Turns out there’s a LOT to see in Berlin. I will make the bold statement that it’s by far the most historical city I’ve ever been to, or hey, might ever end up visiting, since all fantasies of any ventures outside Iowa for a long time involve my ass on a beach, drink in hand/ the Vegas strip, drink in hand. My most tourist-y trip to date started bright and early at 6 a.m. on Friday morning, and here now, a timeline of my weekend:
6 a.m. Wake up. Throw together a bag of hopefully enough clothes and toiletries since someone stayed up far too late Skyping her boyfriend instead of packing the night before. Also, wolf down an orange and banana with peanut butter because if I’m going to spending four hours on a bus with strangers, you best believe my blood sugar needs to be at a semi-tolerable level.
6:50 a.m. Get on charter bus, pretty stoked I have a seat all to myself. I recognize a few of the other students from around campus. The director lady greets us all auf Deutsch and explains the coming events without using English. I understand her (this weekend was generally a huge Win in terms of my German comprehension. )
10:00 a.m. We stop at a rest stop, some students have started talking amongst themselves. I eavesdrop like nobody’s business, about piss myself realizing I can still understand most of what they’re saying in Spanish. Trilingualism, here I come. Some people introduce themselves to me, turns out I am on the bus with: Finnish, Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Colombian, Italian, and Russian students. Their reactions were mixed when they found out where I’m from. ”America.” “Ooooh!!” or “America.” ”Oh.”
11 a.m.- 2p.m. City tour by bus. Berlin is extremely clean and cosmopolitan… and yet still completely defined by the Wall. It’s a beautiful city, though it’s spread out and not up, and I don’t like those kind of cities. I would say it’s my third favorite city in Germany (Munich and Hamburg, duh.) There are literally hundreds of famous buildings– my brain was on severe overload from all the new information. I was never a big history buff, but I found most all of the information gathered on this trip really interesting.
3 p.m. Lunch at an Indian restaurant with three Russian students. Note to self: you like Indian food, eat more of it. Their English was not great, and obviously I haven’t brushed up on my Russian in a while, so we resorted to broken German and hand gestures and comfortable chewing silences.
8 p.m. My first (and I would in no way be offended if it were my last) opera. We went to Strauss’ Salome. I can appreciate having been, but I don’t find operatic singing nice on the ears at all. The lyrics were thankfully projected on a small screen above the stage so I at least got a good German lesson. From what I could understand, there’s this princess who sees and lusts after this hairy prophet guy who lives in the ground, but she can’t have him. Her father then has her do a striptease for him, and in return she can have whatever she wants. She wants the prophet guy’s body, after a lot of, “No! Anything but that!” he gives in. Well, kinda– turns out they’d had him decapitated, so really she only gets his bleeding head. She kisses the head because she thinks he’s still alive (and apparently delusional, it is clearly bleeding all over the stage and herself) to which her father orders her to be killed. The end scene is her being shot.
10 p.m. We go to a quiet bar. I have a beer. The other girls at my table order lemonade or orange juice. One of them remarks at how quickly I drink. I try to politely nod and say something about being thirsty. We go back to our hostel.
Saturday– 10 a.m. Go to the Jewish Museum. It’s actually pretty interesting, lots of artifacts from the Holocaust.
1 p.m. I set off in search of the Wichtendahl Gallery. Thankfully we were giving subway passes for the weekend and a map, so this is not as complicated as it otherwise could have been. I introduce myself to the woman at the desk, turns out she’s the Wichtendahl who opened it. She thinks it’s just the Bees Knees that I came and we share a name, so we chat a bit and exchange contact info. For interested family members, I can fill you in on the details of this visit later.
3 p.m. I find myself at Germany’s largest mall. All of the sightseeing and museum-going had my brain a bit tired, so I had coffee crunch ice cream for lunch and went about window shopping. And then some real shopping; may God bless H&M. I bought two dresses, ideally I will buy 12 more before leaving (ok, at least two.) Fun fact for my at home audience: I love dresses. I love dressing up. Unfortunately now that I have more of them, I want to buy shoes and jewelry to go with. But mostly shoes.
8 p.m. We have a group dinner at an amazingly authentic Italian pizzeria and trattoria. The pizzas for one person are the size of at least a medium back in the States. They were fire-baked and everything. I went home afterward and was in bed by 10. Many of my counterparts went out and didn’t return til 7 a.m. I need sleep, I LOVE sleep. Also, if my friends at home aren’t around, I don’t particularly like drinking with strangers. Not to mention those precious Euros could be used to buy new shoes (see above.)
Sunday– noon to 5 p.m. Tour of the German parliament building. I was also uncharacteristically interested in this and learned lots o’ fun facts (my Facebook album has more info in the captions.) The rest of the afternoon was ours to do whatever. I went back to Checkpoint Charlie, which we’d seen on the city tour, and the wall. We arrived back in Luneburg around 9 p.m.
OVERALL, this trip was a roaring success. I’m really glad I did the group trip thing because the anxiety over getting on trains/ finding a hostel/ what to do where and when was essentially eliminated. There’s so much stuff to see, and I feel I was able to really do it all in a short amount of time. It was also by far the most intercultural experience I’ve had since coming here with all of our different nationalities and translating things for each other. Going off on my own was also a growing up experience but ultimately the most fun. This trip did make me miss my dad more than usual, not just all the WWII stuff, but the fact that I was very thirsty the whole time (he always seems to orchestrate a lot of water-buying when we first get someplace) and DMX’s “Back that Ass Up” came on my iPod during the bus ride home. It’s one of his favorite songs to dance and sing to in his office, as I’m sure it is for many of your fathers as well.
Um, yeah. It’s essentially a marzipan cookie, and the ends are dipped in dark chocolate. Germany will officially be the death of me. In my last three weeks, I have made a solemn vow to try every almond-flavored thing I can get my hands on– no easy task since the bakery cases are filled to the brim. On my radar is a Spanish almond cake, though it appears to only be sold in five Euro slabs as big as my torso and well, if I’d like to keep said torso approximately that size, I should not be eating sheets of cake. (Let’s be honest, people– that cake’s gonna mysteriously make it’s way to my WG by next week.)
