Schnitzel and Road Signs

I have finally been in Berlin for a month, and for the first time something is ending. Two things, really. We only have a week and a half left of our Sprachpraktikum. But the biggest thing on my calendar right now is that on Saturday I have to move out of my guest family's house. Technically they only have to host me until the 1st, which is Friday, but Marion told me last Sunday that I am welcome to stay till Saturday if I want, which would be great.

This weekend was another good one, of course. Friday we celebrated the fact that our friends Michael and Chris have a place to live next month! They now have a roof over their heads but that is about it. They're working on getting furniture, Internet and electricity this week. Hopefully soon we won't have to use our cell phones as flashlights when we visit! (However my phone has an actual flashlight built in, no camera but it has a flashlight, so it's not that bad.) On Saturday I saw "The King's Speech" with my host parents, dubbed over in German. I thought it was very good and I was extremely excited by the fact that I could follow it. And that we rode bikes to get to the theater--I love how easy it is to live without using a car!

Sunday I went to Mass again at the Catholic church that is just around the corner from my house--literally, a fifteen second walk. Pretty awesome.

Sankt-Otto Kirche, after the 11am Mass

Then in the afternoon we made schnitzel (pork, breaded and fried) and French fries! It's a very German meal, and quite good.

HaJo, Ella, Simon and I about to enjoy our Schnitzel und Pommes-Frites!

Yesterday and today were fairly relaxed days. I did a little walking, took care of some errands in Zehlendorf, photographed the sign below (what do you think, Monica?), made some brownies, and just enjoyed living in  house with a German family. This month is my resting time, my soaking in the culture from the ground up month, my break before I start trying to fill every possible minute with a museum, concert, etc. And it's been very eye-opening, in many little ways. I'll share those later, because they deserve a post of their own.

I certainly want to watch out for those children.
 I don't know what is wrong with them but it's frightening!

Double Dose of Culture

Since it's been almost a week since my last post, my first comments today will be about time. I think time is finally starting to go a little faster now. When I first arrived there was just some much going on that after a few days I felt as if I'd done so much that I must have been here for weeks. Now I really have been here for weeks. It still feels as though every day is at least five--ever day at dinner I think back on what I did in class, and it's hard to believe it was only that morning! But I think soon enough I'll be thankful for what feels like extra time.

A few brief notes about this last week: Saturday I helped Marion cook an Indian chicken dish for lunch, and it was delicious. Saturday night my friends found a place to hang out where the furniture is nailed to the ceiling, which was pretty cool. I wish I had a picture but I'll take one next time. On Monday I spent an hour or two walking through a park near my house and then just along the streets, because it's such a beautiful neighborhood and the weather was gorgeous (as soon as my visitors left the rainclouds disappeared, of course). Then Tuesday I celebrated the weather some more by going for a run in the afternoon. It felt great to get out, and per my host dad's instruction I ran along a nearby canal, which had a great path and more nature than running through the streets.

I know I've already talked about some of our cultural excursions, but to explain a little more, every week during our language course we take one day off from class and have a [mandatory] field trip. I find it a wonderful break from the exhaustion that four hours of language class can bring. This week was a special week, because not only did we go to a museum on Wednesday but we also went to an opera tonight!

We visited the Gemäldegalerie yesterday, which is an art museum very close to Potsdamer Platz. I really enjoyed it, especially because we were led by someone who knew what they were talking about (a program professor for my group). After the art museum and lunch Emma and I went out to visit the East Side Galerie. The East Side Galerie is a section of the wall, 1.3 km long, that is still intact from DDR-days, with paintings (some haunting, some hopeful) all done by professional artists.

An example of one section

Emma and I in front of one of my favorite sections

The opera tonight was not quite as good as I hoped it would be. The singers were extremely talented and the orchestra sounded beautiful, but I didn't find the acting very emotional and it was just a little too modern for my taste. The scenery and lighting designs were making a lot of aesthetic and avant-garde statements and I realize that appeals to some people but it just wasn't quite my cup of tea. I definitely want to go back for a more traditional opera because the theater is impressive.

One last thing: don't forget, if you'd like to see more pictures, you can find the online album here! Bis später, tschüs!

What's Irish and stays out all night?

Not me, but even though St. Patrick's Day isn't a holiday here I managed to celebrate!

Biggest good news/sad news: My visitors all arrived when they were supposed to (Jon and Kyle on Sunday, Joel on Tuesday night). Sad news, they left this morning. They are currently spending the weekend exploring Dublin. But we had an amazing time this week. They stayed very busy, and especially the first three days Jon, Kyle and I did a ton of walking which left us all exhausted at the end of the day. I still had class every day this week, but they found things to do in the mornings and we'd meet up in the afternoon.

Jon and I in front of Brandenburger Tor on Sunday

A quick list of the highlights of what Jon and Kyle saw:  Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, Tiergarten park, the Victory Column, Berliner Dom, Alexanderplatz, Potsdamer Platz,Charlottenburg Schloss (a castle in Berlin), the Olympic Stadium from the 1936 Games, the Deutsches Technisches Museum (Jon and Kyle couldn't stop raving about the planes and trains and more), the Gemäldegalerie, the Gedankstätte Berliner Mauer, the Holocaust Memorial and various bakeries and restaurants.Joel saw almost as much. Jon and Kyle also came over to my host family's house on Monday, and we made homemade mac'n'cheese and all ate together. It was quite an experience, because my host siblings don't know that much English and Jon and Kyle don't speak any German so we had various conversations in each language. I really enjoyed having everyone together.


In addition we all took an afternoon and evening and visited the city of Potsdam on Wednesday! It's only about a 30 minute train ride from where I live and go to school. I was worried about the success of the day when we first arrived, because we had trouble figuring out the right tram and tram stop to get to the castle we were looking for. But it all worked out in the end, and I want to thank Jon, Joel and Kyle for bearing with me when I was starting to worry the day would be a failure. We found Schloss San Souci and took a tour with audio guides, and it was pretty cool! It was only Friedrich the Great's summer home so it isn't quite as grand as Versailles, but it was still very impressive and elaborate. I would have loved to know what it looked like when it was occupied.

TRUMPETS TOGETHER! In front of San Souci Castle

That is the Neues Palais in the background, another castle on the same grounds

Finally, after a little walking around we chose a Bavarian restaurant (there was no shortage of options!) and enjoyed some authentic German food and drink. Despite the cold and rainy weather it was a wonderful day.

The boys (Jon, Kyle and Joel l2r)

and me in Potsdam

As for St. Patrick's Day: Many of the students in our program wanted to get together for some fun in the evening, so we did just that. We came and went in various groups. I ended up eating dinner on St. Patty's Day at a Mexican restaurant with Jon, Joel Kyle and Emma, and it was delicious. We were going to check out another Mexican restaurant-turned-Irish-pub-for-the-day but it was completely overflowing with Americans, so we found a quieter bar down the street and just hung out.

P.S.: The answer to the title: Patio furniture! Credit to my mom there, it's her joke, but my friends here really appreciate puns, and I have never gotten more laughter from that joke than I did yesterday. Score.

Pictures (Bilder)

Quick technical update: I decided that a Picasa web album would be a good way to share pictures with you as my trip progress. Some might appear on Facebook so if you know me there too I apologize for doubles. But I want a way to share pictures that is easily tied to this blog, and so thanks to the mighty Google I have that in Picasa!

You can find the album here. Please enjoy!

Now a little bit about this past week...our cultural trip was a museum visit this week. We visited the Deutsche Historiche Museum on Wednesday. It was fascinating, but also almost overwhelming because there was so much information inside! Here's one interesting picture for you: the coin on the left is a mark from after the financial reformation in 1923 following the German hyperinflation. All the notes piled up on the right are worth, together, less than that single coin. In that pile are notes worth a million, ten million, five hundred million marks and more (they even printed a one trillion  mark note).

That afternoon we walked from the museum to Alexanderplatz to find some lunch, and on our way we walked right by the famous Berliner Dom (Protestant Church). Here's one of my favorite pictures so far--all the Notre Dame students in front of the Berliner Dom.

AKA Domers in front of the Dom!

My first visitors arrive in about 12 hours (Jon and Kyle, another civil engineer) so I think another post will be appearing shortly!

Simon the Flag Expert

Yesterday at dinner I learned that my host brother Simon is a flag expert. He is 11, and he was in Austria all of last week on a ski trip with his class. Sounds pretty awesome, right? He got back Saturday morning so Saturday lunch I finally got to meet him. He's very friendly and polite to me, not very surprising my entire host family is awesome. He talked to me for a while about a comic, Asterix, and then today at dinner Ella (host sister, 8) and HaJo (dad) quizzed him on what the flags from all over the world look like, and it was astonishing. Apparently he watches enough football (/soccer) that he knew everyone from Cyprus to Paraguay to Ukraine and more.

So, the first weekend was a great one, over all. Friday I went to a Scandinavian disco with a few friends, and it was a lot of fun. Also a successful use of the night buses. Saturday I visited some sites in East Berlin with Mark and Maria, for a class project. We had to take pictures and then research the places we visited. It was a very interesting couple of hours. We visited Karl-Marx-Allee, a huge wide street that's full of big but now run-down buildings, and was the site of a bunch of riots in the DDR time (especially the 1950s). We also saw the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, which is a memorial of the Berlin Wall. You climb up about six flights of stairs and then you're on a viewing platform. This memorial is very close to where the border was (there are bricks inlaid showing the border through the middle of the whole city) and you look out to a rebuilt section of the wall. It was astonishing, and very eerie.

From the lookout platform

We also visited the Zionskirche, a beautiful church which was also the site of riots and demonstrations. It was a very interesting afternoon, because I really did feel like the part of the east that I saw a different feel than the west. Saturday night a group of us ventured to a new (to us) part of town, recommended to us by Emma's 18 year old host sister. Another success!

Sunday was a great day with my host family, although I should have done more homework! First I went to church with them, definitely a good move since there was champagne after the service. They promised me it wasn't like that every week, but this week was special because they were installing a new minister.

With my host parents, Marion and HaJo

All of us!

It was a really neat experience, I was able to follow the Bible readings the best because I knew the stories. The sermon was much more difficult, because not only was it a little long but any time my mind drifted a little it took a few extra minutes to figure out what was going on. But it was definitely good practice, and a fun time overall. Yesterday afternoon I cooked for my family; first up was brownies. Yummm. It was very difficult to cook in German, I realized (because not only do you need to know the words but also measurements are all metric!), but thankfully brownies are simple and they were a huge hit. Halfway through my host mom said, "So, I suppose you would usually put cream on these?" I said, "Well, you could, that's a good idea. Usually you put ice cream on them." Then everyone's eyes lit up and my mom said, "Hey, we always have ice cream!" so we brought it out and it was, of course, a delicious addition.

In the afternoon we went for a little bike ride to the former southern border of West Berlin. There were big sections of the wall lined up in rows, and you could even kind of climb around on them. Wir haben viel Spaß gemacht (we had a lot of fun)!

Finally the weekend ended with pasta--I found another recipe in German that I thought looked good, because I wanted to cook something since my family invites me to dinner every night, which they don't have to do. My host mom helped, and even Ella, who's a picky eater, liked it. Success!

Alles ändert sich immer

For some reason this thought really stuck with me on Wednesday, when we had our first cultural excursion of our language practicum. "Alles ändert sich immer," said our tour guide as we walked along the streets in the old East Berlin, by the building where "Goodbye Lenin!" was filmed. Alles ändert sich immer means everything is always, continually changing, and on our tour and now just walking through the streets I realize more and more just how true that is.

On our (very cold!) tour we saw the "Scheunenviertel," an old section of former East Berlin by Rosa-Luxemberg-Platz. Three hundred years ago, when the ciyz was much smaller, it was the area where all the barns were, but today, because so many building have been destroyed by war, it is one of the few areas with buildings that date from the pre-war era.

The Volksbühne, or People's Stage, built in 1914

I found it fascinating to listen to the tour guide because I was constantly surprised by the age of the buildings we passed; some were older than I expected and some younger. That's already something I think is cool about this city: you can walk along a street and see an idyllic old home and it might be right next to a building that was destroyed in the war, which is next to another building that was torn out completely and renovated in one of the "Sanierung" sweeps of 60s or 70s, which are very different styles of architecture!

Also on Wednesday, after our culture program with the class, I took a quick stop at the iconic Brandenburger Tor with Emma, because we use the same train to get home and that day the Brandenburger Tor was on our route. It was pretty cool to see such a photographed site! I learned in class that the Tor was originally designed, before the splitting of the city, with the idea of conveying openness. Today most people only think of separation and two cities in one when they see it.

Emma and I in front of the Brandenburger Tor. Fun fact, the statue of the four horses is called the Quadriga.

And finally we have been placed into our groups following our placement exam on Tuesday. I did better than I expected on the text, always a nice surprise. Now I suppose it's time to see what the first weekend brings!