to process and analyze everything, and I feel that this personal insight will prove to be an important aspect of my time here in Berlin. When I first got here, I wasn’t entirely sure what to think. I thought it would be some incredible, life-altering experience, but it just felt normal. Perhaps that was the life-altering aspect. The fact that I feel so comfortable here it’s not even exciting. I’ve been waiting for my double rainbow moment, but it just hasn’t come yet (here’s the video link if you don’t get the reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI&feature=PlayList&p=FB5AAA911FADF219&index=0&playnext=1 Pops, this is the video I was telling you about the other day). I think that maybe I’m just a European at heart (well, I mean, I am) and so being here just isn’t that exciting. There were a few times when I had a brief “oh my god, I’m in Europe" moment, but they were never as strong as some others I had witnessed from my friends. I just accepted my new life, in a new city, in a new country without fear, anxiety, excitement or anticipation.

The first few days here were also incredibly tiring and stressful. I didn’t know anyone, and doing the simplest things like ordering food at a restaurant was the most nerve-wracking thing in the world. I found myself feeling exhausted after just one outing. However, I’ve discovered a few things through all of this stress and ambivalence. Until recently (about a year ago), I was always the type or person who needed to be surrounded by people, or one person. I was terrified of ever being alone, and even refused to eat in restaurants alone. One of the upsides of getting your heartbroken though is the positive changes it forces you to make. I spent the last year and a half working on my fear of being alone. And perhaps it has gone too far. I realized the other day, on my excursion with L, that I do much better in a smaller group, with only one or two people, than I do with an entire mob of people. I find it exhausting to be around that many people – not to mention it is impossible for a group to ever come to a conclusive decision, and I truly despise indecisiveness.

I was beginning to feel like I was missing out on truly experiencing the city because I was often turning down opportunities to be with people and see things, or simply not seeking them out. However, I have learned that I’m just the type of person who needs to be alone every once in a while. Part of my feeling so at home in this city involves me needing to maintain a few of my usual habits. The thought of going out and being surrounded by people everyday for the next 3 months tires me. When I went on a solo adventure around Alexanderplatz the other day – just strolling around for a few hours, with no real direction – it dawned on me that it’s okay for me to not be surrounded by people constantly, and that just because I haven’t done everything I want to do yet, it doesn’t mean I won’t be able to do it before I leave.

This trip is about me, and what makes me happy, and sometimes staying in and watching South Park in German is what makes me happy, and that’s okay. The only issue with this is that I can tend to be anti-social, and completely avoid social contact for weeks at a time. Fortunately, it seems that the people here are not the type to let that happen. Take tonight for example, I was planning on going to Karaoke with some people, but when I got home, I was too exhausted to go out (for no reason, I only had one class all day). But P and M called me and told me to get my butt over there because it wasn’t the same without me. And while these were probably just the words of some drunken friends, it’s reassuring to know that people will make an effort to try to get me to come out. I feel like I’m finally starting to make some friends here. The good kind, who understand when you don’t want to go out, but will force you do when they know your reasoning is irrational.

This post is probably of no interest to anyone but myself, but it’s also my only way of keeping track of this journey. And every aspect of the journey is important. It’s not just about the sites I see or the people I meet, it’s also about how the journey changes me.

Trials and Tribulations of Attempting to Wash Clothes

2010-09-08T06:12:00.000-07:00

Most of my issues in this realm could be very simply solved by just going to the hausmeister and purchasing tokens for the washer/dryer. However, I have no desire to spent 5 Euro (at least) to do my laundry. There’s a lot of it, and judging by how small the washers look, I would probably have to do laundry once a week, and use two machines. Further upping the price of doing laundry. I would much rather take that 10 Euro I save a week and spend it on something fun, like food or museum tickets! Thus, we have the many trials and tribulations of attempting to hand-wash everything I own for the next 3 months (yes, that’s right, it’s already only 3 months!).

The first issue I faced was detergent. As in, I don’t have any. It’s a little difficult to clean your clothes by just getting them wet. If I followed that logic, I would have run out into that rainstorm and “washed” my outfit from the day. As it is, I learned from Mo that I can just use dish soap and it works just as well as detergent. Problem solved. I need dish soap, therefore I have it, and so it’s no strain to use just a little to wash my clothes.

The next issue I face is drying my clothes. This is one I’m still trying to figure out, even though I’ve already done 4 or 5 “loads” of laundry (the loads have to be small when hand washing). The first issue within this issue is where to hang my wet clothes after they’ve been soaped, soaked, rinsed, re-rinsed and strung out. I don’t really want puddles of water all over my apartment, and my balcony faces the street, so I really don’t want to hang it out to dry out there (I’m on the first floor… also, have I mentioned the random rainstorms?). There is a little towel warming rack in the bathroom (or perhaps it’s a radiator, I’m not quite sure). In any case, it’s the perfect length to fit 4 days worth of socks and underwear and 3 tank tops/shirts. Provided I’ve already taken my shower for the day (and if I haven’t, I do while the clothes are soaking) I can hang two more shirts on the shower rail.

But this doesn’t quite solve my problem. My clothes always end up with creases from where they’ve been hung, which is not cute and makes me wish I’d bought that clothes steamer from the in-flight magazine. Not to mention how starchy and nasty feeling my socks get, but I’ll discuss that later. Today marked a first in my drying techniques. Until today, I had been draping my clothes in the bathroom for a day, and then hanging them around my apartment until they completely dried (about one or two days). However, yesterday I needed to wash my jeans. I haven’t done that since I’ve been here, and I don’t want to be forced to wear skirts when the weather is this fickle. I figured out that if I hung them up in the bathroom all day, I could then use my blow dryer to finish, or at least aid along, the drying process. It worked surprisingly well. I now have one completely clean and dry pair of jeans, and another on the way (as well as a completely sopping wet pair hanging in the bathroom). However, I haven’t figured out yet whether this drying process actually shrinks my jeans back down. The main reason I have to wash them isn’t because they are dirty, but because they stretch out after a few times of wearing them, and no longer look as good. So tomorrow, we shall find out if this new drying process actually works. I think the blow dryer will also help with the creases in my shirts, as I can attack them before they completely set into the shirt.

Now, about the socks. I absolutely hate wearing socks more than once. Simply cannot stand it. I’m sure my dad remembers when I would make him buy me a new packet of socks every week from Costco because I just couldn’t stand the thought of wearing my socks more than once, even if they’ve been washed. I just do not feel like washing socks ever gets them clean enough, even when you’re using a washer and dryer. Unlike shirts and jeans, socks never return to their “just purchased” feel. Once you’ve worn them, that’s it, they’re now gross. So, in an attempt at self-exposure therapy, I only brought seven pairs of socks with me (as well as a few pairs of winter socks). In retrospect, it was a horrible idea. Hand washing socks is awful. They just don’t get clean. And they dry rock-hard and starchy. It’s terrible. I’m honestly considering asking someone to mail me some Costco socks. But I won’t, because that would ruin the whole exposure therapy thing (though I would absolutely love anyone forever if they were to send me new socks).

Such are the trials and tribulations of attempting to hand wash everything. I end up doing some form of laundry, whether washing or drying, at least every other night. But that’s ok. I would much rather do this than spend my money on tiny washers and dryers.

Flea Market Adventures

2010-09-08T06:11:00.000-07:00

The morning after our Potsdam excursion, L and I headed down to the Flea Markets. The only one I knew for sure would be going on was at Museum Island, and it was one I had really wanted to see. Originally, I was planning on strolling around the market, then going to check out a museum – since they were all right there! But instead, we ended up exploring around in between Friedrich Strasse and Alexanderplatz, my favorite part of the city so far.

The flea market was pretty interesting, there were so many books and so much soviet memorabilia for sale! This specific flea market, whether because it was Saturday or because of its location, seemed to be a little touristy, but it still had some really great stuff! I fell in love with all of the vintage cameras and typewriters. There was also some beautiful jewelry too. I almost bought some for people back home, but I think it’s a little too early in my trip to start buying presents for people! Here’s a couple pictures of the gorgeous things they had:

Such gorgeous cameras. I almost bought the one on the left, but it was too expensive

Amazing typewriter! I probably would have bought it if getting it home wasn’t such an issue…

When we got to the end of the flea market, we decided to just wander around and head towards Alexanderplatz, as L had never adventured around there before! We also wanted to check out the Neue Synagogue and the Jewish Cemetery. We were able to find the Synagogue, but because it was Saturday, it was closed L It’s the most gorgeous building though! And I will definitely be heading back there soon to check out the inside! There were guards standing behind a rail going around the whole building to protect it from neo-Nazis, which was rather intimidating, but also an incredible experience to see the city actively fighting against any more persecution and desecration of the Jews and their property.

Such a beautiful building.

As we continued down, trying to find the cemetery and failing miserably, we stumbled into a kind of high fashion district. Some of the stores were from Berlin-based designers, which was insanely cool. The prices, however, were not that great. I feel in love with a pair of jeans and a dress, but both were about 70 Euro, and therefore not worth the money. We also found a cool, kitchy basement souvenir shop that had a whole bunch of interesting and funny things. L got super excited because there was a family speaking Hebrew in there! I was excited by all the crazy stuff.

The entrance to the store

We continued along, and found ourselves in a park across the Spree from Museum Island. I think the most exciting part about this, besides the absolutely glorious weather, was finding an Ampelmann café! We are determined to go back there one day when we’re actually hungry. For those of you who don’t know, and I didn’t before I went on the history tour, Ampelmann is one of the only relics of Eastern Berlin. He’s the “walk” sign man, and is the cutest thing in the world. When he’s indicating for you to “walk,” it looks like his hat is about to fly off his head! He’s now a sort of pop icon in Berlin, and there are a few stores that sell everything from bags to sponges with the iconic image embossed on them.

Ampelmann!

We then made our way all the way down to Alexanderplatz, where we strolled around, acting like tourists, and trying to find clothing stores that had cheap, but quality, stuff. When we were determined that that was just not going to happen, we decided to stop and eat at Back-Factory, a bakery. It was delicious, and so cheap! I got an amazing salami sandwich and a drink for only 2 Euro! I’m slowly beginning to learn that delicious food is insanely inexpensive in this town. The best part about my sandwich was that it wasn’t in a regular roll, but the roll was made out of pretzel dough. SO tasty! Oh, I forgot to mention this in another post, but after an excursion with my German class, we all got Falafel from this place called Dada Falafel. It was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten! They fry up the falafel right after you order it, and put so many delicious veggies in. It’s incredible! If you’re ever in Berlin, get off to S-bahn at Friedrich Strasse, turn left and keep going until you hit it!

Anyway, back to the real story. After lunch, we were going to go home, but got distracted by the store C&A, which has really cute clothes for super cheap. I ended up buying some tights because I didn’t bring any with me, and while the weather has been beautiful lately, it’s quite chilly and wearing skirts or dresses without tights is just out of the question! Overall it was a great day! And it was so nice to do something with only one other person. Lately the eternal stream of people who go out together has become tiresome. It’s hard to have a good time when everyone is trying to figure out what to do, and no one wants to make a decision. I’m a much bigger fan of doing things in smaller, little groups than huge groups! It was a nice break from that group mentality. Another great part about the day is that when I got home, about 5 minutes after walking in the door, and huge rainstorm started! It was the most I’ve seen it rain here since I got here! I was so happy to have completely avoided the storm J

Damn.... Potsdamn is gorgeous.

2010-09-07T06:05:00.000-07:00

So on Friday (3/9), we had a program excursion out to Potsdam. It was insanely stressful, and exhausting, but ultimately well worth the trouble. My group was supposed to meet at 10:40, so I left for the train at 9:30, assuming that would be enough time. It wasn't. We had to take three trains to get to Potsdam, and randomly one made us get off, and transfer to another train to continue down along the same line. We didn't end up getting there until 10:50. There were even some people with us who were supposed to get there at 10:20. Needless to say, the 11:00 group was huge! We had to take two buses because we couldn't all fit on one! I was on the first bus, and we waited around for people outside of Rathaus Potsdam, which is gorgeous!

Outside the Train Station... so beautiful

Rathaus Potsdam

While we were waiting, we saw a couple who had just gotten married, and we cheered for them from across the road. She was incredibly preggers! Anyway, we made our way to another bus (this time we all fit!) and traveled down to Cecilienhof, where Truman, Churchill and Stalin had their Potsdam Conference in 1945. Cecilienhof is called a "schloss," or castle, but really, it just looks like a nice bed and breakfast.

Cecilienhof - twas boring.

It probably would have been more interesting if there hadn't been so much waiting around to see the place, or if we'd been told why this place was important before we got there. They charged 3 euro for pictures inside the "castle" and it was definitely not worth it. So no inside pictures, sorry!

After that, we made our way back to the downtown area of Potsdam and grabbed some lunch. We only had 10 minutes before we had to leave for our next Schloss, so I just grabbed a mozzarella baguette. It was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. It had mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar. Soooo good. I wish I'd gotten a picture or gotten the name of the cafe. Needless to say, I may find myself making my way back into Potsdam just for that sandwich!

Our next stop was Sanssouci, the palace of Friedrich II. It was his pleasure palace, and no women were allowed (I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that...), but it was absolutely stunning! Again, no pictures of the inside, though this one may have been worth the 3 Euro. Here are a few pictures of the grounds:

The Garden was phenomenal. See what I mean about

Potsdam being beautiful?

The Castle. This one was way more castle-y than the last

Gorgeous windmill

The Courtyard from the street

It was all-in-all a good trip. A little stressful at times, but the beauty at Sanssouci, and that delicious sandwich made it completely worth it. After we got back, we had a welcome dinner with the entire program. The food was delicious, and free! Everyone dressed up a little, and we were all happy to be fed after such a long excursion! The next day, I checked out the flea markets with Liva, so look forward to a post all about that!

Oh, and on Friday morning I'll be headed to France for the week, so don't expect too many posts. There will be tons when I get back though!

For Everett

2010-09-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

Who probably doesn't read this blog, but told me I wouldn't be able to make/find/buy good food. Neither tasting nor health-wise (tasting because I don't like heavy foods). Here's a few pictures of the delicious, semi-healthy, light foods I've been making/eating:

Delicious pasta sauce I made. That's at least 4 types of vegetables, btw!

The final product. Relatively healthy for only spending 1 Euro

I love sandwiches. This city knows how to make amazing sandwiches.

Though I didn't get a picture of the healthier one, that had

Balsamic instead of mayo

More delicious sandwiches. I got a pretzel sammich and L got a spinach croissant

So there you have it, you can get delicious, moderately healthy food in Germany. Not that it matters too much, there's so much walking to be done every day you could eat curry wurst all day and not gain a pound!

Unanticipated Expectations for the Journey

2010-09-02T05:55:00.000-07:00

Today (2/9) marks the last day of my first week of classes. It was a pretty boring week, since most of my time was spent either sleeping or in class. I only went out one night this week, and the other nights I just spent at home cooking dinner, or hanging out in someone's room. Nothing too terribly interesting. But I'm sure some of you would like to hear about my classes (or at least now feel obligated if you've already made it this far into the post).

So, right now, my schedule is:
Monday:
German 9:00-12:00
Modern German History In European Conext: 13:30-16:00
German Cinema Before 1945: 16:30-19:00

Tuesdays:
German: 9:00-12:00 (these days are typically excursion days, and aren't every week)

Wednesdays:
The Human Condition & the Totalitarian Experience: 16:30-19:00

Thursdays:
German: 9:00-12:00

With the exception of Mondays, it's not too bad a schedule. I know a few people who have these huge gaps between their German class and their 16:30 class, so I'm really glad I don't have any of those! Though Monday is a killer. I made the rookie mistake of not bringing food with my this week. On Monday, my internet still wasn't working at home, so I used my hour and a half break to catch up on blog posts/emails/etc, without thinking about the fact that I had to be in class for another 7 hours... I was so hungry by the time I got out of class, my stomach had literally inverted. Mo told me I looked disgusting haha

Anyway, onto class details. So, from what I can tell, for each class (not German) I have to do some weekly thing (turn in a paper, take a quiz, etc), give a presentation on the reading, take a midterm, write a term paper, take a final, and go on & write about two excursions. That's kind of a lot. While almost none of my professors can agree on how many class meetings we have (somewhere between 10 and 14), it still doesn't seem like enough time to get everything done, while still having an amazing time and being able to travel. I think these four days out of the week are just going to have to be exhausting, and anything I can't finish during those days will have to come with me when I go places!

My German class is great! Our teacher is crazy, and enthusiastic, which is awesome. She always looks so shocked and impressed when we actually pronounce something correctly on the first try. And she never makes us feel bad when we can't figure out how to say something. I think the best part about her teaching style is that she shows us where in our mouth or throat the sound is supposed to be coming from. It's beyond helpful! We've only had two classes, and I already feel like my comprehension - though not necessarily my speaking - has increased dramatically. I even overheard and understood my first all German conversation the other day! (One woman was thanking the other for the cake, and the 5000 calories, and then they said goodbye to each other. Twas awesome)

My Professor for History is kind of difficult to understand. The class seems as though it's going to have some great content and be an interesting and new view on German history, but it is really hard to understand the professor. But, he's aware that his accent is not so great, so he's totally fine if we ask him to repeat things, or explain further. The other issue with that course is that I'm not sure if we're supposed to be taking notes on what he's saying, or what's on his slides. They don't always mesh up. Oh well, hopefully the reading will help to supplement anything I might miss in class.

Cinema seems like it might be an interesting course... maybe. I'm not sure. I really don't like cinema classes. I love learning about movies and watching them, and seeing the reflections of society come across on screen... I just cannot for the life of me write papers about films. My academic papers are always so matter of fact and argumentative, but film papers are all about analyzing the film and agreeing with the argument that such-and-such was reflected in such-and-such a scene. Or at least that's been my experience. The good news is that I've already seen a few of the films we are watching, and have even written papers on a few, so hopefully it won't be too hard a course. Also, it's my last class of the day on my hell days, so by that point I'm normally too tired to pay too much attention, so it's probably a good thing we'll just be watching films. The professor is a really cool, excited German guy. His English is much better than my history professor's.

Totalitarian seems like it is going to be a wicked interesting course. The professor is this really old guy, who used to live on the East side of Berlin while it was still divided, and his parents had first hand experience of living in a totalitarian state, so it sounds like he's going to have some fascinating insights. He reminds me a lot of my professor from Santa Cruz. Really slow and boring to listen to, but once he gets to the point of his story, you're really happy you stuck around to hear the whole thing. The class is probably going to be pretty easy for me, since it is basically a summation of all the things I've been focusing on for the last two years. But this is the first class where there has been a distinct combination of psychology and history. It's my first psychohistory course, I suppose.

For all of my classes we have to go on excursions, which at first sounded like a drag, but now that I know what they are sounds interesting! Here's a quick list/description of each excursion (I put links to the websites on the ones that I could find):

German (on these ones we are limited to only speaking the German we know - no English!):
- History City Center (we did that today... a scavenger hunt around the historic district, all in German!)
- Ikea (we have to approach people and ask them about furniture or something)
-Kreuzberg
- Walking tour of Friedrichshain/Kreuzberg
-Eating at a German Restaurant
- Breakfast - absolutely no English - at my teacher's house after the final

History:
- German Historical Museum
- German Russian War Museum

Cinema:
He didn't go into too many specifics, but I know we'll be going to a museum (probably the Film Museum at Potsdamer Platz) and going to a cinema.

Totalitarian:
- The German Resistance Memorial Center - where my professor works!
- The Topography of Terror Memorial Center - if you haven't heard of this, go check out the website. It's insanely cool! I've been wanting to go since I heard about it a few months ago :)

I think most of those websites have an English version, if you don't speak German. I'm so excited for all of these excursions. Most of them are places that I wanted to go regardless, and so it's kind of nice that now I don't have an excuse for not going.

So yeah, that's my school work. A whole lot more work than I had anticipated, but I'll take a tip from Tim Gunn and make it work :)

Discovering Things I Already Knew. But Had Forgotten.

2010-09-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

The day after the walking tour (29/8), I slept in. It was delightful. Since I'd gotten here I had only slept a few hours a night - probably no more than 7 hours. And there was so much stuff going on. After only sleeping 2 hours the night before, I ended up crashing around 11, and didn't wake up again until 1:30. It was glorious. Technically, I did wake up at 11:30, when my slew of alarm clock went off.... but after half an hour of snoozing, I just decided to sleep for the rest of the day. Someone rang my doorbell at 1:30, and I decided that maybe I should get up and do something. I didn't answer the door though because I spent about 5 minutes lying in bed debating what my next move would be, so I assumed the person had left by the time decided to get up.

I lulled around for a bit, watching some German MTV (which is fabulous), making breakfast, and showering. Pretty boring. I could feel that I was likely going to get really depressed if I continued to do nothing and see no one. I was still emotionally exhausted from the day before, and I knew that if I let myself dwell on it, I'd fall into a big depression spell, and I wasn't about to let that happen! So I called Mo, and we decided to go shopping. This was on Sunday. I wanted to get a better jacket for the weather, as my sweatshirt wasn't exactly working out with the rain, and some flat boots that would be good for the bipolar weather. Mo wanted a pillow, so she was down to join. The pillows that our apartments came with are awful. They are the flattest things ever. No matter how much you ball it up, you will wake up with absolutely no head elevation.

So we hopped on the S-bahn and went to Ikea. Closed. Then we went back to Friedrichstrasse. Everything was closed. Except for food. We took a little break at the Fish and Chips place at the station, which is currently my top choice for fish and chips in the city. Their tartar sauce is incredible! And it's only 3 euro for more food than you could ever finish. So delicious! Plus they have this cherry slushie thing. It tastes nothing like American cherry flavored things. I don't quite know how to describe it other than absolutely freaking amazing! After lunch (or I guess it would be dinner, since it was like 6) we just decided to head home. Neither of us were in the mood to go out and do anything, so that was a boring night.

The first day of classes was the next day, so I just chilled in my room for a bit. I headed over the hall for about an hour, but then came back to my room and did my usual day-before-the-first-day thing. I went through all my syllabi and made a list/calendar of all the reading and papers and midterms for the semester. Yes, I do this at the beginning of every new school quarter/semester. I'm a nerd haha.

I've got one more class to go to, and then I'll have been to all of them. So stay tuned... probably later tonight or tomorrow morning, I'll have a post about all my classes!

It's a Good Thing I've Got Walking Shoes. And an Umbrella.

2010-09-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

So after our disastrous night of trying to go to a club and taking about a thousand trains, we had to be up at 8 for a walking tour of the historical district at 9. I had been up all night dealing with the goddamn internet, and ended up only getting 2 hours of sleep. I was beyond exhausted. Tall and Curly were completely hungover, so the train ride there was pretty boring, and spent trying not to fall back asleep.

Curly didn't do the best job not falling asleep.

Neither did Tall, that's his arm resting on the seat.

We got to the Brandenburg Tor station and got suited up with our delightfully touristy headsets. Because, when traveling with a group of 50 other Americans, it's best to just make it as obvious as possible that you're tourists, and the best way to do that is with matching head sets! Fortunately, I had my iPod with me, so I used my own headphones, and looked slightly less touristy than the rest of the group. Though I suppose being in the group likely gave me away.

We headed up the stairs, and wouldn't you know it? Literally 200 yards away was the Brandenburg Tor! I thought we were going to have to walk a while to get there, but no. The train station is right underneath it! Dirk, our lovely tour guide, told us a whole bunch of information about the gate. Like how it was build in celebration of finally defeating/surviving Napoleon, but then Napoleon was the first to enter the city through it. All sorts of fun stuff like that.

I think for the rest of this post, it'll just be pictures. That's better than me trying to explain everything :)

The Brandenburg Tor

The back of the Tor.

The British Embassy

I honestly don't remember what this was. But in the

center of these buildings was a memorial to the

book burning that occurred. It's pretty moving. It's

a glass sheet, and underground is just a bunch of empty

bookshelves. It's intense.

The Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny.

Check this picture out on flickr to see

more details about the memorial

Close up of the statue

We took a break about an hour into the tour just on

the outskirts of museum island. That's the Cathedral

you've seen before, and to the left is an Art musuem

where I think I'm going this weekend :)

Tall and V being ridiculous. Her food confused

me. It was a kebab in a hot dog bun. But it still had the

stick in it. It look hard to eat. I had some of the meat

and it was delicious though!

This is where the Castle used to be. They had to tear

it down because they found asbestos, and now there's

a big debate about whether to rebuild it or not

That big, boring, brown building is where the Nazis

formerly had their headquarters. The architecture in

Berlin is all so fascinating because it really does reflect

different historical moments, and there are so many

different types of buildings. The Nazis had the most

boring architecture ever.

Goebbels former office

Hitler's former office is now a Peking duck restaurant, and a

children's playground.

This is the street where the final battle for Berlin

happened. Hitler's bunkers were all underground here.

His personal bunker now has a parking lot sitting

above it. Apparently, the German government did

this because they did not want a place for neo-Nazis to

meet and glorify Hitler. Kind of ruins it for us historians.

Our final stop was to check out a section of the wall.

So there you have it! My walking tour, all in pictures. It was positively exhausting. I highly recommend anyone interested in German/European history to do it though. I wish I had been better rested, because I feel like I would have felt a deeper impact from everything I was seeing. But that's ok, I've still got three and a half months left to go back and explore :)

On a related note, the weather in this town is insane! This whole tour took about two and a half hours. In that time it switched from cloudy and warm, to cloudy and cold, to sunny and cold, to raining, to sunny and raining, to just gloomy. It was nuts! You really do have to be prepared for any kind of weather here. Strangely enough though, I don't mind it so much. Unlike back in Santa Cruz, I really don't mind the rain here. Perhaps that's because I know that within about 10 minutes it won't be raining anymore. Or because the clouds are just absolutely stunning. And the move so quickly! When it starts to rain, you can look up and see that it's just one cloud, and if you move towards a blue part of the sky, you'll be out of it soon enough :)

Tours, History and a Memorial.

2010-08-31T05:20:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a photo intensive post, just to warn you!

On 27/8, we headed out early for a campus tour, followed by a boat tour of Berlin, followed by a stroll around the biggest Soviet memorial in Berlin. Twas a busy day. Fortunately, I stuck to my "only one drink" rule the night before, and so was not as exhausted as a few of my fellow compatriots. The campus tour was supposed to last from 9:30 - 12:00. We had to be at FU-BEST by 9 (for no reason whatsoever), and then we sat around waiting. The tour only took about an hour - it was raining and H, our tour guide, didn't want to drag us around town too much. The FU campus is spread out all over, and really doesn't have a central location, so an entire tour would be been awful in that weather.

This building used to be where the Nazi's carried out

all of there eugenics experiments. It's now part of the

Political Science department. Berlin has a belief in

recylcing their buildings, and not just knocking them

down to ignore the past. All of such buildings have

a plaque to remind people of the buildings former

and current purposes.

This is the best shot I could get of the library (which I already

have a picture of in an earlier post). It's crazy cool, and will be

awesome for studying in. It's all glass, so I imagine it sounds

incredible in there when it rains!

The mensa (cafeteria) at school actually has some relatively

good food. There's typical German bad-for-you food (which is

delicious), but they also have a lot of healthier food. This is

some yoghurt concoction with blueberries in it. Super delicious!

And it's all pretty cheap. I got a sandwich and the yogurt for about 2Euro!

After the mensa, we sat around for about 2 hours waiting to go on the boat tour. We were all so tired and bored, but it was really great getting to know some other people on the program. Finally, the masses started to move and we were on our way. Because our program is so large, they had rented out the boat for us, which was awesome! We went all over Berlin. I don't know where we started or where we ended, but I can tell you that it was along the Spree river, so you can look that up yourself if you're uber interested :) Here are a few pictures from that:

On the boat. And no, we didn't sing "I'm on a Boat."

None of us have learned the lyrics in German yet,

and we weren't allowed to order wine, so there was

no singing.

The rain started to get a little irritating, and we couldn't see around

everybody else's umbrella's, so we moved inside where it was warm :)

Mo and I took some cheesy "boat tour" pictures.

This picture makes my fingers look stubby :-p

When the tour was over, we walked down a gorgeous road, with trees arching over the top creating a beautiful green canopy (you're getting this much description because I didn't get a picture of it). Then, we arrived at the Soviet Memorial. While I was hoping my first trip to a memorial ground from a war I actually care about would be moving in some way, it's almost impossible to be moved or feel anything much when you are surrounded by 109 other people, and are trying to listen to one person on a microphone. Still, it was pretty incredible to look at. All of the granite used to build the monument was originally quarried by the Nazis, who were planning to use it for their victory monuments in Moscow. As Dirk, our ever so awesome director, put it, this was the Soviets "big F you to the Nazis."

One of the two framing pieces of the monument.

The view from in between the two framing pieces. It was

pretty breathtaking.

There is no other way to describe this sculpture than

badass. That it one epic man holding a child

and a sword.

Later that night, we headed to Kruezberg to check out the bar scene. We were unimpressed. 4 trains is about 3 trains too many to take, and everything was super crowded. Plus, I was in a horrible mood. All of a sudden the stress of moving to a new country, trying to deal with technology, and all of the crazy emotions just laid down upon, and I freaked out. Which I've already written about, so there's no need to go into further detail. I think it was good for me to have that freak out because it released so much pent up emotion, and now I'm having the best time :) Though I still have to deal with the stress of the internet....

If you want to check out more pictures, you can see my public album on facebook

The Tumultous Tale of Attempting to Acquire Internet.

2010-08-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

The morning after Karaoke (26/8), we had a hugely long meeting with all of us FU-BESTers. Dirk, the program director, is probably one of the coolest people ever. He's originally from Holland, then spent 25 years in the US, and now lives and works for FU as our program director. The meeting was boring, logistical stuff, and went from 9-4:30 with an hour long break for food. We did set up our laptops to use the campus internet, which rocks, and is how I was finally able to add pictures and videos to the blog, because my goddamn internet at home is too slow. And now onto the stress of setting up internet:

We got to the media markt and fortunately met a group of people who were also buying their surfsticks, so we just tagged along with them, and bought the right thing. Then, we headed downstairs and purchased the 30Euro package, which is supposed to be a month's worth of internet. According to other people, that is actually a by-bit charge, and it runs out in 2 days. More on that later. Once we got everything, Mo, V and I broke off from the group and started setting it up. It was in German. And once we'd installed it, it kept yelling at us about something, but it was in German, so we didn't understand. After about 2 hours of trying to set it up, we headed to the O2 store (the company who the sim card is from), they told us that since so many people had bought surfsticks that day, it would take a couple hours for the card to get registered. Finally, it was registered - at like midnight - and we could finish setting it up. I entered my code for the 30Euro purchase, and then waited until the next morning for authorization.

I was stoked to have internet, but it was painfully slow. But hey, better than nothing! Then I headed out for the day (campus tour day, 27/8). I came back around midnight hoping to talk to some people from back home, and the goddamn internet wasn't working. At this point, it had been such a crazy few days. I was jetlagged, somethings were really exciting, somethings were insanely stressful, and I was homesick. And now the goddamn internet wasn't working. I stayed up until 5:30 a.m. trying to get it to work, the whole time crying my eyes out. Turns out, for some reason, my 30Euro had already been used up. I had a 5 day free use thing, so I entered one of those codes, and got the internet back. I only have one more day left of those, so we'll see what happens the day after that. This is the toned down version because right now the internet isn't stressing me out (it's so fast on campus!), but let me tell you... getting internet is perhaps the single most stressful thing in the world. I think if it is a pay-by-bit system, I'll only use it at my apartment once a week, and the rest of the time I'll just use it at school. So if you want to skype with me or something, you should tell me when, and I'll try to be on campus or have it be on the day I'm using internet at home!

It's Hard to Get Home When You Don't Know Where You Live

2010-08-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

The following day (25/8) a group of us - Tall, Curly, Mo, J, Br, and BB - went to Alexanderplatz to get cell phones. I really didn't realize how incredibly stressful trying to get a cell phone (and especially internet, but that comes later) would be. I mean, think about it, it's stressful enough trying to make sure you're not getting screwed over on a phone plan in a country where you actually speak the language. Now try doing it somewhere where the person helping you only speaks broken English, and for some reason refuses to go into any details because apparently everyone in this country knows how prepaid phones work. Anyway, we managed to get our phones and headed to an internet cafe to use the internet to start them up. And of course, all the installation things were in German. Fortunately Br is pretty good at German and was able to figure it out. I just waited until he could show me how it worked, and it only took about 10 minutes (unlike the goddamn internet...)

After we were all set up, we strolled around Alexanderplatz, which is absolutely beautiful. It's where the cathedral is, as well as museum island (there are at least 30 museums on this little island in the middle of the city).

The cathedral at Alexanderplatz

Mo and I decided that we were exhausted from the long morning of stressful phone shopping, so we broke off from the group, who were going to check out a museum, and headed home. Here's where things get interesting. We had both just been following the group, but I thought I could get us home. Turns out I was completely wrong. We knew we had to take a train back to Freidrichstrasse, and that was easy - it was only one stop. But then we couldn't figure out what train to take from there. Neither of us had any idea what the name of our stop was. We knew we came in on an S-bahn, just not sure which one.

We got on one train, realized we didn't recognize the area, hopped off, went back to Freidrichstrasse, and hopped on one that sounded right. Turns out it was. But we didn't recognize the area, so we got off and headed back to Friedrichstrasse. So ensued a good hour and a half of trainhopping. Eventually, we were both getting cranky and irritated (we were still super jetlagged), so we found a train station with an info center, and managed to communicate via broken English and German that we needed to get home, knew we lived on Celciusstrasse, but had no idea what stop that was. The woman told us we wanted to head back to Freidrichstrasse (we'd been there at least 10 times that day changing trains), and take the S25 to Osdorferstrasse. We finally made it home! And when we got there, we realized the group of people we'd left earlier were on the exact same train. That was embarrassing. But now, both Mo and I are wicked good at navigating the S-bahn and U-bahn, so hopefully we won't get lost again!

Later that night, I was exhausted from the day and didn't feel like going out, but Tall and Curly came to my room and demanded that I come to Karaoke with them. So I did. And it was so much fun. I was so happy I went. I think it's going to be our new thing to do on Wednesday nights. The only issue is that the bar allows smoking inside, and all the workers were smoking, so when I got home my clothes just reeked of cigarettes... not sexy. The guy hosting the Karaoke was hilarious. He sang country music with a perfect country accent, and when he wasn't singing, sat behind his equipment smoking like a chimney. I don't think I ever saw him without either a cigarette or a microphone in his hand.

A Tour.

2010-08-30T03:30:00.000-07:00

So this is just a brief little video I made of my apartment. You should keep in mind that it’s mirrored since I took it using my webcam. Also, sorry about the squeakiness – apparently my microphone is wicked sensitive. And how quiet it is. It was late, I didn’t feel like talking too loudly (apparently the mic sensitivity doesn’t contribute anything when I’m talking quietly).

Oh and btw, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm giving everyone nicknames (Mo, Curly, Tall, L, B, etc - I've now established the nickname "Larry" but I don't think I'll refer to myself as that). If you see an LP, that's the same person as Mo.

(That's not a cute freezeframe...)

Butter Goes on a Diet, and Milk Comes From a Bag.

2010-08-29T04:59:00.000-07:00

Once we had settled into our individual apartments (I'm still working on getting a video of mine uploaded - probably by Tuesday), Mo and I decided to do a little bit of grocery shopping so that we wouldn't have to eat out all the time. I had no idea how intensely stressful grocery shopping could be. But, when you don't know the language, and you don't know what packaging looks like, it can be one hell of a task. We didn't even know where a market was! We just strolled down the street, and found one about half a mile away - since then, we've found one about the same distance, but much cheaper! The first thing we had to deal with was getting a shopping cart. Apparently, it costs 1 Euro to use a shopping cart, the logic of which I just don't understand. If it's a strategy to make more money, all it really does is detract people from wanting to use one, and therefore they buy less stuff. But, whatever, I figure it's best to just not ask questions.

When we finally figured out that we would have to carry all our groceries, we got to work going around the store. I tried to buy the cheapest of everything I bought - and was successful - but this particular store was a little pricey. We spent about 5 minutes trying to find the milk, and just could not find it. Finally, I saw a bag with a cow on it filled with liquid. Upon closer inspection, it did indeed read "Milch 1.8% Fett." Milk comes in a bag. It's one of the strangest things I've ever seen. But it's actually quite cool.

(picture coming soon!)

When looking for butter, we discovered that the word for margarine is sometimes translated to "diet butter." Which is possibly the most hilarious thing in the world. I didn't get a picture of that though, so you'll just have to take my word on that :) Towards the end of our trip to the market, we couldn't find eggs. Both Mo and I are huge fans of one eyed egyptians/eggy bread in the morning, so eggs were essential. Mo speaks enough German to ask the woman behind the meat counter if she spoke english, which she didn't... She started going on about something in German, and we just stood there feeling awkward and confused. Finally, someone who worked there who spoke English came up and showed us where the eggs were. He was incredibly sweet and incredibly German (blond, tall, jovial, and spoke great English). Checking out was pretty easy because in Germany certain things aren't considered rude, so it was ok when we only said "hallo," and "danke" to the cashier. Also, apparently you have to bring your own bags, or they charge you. So I had to buy a reusable bag, which is fine because I hate having a bunch of bags just lying around my apartment.

After the market, we hung out for a bit, made a little dinner, then joined about 25 other FU-BESTers to the bar. There is this tiny little dive bar a 4 minute walk away from our apartment complex, the literally only serves booze. No food at all (though after you've ordered enough drinks, they bring you little snacks). It was pretty fun. Ordering drinks is not as exciting as I was hoping. The drinking age here is 16, so none of us are ever going to get carded, so ordering a Sex on the Beach (my new favorite drink) is just the same as ordering a Coke. I don't think this bar was prepared for 25 Americans to show up since there were only about 4 people in there before we got there. But once they got over the initial shock, they were very nice. The next day, a group of us went on an epic quest to acquire cell phones... more on that adventure later.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Endless waiting.

2010-08-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

Once our fantastic cab driver dropped us off, we were at the FU-BEST program office (that’s the name of my program, by the way). We once again had to lug our luggage down stairs, but fortunately there were some of the teaching assistants around who helped us to put our bags in the basement – I didn’t even have to carry anything :) Then we went inside this house – it’s really the only way to describe the building – and stood around awkwardly, not sure of what to do. Finally, someone told us to give our passports to someone, then to wait for the next meeting to start. The meeting was super brief. We received a few really important cards – printer card, meal card, U-Bahn/S-Bahn ticket, and most importantly a card to get into about 30 museums for free!! I thought we had to buy this card ourselves, so I was beyond excited when they provided it for us!

After the meeting, we were told to go upstairs and get our picture taken, then pick up our passports, and then bring the printed picture to the director’s assistant, who would let us know if we had sent them too much or too little money (I was really hoping that I’d paid too much, but alas, I’d paid the right amount). So, we waited around for about half an hour, gave the photographer 5 Euros for the picture, and then continued to wait around. Eventually, I got my passport back, and was informed that since I’m a member of the EU, I didn’t need to get my picture taken (apparently the pictures were for visas) but that they couldn’t refund me the money because of some weird reasoning. I was not amused. I was all done at that point, and could go to my apartment if I so desired, but I decided to wait for Mo to get all her stuff done. While I was waiting, I met Tall and Curly (this is how Mo has been referring to them for the last few days because she can’t remember names). They’re pretty awesome, and rode with us to the apartments. While we were waiting around in the office/outside waiting for a taxi, we met a whole bunch of people. So far everyone seems really awesome. Everyone’s pretty laid back, and really excited to be here, which is delightful :)

The side of the FU-BEST house

Dim Lit Hostel

2010-08-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

When we arrived at St. Christopher’s Hostel, we almost walked straight passed it. The hostel has a bar attached to it, but we assumed that it was two separate buildings that were connected by a hallway. Fortunately, some nice people who were sitting outside of the bar told us that we were in the right place and to just go inside. We struggled with our bags, and finally made it to the check in area. Both Mo and I had two huge bags, as well as a heavy carry-on – plus I had my camera case to lug around. This is a critical part for later in the story. We checked in, and were a little confused at the fact that everyone working there was British. They were all very helpful and nice. However, according to the website our room was supposed to only cost 17 Euro each, but the total came to 47 Euro, which didn’t include the $10 deposit we had already made. At that point though, Mo and I just wanted to lay down, eat some food, let people back home know we’d arrived safe, drink a beer and go to sleep, so we paid the bill with no question. What we didn’t take into account was the tiny elevator.

Now, as I’ve said, both of us had two huge bags – mine both rolling duffels, hers regular suitcases – as well as relatively large and heavy carry-on bags. The elevator was about 3 feet by 2 ½ feet (this may be an exaggeration – but it was tiny!) So we decided that it would make sense if I went up first and then have Mo meet me at the room. She told me our room number was 14, and I saw no reason to disagree with this. Once I’d struggled to get my luggage in the elevator, I determined that I needed to go to the second floor (as per the check-in guys instructions) to get to room 14. When I got up there, I had to struggle with my bags up three stairs and through a door that simply refused to stay open. I held the card up to the door scanner, and waited for the light to turn green. It just blinked red. It was then that I realized the check-in guy had said room 16, and Mo had given me the wrong room number through no fault of her own, it was just a byproduct of our mutual exhaustion.

So, I had to get my bags back down to the elevator, wait about 10 minutes until it was free (this elevator liked to go straight passed your floor, even when it was empty). I finally found Mo and we managed to both get to our real room, and finally put down our luggage. Exclamations of “I fucking hate luggage!!” were disbursed into our conversations quite regularly for the next day or so, until we were finally able to move into our apartments. We went off to find the showers because quite frankly neither of us had showered in over a day, and the humidity combined with all the luggage lugging was not a combination for smell success. The shower was a complete fail though – for me at least, I think Mo was able to get her shower to actually work. In my shower, you had to push a button to turn the water on and, just like those annoying sinks, it only stayed on for about 13 seconds. And rapidly fluctuated between burning and freezing. I managed to shampoo my hair, and just gave up. I had no energy for trying to figure out this crazy contraption.

We then tried to get the internet to work in our room – since the guy had given us the log in code, and told us to just enter it in when prompted. He forgot to mention that the internet only works in the bar. So we headed down to the bar, sent a few emails, caught up on gossip, and decided we didn’t really want to have our laptops down in the bar area. We put them back in the room, and ordered a drink and some food. Mo got the most delicious currywurst I’ve ever had. It was huge! And the third cheapest thing on the menu… Absolutely delicious.

When we came back upstairs, we realized how incredibly creepy the hostel was. The lights were never turned on in the hallways, so it had this insanely eerie vibe about it.

This was the hallway in the morning. Yes, it was that dark

The next day however, our cab driver completely made up for the many misfortunes of the previous day.He was an absolute riot! He spoke English, thank God, and as he was driving us through Berlin (a much nicer area than the previous trip) he was telling us all these fun things about the buildings we were passing. “Back in the olden times there was a castle across from that cathedral,” “I grew up on the East side of the wall, and that regime was just stupid. It wasn’t even that evil, just a stupid system” – just a few of the great things he shared with us. He seemed genuinely interested in what we both were here to study, and had a pretty firm grasp of Berlin history which made me really happy. I’m so sad we didn’t get a picture with him though! Oh well, maybe one day we’ll see him again

Departures and Arrivals

2010-08-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

Arrive SFO at 2:00 p.m. August 22^nd, Depart SFO 5:00 p.m. August 22^nd. Don’t sleep. Arrive London-Heathrom 11:20 a.m. August 23^rd. Consume delicious English breakfast and cider. Depart London-Heathrow 3:20 p.m. August 23^rd. Sleep 2 hours. Arrive Berlin-Tegel 6:20 p.m. August 23^rd. Arrive at St. Christopher’s Hostel 7:30 p.m. Consume food and drink. Send emails. Finally sleep at 11:30 p.m. August 23^rd.

This is a very basic summary of my flight over to Berlin. Notice how there is very sleep involved? That’s because I didn’t sleep for about 30 hours, with time changes accounted for. It was quite possibly the most exhausting trip I’ve ever been on.

I met up with Mo in SFO, said good-bye to the parents (was confused that Muth didn’t cry, because she normally does at things like this), and made our way through security. It only look about 10-15 minutes to get through, and then the waiting game began. We had about 2 hours until our flight departed, so we sat at the gate, reading each other random German phrases from our respective phrase books (hers, something helpful like grocery items. Mine, the Dirty German book that awesome Isabelle got for me). A few minutes later, we heard these three people talk about classes, and one sounds exactly like the class both me and Lana are taking, so our ears perk up, and we finally ask if they are also going to study abroad in Berlin. They were, and that’s how we met L, B, and J! (I so hope someone gets that obscure history reference)

The first hour of the flight went by super quick. I read about 40 pages of Homo Faber, which was finally beginning to pick up… but then I did something stupid. I checked the time. Having realized that an hour had passed, I managed to convince myself that the rest of the flight would go by wicked fast. Why is it that the delusions we tell ourselves are always the hardest to face once their entire falsehood comes to light?

Three and a half hours into the flight, the lights turned off and people shut their windows. Darkness. No more reading. So, I turned to the TV and watched Invictus – which was incredible, both Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon were spectacular, though Matt Damon seemed to have a hard time sticking with a South African accent, and occasionally sounded British and/or Irish. The movie was made worse by the fact that the woman in front of me had leaned her seat back, however I could not lean my seat back for some unknown reason, so I had to scout down in order to see the screen. Alas, two and a half hours passed, and I could see the sunlight peaking out from the windows, though no one was opening them. I got irritated by this lack of light, and opened the window on the emergency exit. Being surrounded by people sleeping soundly, and not being able to sleep yourself is quite frustrating. Eventually, the lights came on and we were served breakfast. At that point, it was about 18 hours since I had slept, and I started to feel nauseas, so I skipped the airplane breakfast (and rightly so according to Mo). We made a rather shaky landing a little over an hour after that, and had finally arrived…. In London.

Our layover was only supposed to take 2 hours. And we were not prepared for having to take a bus to our terminal, or having to go through a very hot, sticky room to go through security again. We met up with B in security, but had no idea where L and J were. The three of us went to a pub and I ordered a real English breakfast. As Mo can attest to, I was thoroughly enjoying my meal. At one point I was so immersed in the delicious foods, I completely missed about half of the conversation. This was also the first time the three of us had legally ordered alcohol – which was thoroughly unexciting. I got a Blackthorne Cider because it was the cheapest drink by volume, and it was British. It was also one of the most delicious things I have ever had to drink!

Unfortunately, after our meal, we discovered that our flight was delayed, and that no matter where we went in the terminal, we would have to pay for internet. So we rushed to try and get all three of our parents/loved ones emailed before rushing off to our gate – our flight decided to arrive about three minutes after we discovered the 10 minute computer stations. On the flight from London to Berlin, I had probably been awake for about 26 hours, and so I was able to sleep. And by sleep I mean surreptitiously pass out for minutes at a time, while still being alert enough during moments of consciousness to assure my German neighbors that I would be able to move out of the way should they need to leave the aisle. At one point, I woke up and everyone had sandwiches. When I woke up again, all the sandwiches were gone. Perhaps the sandwiches were just a figment of my delirium.

We were able to find a cab at the airport, though he didn’t speak any English, so it was a rather awkward cab ride. We were driving through a pretty industrial part of Berlin, so there was nothing too exciting to look at. Though I do think that my favorite part of Berlin, so far, is the vast amounts of architectural styles. Every building has a different style, from a different era. Almost all the buildings are either disintegrating, being remodeled or are brand new and modern. It’s fascinating. As I learned from the cab driver the next morning, this is because the war ended for Berlin in 1989, and they are still trying to rebuild the city from then. However, the tale of the incredibly awesome cab driver will have to wait… Until next time…

Preparations for the Departure of the Journey

2010-08-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

I think one of my favorite things in the world is when I have a To Do list that seems utterly impossible to complete, and yet somehow I manage to find the time. I'm sort of feeling this way today, but at the same time, I feel like I haven't done enough. Allow me to explain, I set myself a pretty hefty To Do list for the day (call doctor, work for 3 hours, clean room, wash sheets, update computer, finish packing list) and I was able to finish the whole list! However, that last item - finish packing list - proved to only perpetuate that sense of needing to complete things. I now have a (hopefully) completed packing list of all the things I will need on the Journey, color-coded to indicate what's going on carry-on & what's being checked, as well as a list of things I still need to buy. I even started to pack some of the stuff. So I'm insanely happy to have finished everything else on my list, but since that list only led to another (and another), I don't feel as accomplished as I should. I've been wanting to pack for weeks.. but it's pretty silly to start packing that much in advance when you're planning on bringing almost your whole closet with you! So until tomorrow, or possible a few more days, I can just relish in the fact that I finished everything off of one of my many lists!

Ok, right now, I don't have the energy to flip this. But the list

contains some gems like: "blue lacy tank top" & "belt from

anthro dress." I'm probably the only person who can decipher

what any of this means

Page 2 of the packing list. This has more reasonable stuff on it, like

"passport & green card," "toothpaste," & "Address of hostel"

This picture is just adorable. Apparently Sean wants to come with me!

Impending Emotions to Expect on the Journey

2010-08-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

According to my program guide, there are four stages of culture shock: initial excitement, irritability & hostility, brighter outlook, and finally enjoyment of differences. Essentially, what I can expect is a cornucopia of crazy emotions, and finally I'll settle down and get comfortable... only to all to soon be sent off home, where I get to experience re-entry shock. Which is the reverse of culture shock. These aren't exactly things to get too excited about! But, then again, I would much rather be aware that these things were going to happen than be surprised about them.

During the 2nd stage of culture shock, I have all these lovely emotions to watch out for: "frustration, loneliness, homesickness, depression, irritability, and loss of appetite." Seemingly simple things, such as doing laundry or food shopping, can apparently entice so much stress that one finds themselves flung into the 2nd stage. If the culture shock is really severe, then I have uncontrollable crying fits, compulsive eating, and inability to work/study to expect. Now, this post is making it seem like I'm trying to find reasons to not want to go, which could not be further from the truth. With 7 days until I hop on my flight with my lovely travel companion, Lana, I'm going through phases of extreme excitement, and extreme anxiety. The point of this post, is to warn you (the lovely readers) that some of these blog posts will be erratic, emotional, and probably a little whiny. However, I think going through culture shock is going to be an integral part in making my whole experience in Berlin.

I'm just hoping that I'll be able to communicate with people from home enough to help my keep my head together. My main fear is that I will get stuck in the 2nd stage, and be completely unable to enjoy myself there. I'm going to try my hardest to not let that happen, but it might. I think if I can't find a way to pull myself out of that stage the whole journey will have been for naught. Fortunately, I already have a friend on the trip who I will feel comfortable talking to about this stuff, as well as another friend who is off gallivanting in Nepal (!) being a volunteer. So hopefully talking to those girls will help me keep my head focused. It'd better, because as I've already said, the food in Germany, not so healthy... I really can't afford to get into the compulsive eating stage for long!

Expectations for the Journey: 7, 8, & 10*

2010-08-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

With only 15 days until I board my plane, I thought it might be a good time to finish up my expectations for the Journey since I have been dreadful and neglecting this blog for the last month or so. To be honest, I haven't wanted to think about the trip. It's a terrifying prospect. I know I'm going to love it when I'm there, but currently, I'm freaking out! Anyway, moving onto the expectations!

7. Trying New Food
Now, I'm not exactly the most adventurous person when it comes to food. In fact, when I go out to eat, I only pick from about 6 different restaurants, and at each restaurants, there's only one or two things on the menu that I'll order. It's not that I don't want to venture into new flavors, I'm just a creature of habit, and when something tastes good and is cheap, I tend to stick with it! So, for the next four months, I'm resolving to be more adventurous when it comes to food. I'm going to try the local cuisine in every country I visit. I have it on relatively good authority that the food in Germany is awful, and that I won't even be able to find ingredients to make something tasty. This person obviously doesn't realize that my diet is essentially based around toast. And sandwiches. And Chinese take out. Also, food that is phallic in anyway will at the very least amuse me to no end, even if it tastes disgusting.

Anyway, here's a few pictures of the food I can look forward to:

See what I mean about phallic food being endlessly amusing?

Fortunately, I was raised on meat and potatoes because that's all

that appears when google-ing "German food." 6 pages of pictures

and not a single fruit or vegetable...

8. Shopping at Flea Markets

Almost every single book/article/blog/info packet I've read about Germany in the last six months has dedicated a fair amount of space to tell me all about the Flea Markets. Apparently, they are quite spectacular. Now, of course in December I'll have the Christmas Markets to go to (I don't have a choice, my Mum's making me). But, to hold me over until then, there are a bunch of flea markets going on all the time in Berlin. Spot Cool Stuff has a great list of the flea markets, as well as what type of things are sold there, and when the markets are. From what I can tell, the flea markets are open every weekend, typically from 9-4. None of this waiting for the first Saturday of the month, and having to get up at 7 in order to get 8 towns over for a flea market! I'm planning on buying a whole lot of jewelery and props for shoots. As well as taking a bunch of pictures! I'm probably going to have one suitcase just filled with things I've bought at the flea markets :)

If there's one thing I love in life, it's rifling through random crap,

and finding something spectacular :)

This one is right outside of a museum, so when I'm done buying

random crap, I can go check out a museum. Pretty much the best day

ever.

10. Taking More pictures than ever before :)

Originally, my plan was to start a 365 project on the day I leave for Berlin. But, I realize that I don't want to put too much pressure on myself to do that, seeing as I'm trying to cram so much traveling into 4 months, and keep forgetting that I actually have to do school work while I'm there! (For those of you not familiar with a 365 project, it's a project where you take a picture a day, and there can be limitations for it if you want them, i.e. a self portrait a day) So, I probably won't start that, but I do plan on taking so many pictures! I'm bringing my digital SLR, as well as my super old school film camera. I just bought an 8 GB memory card for my camera yesterday, and have another 7 GB in assorted memory, so hopefully I won't be in too short a supply of memory. The one thing I'm really concerned about is my battery. I've only got the one, and I don't know how available power supplies will be during my weekend trips. Hence the film camera! Which, now that I think about it, I should really get a new battery for too...

So that's it! Those are all my expectations. I'm sure when I get there I'll realize about a thousand things I didn't even realize I was expecting to happen. For now though, I've got 15 days to pack, freak out and say good-bye! Future posts will likely include pictures of me surrounded by clothes, looking sad and pathetic at the camera, as if pleading for someone to take the responsibility away from me :)

*I decided that the ninth expectation I'd written down was lame, and no longer relevant, so it doesn't exist. Not that I imagine anyone was really keeping track of the numbers.

In which stress is relieved and replaced anew

2010-07-29T20:15:00.000-07:00

Today, all the little things that were stressing me out are no longer worth the stress. A quick phone call to my doctor resolved the medical issues, and so those are no longer issues. And about 5 minutes ago, my wonderful, lovely, kickass Pops hooked it up and paid for the program. There's no turning back now!

No, literally... there's no turning back. No refunds after this point. Even if something dire came up and attempted to stop me from going, I think my guilt and my parents would force me onto the program regardless, due to the sheer amount of money we've poured into it. So, now that the logistical issues are no longer pressing down on my shoulders, the realization of the trip sets in.

When checking what seat I'll have on my flight, Virgin Atlantic thought I would appreciate a lovely countdown... 23 days and 22 hours until my flight leaves. I have so much to do. So much to get. I need memory cards for my camera (somehow I just don't think 9 GB of memory is going to be enough). I still need to get shoes. I need to earn money so I can actually travel. I need to figure things out with the new love interest. I need to start packing. Do I need a new suitcase? Can I afford those boots, or should I wait until Europe to go crazy on shoe shopping? Will people be upset if I come home with a suitcase full of shoes, and not of presents? I've never been away from home for more than 2 months, what the hell am I thinking going 9,000 miles away from home for 4 damn months?!

The realization is intimidating.

An Unexpected Plea from the Author

2010-07-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

So, I'm not usually one to ask for money from people (my parents excluded) but right now I'd really start to gather up some money for the trip! So instead of asking people to just hand over donations, I'm offering up some of my photos for sale :) You can click this link to see which photos are for sale, and then this one to fill out an order form, if you find one you really want! If you live in the area, I'll hand deliver it :) All prints will come signed by me.

Here's a few examples of the ones that are for sale:

"Infinite"

"San Francisco Sunset"

"Untitled"

There's lots more too! More conceptual ones, as well as more still life. I might add a few more to the set tonight or tomorrow.

Again, even thinking about ordering prints is appreciated! I have no misconceptions that my photography is truly payment worthy.

In which the author begins to freak out...

2010-07-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

...but only on occasion.

With 28 days to go until I land in Berlin, you would think I would be freaking out; asking myself questions like: Why don't I have any shoes that aren't heels or flip flops? Will I get frost bite if I go out in November with a tank top on? Where am I going to find a power adapter? Have I even paid for the program yet? Are classes cancelled when it snows? How am I going to cram so many countries into 4 short months, while still keeping up with school?

Really, all I'm thinking about is nothing. After 5 hellish weeks of commuting to summer school, I don't want to think about anything that has anything to do with responsibility. Being in class from 1-9 three days a week, and not getting home until around 10:30 every night was quite possibly the most exhausting experience of my life (ok, not quite, but it was close). I haven't had time to think about going to Germany, and now that I do, I don't want to. I know I should be excited, and I know that deep down somewhere I am, but thinking about it just leaves me feeling stressed out and irritable.

The main point of contention for me is the cost of the program. So far, I (meaning my dad) have spent about $1500 on the trip (plane ticket, suit case, backpacking backpack, etc) and in 6 days will have to pay slightly over $11,000 for the entire trip (housing, tuition, books, transportation pass, etc). When you really look at all I'm getting for this amount, it's actually quite a steal! But, getting together that much money all at once is terrifying. There's no option to defer some of the payment until later because I don't receive any financial aid. I wish I had saved my life savings to pay for this, instead of paying my own rent for 7 months.

The other thing that is freaking me out is a medical issue. Obviously I'm not going to go into details here, but I just don't want to pay all that money and then find out that I can't go because of a medical problem. I don't know what the refund policy is for the program, and that would just be the absolute worst.

So, for now, whenever I think about going to Germany I get a sinking feeling in my gut, and start to panic a bit. I know it will pass once all the bills have been paid and the doctor's appointments attended, but right now all thinking about Germany is doing is stressing me out.

Eexpectations for the Journey: 11 & 3/1

2010-06-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I promised an uplifting, chocolate filled post, so here it is!

11. Make a Real German Chocolate Cake
My friend just bought this cookbook, and I immediately stole it and scanned in about 20 recipes for desserts that I want to attempt to make (attempt being the operative word!). The other day, I was in a baking mood and decided not to make my usual Triple Chocolate Chip cookies because my mum was starting to get annoyed at how many cookies there always were in the house! So, I perused through my recipes and got so excited about making a German Chocolate Cake! It was everything I was craving at that moment - a challenge, chocolate and something German! Perfect! Except then I realized that the only chocolate I had was a year old brick of Dark Chocolate. Works fine chopped up in cookies, but not exactly what I wanted for my cake. And with $24 in my bank account, I didn't really want to go on an excursion to the store, and thus, expectation #11 came to light!

What better place to learn how to make a German chocolate cake than in Germany? The chocolate will probably be a lot cheaper there, and tastier than any I could find here. Of course, I also face the issue of not knowing anything about what my apartment will look like over there, or whether I'll even have the tools to make a cake! You know, like bowls and measuring spoons, and all that. The only thing I know my apartment comes with is a bed, a coffee maker, and an alarm clock. Could make for an interesting baking experience...

3/1. ADVENTURES!!
This one sounds much more exciting when you hear me say it, but I'm assuming that whoever is reading this has probably heard me exclaim "adventure!" when getting lost or dragging people around with me to do boring things (and if you haven't, you should come grocery shopping with me sometime, it's quite the adventure!) This expectation actually qualifies as expectation #1, which was "lots of traveling," so I'll just combine them!

I've been looking forward to writing about this expectation because it's actually forcing me to look up where I want to go, and when I can go! So far I know of a few, program sanctioned trips I'll be going on. Most of these are day trips, so I'll have the Saturday & Sunday of that weekend free for my own travel.

Sept 3rd - Program trip to Potsdam
Sept 10th & 17th - "France excursion" (this might be the group split up, so one goes on the 10th, then the other on the 17th) This is a 3-day trip!
Oct 1st - Guided tour of Bundeskanzleramt (Chancellor's Office)
Oct 15th - Oct 24th - This is our mid-semester break. Most of my time, if not all of it, will be spent in England visiting family I haven't seen in years :)
Oct 29th - Memorial Site KZ Sachsenhausen
Nov 5th - Memorial Site Hohenschönhausen (Stasi prison complex)

So these are all the trips/excursions/adventures that I know for sure I will be going on! On top of all of these I also want to go to Auschwitz in Poland, Amsterdam/Utrecht in Holland, possibly Greece for historical sites, Rome (to stir up commotion at the Vatican :-p), and Kiev in Ukraine. I realize that with only 4 months and a full school schedule (as well as rapidly diminishing funds) not all of these adventures will actually happen, but I don't really mind! As far as I'm concerned, everywhere I go in Europe will be an adventure!!

Parisian Sunset

Amsterdam

Greece

*Just based on these pictures I found, you'd better believe everywhere I travel I'll have my camera and tripod with me! And hopefully a lot of memory cards!

And Now for Something Completely Different...

2010-06-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

As I said in the first post, sometimes this blog won't be about anything having to do with Germany. Sometimes it will just be me rambling about nothing that holds any importance to anybody but me. This is one of those posts. You can go ahead and stop reading now, if you want. I won't hold it against you. Here's some pictures to look at while you're deciding whether to continue reading or not:

"The Strung Their Minutes like Pearls on an Hour String"

"Time is an Illusion"

Wasn't that nice? OK, for those of you who only have a vested interest in my Germany explorations, this is when you should close the window. Thanks for stopping by :)

For those of you brave enough to stick around, thanks! I appreciate it, though these are really only the incessant ramblings of a depressed woman who's had a rough week and perhaps a little too much red wine (why the "blackout" glass is always the only clean wine glass is a mystery to me). This week started where most do, with the end of the weekend. It was quite possibly one of the most emotional, frustrating, illuminating, and stressful weekends I've had in a while.

Without going into too many details (as doing such will likely only lead to even more drama), this past weekend I essentially lost some of my closest friends. Issues had been around for a while, but I was trying to work through them to regain our former relationship, or at least some semblance of what it once was. However, because of a mistake that I made a few weeks ago, apparently I had no say in the matter and several people chose to completely cut of relations without even talking to me about it. I'm not placing the blame on anyone; everyone involved made mistakes (some worse than others), and so we are all to blame. However, while I try to keep our mutual friends unbiased, it appears as though some are choosing sides. Feeling as though you are losing your entire system of friends over something you cannot control, and without anybody talking to you about it, is quite possibly one of the worst feelings I've ever felt. Possibly only made worse by the fact that this isn't the first time it has happened to me.

On top of this, I also started summer school this week. I have class from 1 p.m - 9 p.m. I commute, so I have to leave the house by 11, to avoid traffic, and typically don't get home until 10/10:30. It's exhausting. I found myself wondering how I was ever going to make it into the workforce when I can barely handle 8 hour school days. Then I realized that once I have a job, I won't just be passively sitting in a seat for 3 1/2 hours at a time (my professor literally told us to stop taking notes, and just absorb the material today). Also, most nights, I will probably be home by 7, not 10. I'm so glad that summer school is only 3 days a week, and only lasts 5 weeks. Combined with the stress of the weekend, currently, if I'm not in class or in my car, I'm sleeping. I've been getting 10-13 hours of sleep a night for the past few days, which is always a sure sign that I'm stressed, or depressed, or some wicked combination of the two.

I've also come to the horrible conclusion that I am still not completely over my ex. We have been broken up for longer then we were together, but some part of me just cannot let go. A lot of my behavior over this last year (including the aforementioned mistake) has been a result of this. Now that I've finally realized this, I can start working to fix my behavior. It will be tough, and I'm going to need people to help keep me in check (you know who you are), but hopefully I'll be able to finally move on from him.

And so there you have it. A lovely post about my awful emotions. This has been fairly simplified to protect the innocent (and guilty), but for the most part these are the three main things on my mind. I wish this was an exciting post about expectations 11 and 3 (that's right, I thought of an 11th), but I'm too distracted, too tired, and my only friend from here is out of town, and so I need someone to listen to my ramblings because I can't begin to fix things until I've laid it all out. I promise my next post will be more upbeat, and there will be plenty of pictures and discussion about cake :)

P.s. This is not a cry for attention (OK, I guess it is a little... I just tend to express my emotions a little too much), don't worry, I'm fine, just a rough week. I'll be over it soon enough :)

A Painful Interuption to the Expectations That is Vitally Important to the Journey (Apparently...)

2010-06-19T03:05:00.000-07:00

Or: The Troublesome Tale of T-Rex Arms

One of the final steps in getting prepared to go abroad is getting a physical. Now really all your doctor has to do is check a box that says you're not crazy or sick or disabled, and you're good to go! Unless of course you're me. Now, I'm not crazy (at least not clinically), nor am I sick or disabled, but for some reason this has been the hardest requirement for me to complete. It all start 3 months ago when I decided to wait until I was done with school before I got my health clearance... afterall, it's not due until June 25th! Plenty of time! If 14 days is your idea of plenty of time.

My first appointment was set for last Friday, and it was just perfect, my brother was in town, we were going to go to the beach after; super quick and easy! Until we hit traffic on Highway 17. A typically 45-50 minute drive suddenly became a 2 hour drive (perhaps suddenly isn't the right word). So, there went that appointment... Spent sitting in the car, in scorching heat, with no A/C and no iPod. But remember, I still have 14 days at this point.

Fast forward to today... In light of lat week's excursion, I head down to Santa Cruz 3 hours before my appointment, just to be sure, after all, now I only have 7 days! And wouldn't you believe it! There was no traffic at all, in fact the whole drive took my 40 minutes! So I killed 2 hours with friends, catching up, etc, then headed to my appointment. This is where it starts getting painful. For some reason, the only record I have of my immunization records is on my high school transcript, which is likely completely inaccurate, but when traveling abroad for an extensive amount of time doctor's like to make sure you're all caught up on your shots! I apparently was not.

My doctor wouldn't sign my form until I agreed to get new shots, and so I caved in a got them (none are covered my insurance, I'd just like to add). And so I received, not one, not two, but three shots! All in one sitting, within a span of about 90 seconds. Now, this may not come as a shock to some of you... But I never get shots, and as much as my 12 piercings and 2 tattoos may fool you, I hate needles! I have an irrational fear that the needle will hit my bone and cause excruciating pain, so of course I asked if they could do the shots in a less bony part of my body (use your imagine here kids), but the nurse refused to. So I got 2 shots in my left arm, and 1 in my right. Each shot got progressively more painful... I could even feel a burn as the liquid was injected on the last one.

10 minutes later, after they'd established that the 3 substances they had injected in me weren't going to have a drastic effect, I was sent home. And let me tell you, there is nothing quite like driving on Highway 17 with T-Rex arms. Or that the pain is getting worse and I'm slowly becoming even more T-Rex like. but, for Germany, I suffer these pains :)

An accurate portrayal of what

I look like right now

Expectations for the Journey: 4 & 5

2010-06-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

4. Going to lots of Museums
I think the best thing about traveling anyway is checking out all the new museums! In my mind, museums are a lot like history classes and books - what you learn from one in your own country, will be drastically different from what you learn in one from a different country. As with history classes, the host country will always try to portray itself in the best light, so going to other countries will teach you about that countries own version of the story! It's like being a detective and having to match up people's stories and alibis to figure out the whole story! So, going to museums will be fascinating because of all the artifacts they'll have on display. It will be a breath of fresh air - because as much as I do love history and museums, the same stories and artifacts tend to get a little boring! I hear the museums in Berlin are just fantastic, and have so much history and substance to them. Truth be told, I would to get the chance to work in one of those museums... in fact it's on my list of things to apply for during my year off before grad school!

Judisches Museum, Berlin
This has always been the museum I've wanted to go to! It's the Jewish museum in Berlin, and has a permanent exhibition documenting two millennia of German Jewish History. Unlike some museums who keep the same artifacts on display and rarely change anything, the Judisches museum is active in adding new artifacts and changing the organization of the displays. They also have several exhibitions that are non-permanent. Right now one of their exhibitions is on the Jewish influence over the comic book world, which sounds so fascinating in the most nerdy fashion :)

Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin
It's pretty obvious to see why a history buff would want to go to the German history museum in Berlin! They have a permanent exhibition of your general historical stuff, as well as a few non-permanent exhibitions. Now, I realize I'm not exactly making this sound like the most amazing museum ever, but their website isn't too helpful or well done, so it's hard to talk it up... but trust me! It should be awesome!

Holocaust Memmorial, Berlin
Given my affinity for all things Holocaust, it's not a surprise that I want to go here! Though it's not technically a museum, it will still be a learning experience, and definitely not one I will want to pass up!

Easily the greatest thing about going to all of these museums is that, according to my program guide, I can buy a pass for 20 Euros that will get me into every museum! I'm not sure how long the pass is for (possibly a year!), but $35 dollars to get into every museum in the city! How could I possibly pass up this opportunity?

5. Visiting Auschwitz
I realize this is not something a "normal" person would necessarily be excited about, it's something they would potentially want to do, but not exactly something they would be excited about, since it is quite a morbid and depressing excursion. But I've spent the last year devoted to studying the Holocaust and really trying to understand why and how it was carried out. I've read more details about the extermination camps and firing squads than most people my age, and as a result, I've became slightly immune to the horrific stories. That's not to say that I don't feel any emotion when I read or hear a survivors story, but most of the time, the stories aren't surprising to me. It's not that I've heard it all before, it's that I know what they were doing to people in the camps, so hearing it from a survivor just reiterates the fact to me, and makes it more real.

So that's why I'm excited to go to Auschwitz... For me, it will be like putting a face to the name. I'll finally get to see the site that I've read so much about. And I know it will only make me more passionate about studying it. They also have free admission (perfect for a poor college student), and you can even take a seminar or visit a lecture about the extermination camp. For me, this is one of the most exciting things I'll be doing!

Expectations for the Journey: 2 & 6

2010-06-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything recently. It's "dead week" at school, and while I finished both of my papers for this week on Sunday, I've still been incredibly busy!! So now time for blogging... :( But now I am headed back home for the summer, and then it's off to Deutschland! So, here's a little outline of 2 of my more boring expectations for the Journey (more interesting expectations will come once I've done some more research on the topics)

2 - Horrible Weather
I suppose I should have realized early on that Germany was going to be gray and gloomy, but for some reason I always think places I'm traveling to are going to have the most amazing weather ever! This could be because my first travel abroad was from England to the North of France in the middle of the summer, and France is a whole lot nicer in the summer than England. My next big trip (a pretty huge trip!) was when I moved from England to California - again during the summer! So, from an early age I've been exposed to traveling to places with much better weather than I'm used to!

This is not the case for Germany. I'm currently completely adjusted to Santa Cruz weather, which for lack of a better word, is completely bi-polar. Even if the sun is blaring through your blinds, it's still not safe to assume it will be warm out, or even that it won't just start raining when you're walking back from class in your favorite flats that then get destroyed (not that I'm bitter or anything....). But Santa Cruz weather's one saving grace is that even after all the doom and gloom, the sun comes out for real this time, and everything is gorgeous, and warm. Hiking and going to the beach become the only things in the world you want to do, and you completely forget that you are now short a pair of shoes.

Here's a little excerpt from my program guide about the weather in Germany:

The weather in Germany is considerably more severe than in California. The summers are warm (humid to hot) and winters can be bitingly cold. The annual rainfall is about 20 inches. The first snowfall usually comes early in November,

with alternating snow and rain lasting through March. The weather is often

cloudy.

And a brief list of clothing items to bring:

Raincoat & umbrella
Warm coat or down jacket
Thermal underwear
Warm Pajamas

Now, I may be British, but when it comes to weather, I'm a California girl! I wouldn't even know where to find thermal underwear (or what the hell it looks like!) So, the weather in Berlin... that's probably going to be my biggest problem with the city! And on my list of 10 (still counting!) expectations, this is the only negative expectation...

According to several blogs out there,

this is what I can expect on an average day

6 - Becoming amazing at German
This one's sort of a no-brainer. At least you would think... When I tell people about the classes I'm taking in Berlin, I always omit my Experiential German class because it just seems so obvious that I would be learning the language of the host country! But apparently not. Several people have asked me "so, will you, like, take class in German?" To which I answer and adamant "No!!" I hardly no any German, and am not going on an immersion program. I would never be able to pass a class taught in German because the only thing I'd be able to understand the professor say is "Guten Tag!" when he begins the lecture. Other silly question I've recieved follow along the lines of "Wait, so you're not actually taking a class on German when you're there?" Of course I am! What would be the point in going to a foreign country for 4 months if you're not planning on picking up some of the dialect? So, to all these silly question out there: No, I do not speak German; Yes, I will be learning German upon arrival!

Now, I purchased a really cheap ($5!) German learning tape about a year ago, and while it's definitely not the best, and doesn't actually repeat the phrase in English, I've gotten surprisingly good at general phrases just from having them pop up on my iPod every now and again. I currently know how to say "Good morning," "Good afternoon," "Thank you," "Where is the bathroom, "One beer, please," "Ambulance," "Hospital," and "Cheers!"

As you can see, I've essentially got all of the phrases a 20 year old needs to know for traveling abroad :) I know a few more phrases, but it's early for me right now (10 a.m.) and my brain isn't quite functioning at full capacity. I plan on finding the time to learn a bunch more phrases before I go, but that will have to happen somewhere between taking two summer school classes, and working two jobs - possibly three!

I'm also hoping (hint, hint) that somebody will buy me this book before I go, so I can learn all of the fun German

An Introduction to the Expectations of the Journey

2010-05-30T17:29:00.000-07:00

So, as the sub-title says, this is all about a journey of expectations. And some of you maybe be wondering what these expectations are.... Well, I don't even know! I've got so many of them!! So I've decided that over the next few days/weeks before I leave I'll post a blog every day or so outlining some of my expectations, whether realistic or not. Hopefully all of my expectations will be met and exceeded, though I doubt they all will be. So, over the next few weeks, look forward to hearing all about the crappy weather, traveling, museums, adventures and food that I'm looking forward to in Germany :)

For now though, check out some awesome pictures of the University I'll be going to!

The Dome (taken from google images)

Another view of the Dome (from google images again)

How cool is the building?

I think it's a library or something

Inside one of the buildings! (from google images)

A Brief Intrusion to the Beginning*

2010-05-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

*The "Beginning" doesn't actually start until August 22nd. So expect lots of these ridiculous little titles :)

My Flickr page always amazes me. Sometimes I'll create an image that I am so proud of and love, but when I post it on flickr, I only get a few views and maybe a comment or two. And then sometimes I post something that I haven't worked that hard on, that I think doesn't look that great, but I post it anyway. And it gets over 100 views in the first 4 hours, and a billion comments (ok, more like 6-10)! It's amazing, and it frankly doesn't make much sense. I guess the Flickrverse has different taste than I do.

I'm rambling on about this because When I checked my stats at midnight last night, I'd had 3 views for the day. That's pretty pathetic. Less so when you take into account that it's set on Greenwich Mean Time, so the "day" had started at 5 p.m. but still... And then I wake up this morning to find I've got 490 views! In 10 hours! How is this even possible? Like I said the Flickrverse never ceases to amaze me....

Here's a link to my flickr page if you want to check out some of my photography. I've added some of my favorite shots to the rest of this post, for your viewing pleasure, of course!

"Patience"

"Preparing for the Hunt"

"Kelly"

A Continuing Introduction to the Beginning

2010-05-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was sent my course list for the classes I'll be taking next fall, and I must say, I could not be happier! They made us pick our top 12 courses on the application, which made me a little nervous.... I really didn't want to get stuck in my bottom 3 choices! Fortunately, I was assigned my top 3!! So next fall, I will be taking:

German Cinema Before 1945 - which should be fascinating because we'll be looking at some Nazi Propaganda films, and because it's in Berlin, the films will probably be way different than any you'd see in the US!
Modern German History in European Context: A Thematic Approach - which takes basic German history, but then contrasts it to the evolving political and social situations occurring in the rest of Europe... so again... should be fascinating!
The Human Condition and the Totalitarian Experience - This is the course that actually made me chose this specific program! I am so excited because it is one of those hybrid, psychohistory courses! So using psychological analysis and theory, we'll be looking at the motivations, pressures and reactions to totalitarian governments and the genocides that often accompany them.

I've already done a lot of work on the last course - I've taken a psych class and my history seminar on similar topics, but this course really seems to just encompass everything I'm interested in. Looking at the course description, it looks like the professor is basing his curriculum on Philip Zimbardo's incredible book "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil." This is easily one of my favorite books. For those of you who don't know, Zimbardo was the genius behind the Stanford Prison Experiments, and this book is essentially a full manuscript of exactly what happened in the experiment. He also discusses other studies, and historical events which psychological research has helped to explain. I highly recommend this book! It's pretty dense, but so worth it!

I suppose this has been one of my nerdier posts, but I am just so excited about the courses I got! They are right on key with what I'm interested in! Oh yeah, and besides these awesome classes, I'll also be taking Experiential German on Mondays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. - 12 p.m. So hopefully I'll get really good at German! I'll probably do a post later about how awful my German currently is, but for now, I am off to lunch!

Auf Wiedersehen! (That means goodbye to those of you who don't speak German, or watch Project Runway) :)

An Introduction to the Beginning

2010-05-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

This blog is meant to not only serve as a means of communication with friends and family while I am studying abroad in Germany this coming Fall, but also as a means for me to get back into writing. I used to be an avid writer - poetry, short stories, you name it, I've attempted to write it (yes, I've even tried to write a novel). Writing used to be the only way I knew how to express myself and deal with the depression I face on a daily basis; however, over time it seemed to only perpetuate the issue. And so, in an attempt to quell my depression, I lost my ability to express myself in any meaningful, spiritual or beautiful way through words. As a result, I've found solace through the lens of a camera.

I am simply trying to discover a way to combine my passion for photography with my comeback into the creative writing world. And what better opportunity to combine just these two things than by documenting my upcoming journey to Berlin! At some points, this could turn into a travel blog, or a photo blog, or simply a quick "hello!" to let everyone back home know that I'm still alive! Sometimes I'm going to come here to vent my frustration/anger/excitement/amusement, and other times I might muse to myself about the inner workings of my emotions. At times I'll talk like the 20 year old girl I am, and at others, I'll be speaking purely academically. You'll never know what to expect ;)

So now that I've begun to introduce you to me, here's some stuff you should know! I leave for Berlin on August 22nd, and will be there until December 13th (at least!). I've never been to Germany, nor do I speak any German! My interest in Germany stems from my passion for history, especially in studying the Holocaust. It is my dream to one day get a PhD in Psychohistory (a new collaborative field that uses psychoanalysis to help explain historical events). As for now, I am merely a dreamer with more goals than I know how to reach.

This was a very boring blog post, and I do apologize. The next ones will be much more interesting (I hope!) and less blasé!