What? Its over?

AHHHHH! I left Berlin this morning. I still don't believe that I did. I had to say goodbye to Felix and Charlotte a day before I left because they went to their grandparent's house. I teared up when we were waving to them as their train left. I can not believe 6 weeks are over. I feel so strange because part of me feels like I have been there for a really long time but the other half of me can not seem to grasp what I did. All the time seems to blend together. I know I have done so much everyday but I feel like all of it molded into one big blur. Of course I remember so much and there is so much I will miss but I am just not really able to grasp that my time there is over.

This morning, Kathleen and I got up really early and caught our train to Munich. I had to say a sad farwell to my apartment at 5:45 this morning. Dropping off the keys into my neighbor's mailbox (because the parents left to meet their kids) was so sad. There was no way back in after that. Plus it was raining which made me feel even more depressed.

But it was interesting dragging all of our luggage onto the train. Interesting isn't really the correct word...difficult and exhausting described it better. We have a decent amount of stuff and so did everyone else on the train so it was a kind of race to get your stuff on and into a holding shelf as fast possible. We also had to kick an american lady out of our seats which she was not too happy about at first. But just as she started to cause a scene she suddenly became really nice and asked us about our trip...really strange.

But now Kathleen and I are in our Hostel...and it is still down pouring. We plan to spend the day in Munich tomorrow seeing things. Tonight there is a bar crawl we might try to join. And then Monday we are hoping to go possibly to Neuschwanstein. I have already been there but Kathleen has not and we found a program that will take you hiking up the mountain next to it, biking around the old area, into the castle, for a swim in a lake and this crazy slide thing down the side of the mountain. Its a little pricey so were still debating but it would be really fun if we do. So we will see.

Other than that I am waiting for my parents to get here!!! They come in THREE days! I cannot wait to see them. We will have three more days here and then its to ITALY! I literally cannot wait to sit in the beautiful village of Pozzilli! It is so beautiful there and I love being with all of the family.

I am so sad the first six weeks are over and Berlin in a place I will never forget. I will miss my wonderful German family of course, flowers billowing out of balconies, milchkaffee, little dogs everywhere, the world's cutest babies, the man that sits everyday between the S and U bahn at Potsdammer Platz always painting a new picture, my class, random stone streets, everyone on bicycles with baskets (including those in business suits), Milka, and most of all the language. I will miss the cute little kids that get on the S-bahn and speak german together. I know all I will want to do when I get home is speak German and I cant! I think that will be the most frusterating thing.

But I cannot wait for Italy! I will try to update when I can but I am doubtful there will be much internet when we get to Italy. I hope all is well back home and have a safe flight mom dad and Jeffrey! I cant wait to see you guys!!!!

Ach So!

Guten tag alle. It has been a little while again since I have written but I feel like it is time to update you on my trip.

First off, one of the most interesting things I’ve been experiencing is watching Charlotte, age 11, deal with what she feels is a tragedy…Michael Jackson’s death. This little girl began researching Michael Jackson’s life and trying to fully understand all of the things he went through. She has fallen in love with his story and is personally and internally struggling to deal with his death. It is the craziest thing to watch because she truly and passionately feels effected by his death.

Every day and every night she talks about him. She has explained to me that before his death she only saw him as a strange person but now, talking about him actually brings her to tears. I have watched her cry when she talks about all of the wonderful music and other great things that he did during his life. It is so interesting to me because she is so small yet feels so much for someone she does not know. How is it possible that an 11 year old can understand more about people, life, and emotion then most adults I know? When asked what famous person you would want to have tea with dead or alive, I am sure there are people who would now choose Michael Jackson. I would say I would like to be in the room in which Charlotte meets him because her questions would undoubtedly venture further and deeper into his soul and mind then I could conjure myself. She is such a small person with such a big heart. It is astounding to watch.

Anyways, besides Charlotte’s new obsession with Michael, things have continued to be great here. I went to another school play of Little Red Riding Hood in which Charlotte played the role of a bunny. It was cute and she did a good job.

I also went to my first opera! It was really interesting. I think it is true when people say that some people love it while others don’t because I thought it was incredible and two other people I was with hated it. It was all sung in German but they had the German words projected above the stage so I could read most of it. It was beautiful and cheap! We got a student discount so it was only 13 euros and we came as it was about to start so the usher just told us to sit right where we were which was like a row from the stage. We were so close that when the actors came out onto the walkway area, I could see one guy’s spit when he sang. Gross, I know, but that’s still how close we were. What I thought was interesting too, was that during the intermission many of the actors and extras came out and were hanging around with all the audience members. We got a picture with one but it came out really blurry.

Us with one of the actors...blurry though

After that we went out for the evening. It was a lot of fun. We went to a couple of bars and I saw my first prostitutes. Quit an interesting occupation they have and funny to watch. All in all it was a fun and eventful night.

This is one of my favorites because Ben is doing some sort of a ballet move, Anna...I'm not sure what that is, and Kathleen is losing it.

An early morning Doner...I know I've talked a lot about food...but I must explain this one. It is a turkish sandwhich and its similar to our Gyro but BETTER. It has lamb or chicken, tons of vegetables, amazing bread, and yummy sauce. The best part? They're almost always only 2 euros!

Hey Anna, you have Doner on your nose

Later that week, I took Charlotte to Sea Life, which is basically the exact same thing as sea world in America. But she loved it and they had this elevator that went up into a fish tank so you were surrounded by fish and she LOVED that. We got ice cream and a crepe. It was quite and expensive little trip but I wanted to spend a day with her so it was good.

We couldnt use a flash so sorry for the blur ahead of time

And last weekend we went to WEIMAR!!! Ohhhhh I loved it. It actually made me a little jealous that I didn’t choose a more Bavarian-esque place to study. Don’t get me wrong, I love Berlin, but there was just so much to look at in Weimar. It is one of the most incredible cities I have ever visited. It thrived with history from all of the arts. It was home to Schiller, Goethe, Wagner, Bach, and so on and so on. No city has ever had such famous artists like Weimar.

And the buildings are beautiful. They are absolutely picturesque. They have amazing schools there too for design or all fields. We went into Goethe’s house which was my absolute favorite because almost everything was left exactly the way Goethe left it hundreds of years ago with all of his things, furniture, and even the chair he died in sitting exactly as it was the day he died. I love that kind of history because you really feel like you stepped into their time for a minute. And the things inside were incredible.

We went to an international potatoes restaurant the first night which was really delicious. Then we ventured out and found a club with 70’s music upstairs and current downstairs. There were a lot of people there and everyone from my program went so that was fun. It is interesting to watch Germans dance…its different. They swing their arms a lot more and its funny.

MMMM Potato

70's/other things bar

The next day we did a bunch of tours and got a lot of free time. There is this huge area that used to the queens garden but is now a park type thing. It looks like something out of the Grimm Brother’s fairytales. There were meadows dotted with wild flowers, huge trees, rivers, and old ruins everywhere. A couple of us bought a book and laid on the grass and read for a little. I chose Wuthering Heights for 3 euros which I have already read, but I felt it was an appropriate book for the type of Romanesque setting we were in. Plus I love that book and now I have something to read on the trains in the mornings.

A ruin in the park where we read

Re-enacting Rapunzel

That night was the fourth of July and believe it or not we saw fireworks. They were having an American classics concert in the center of Weimar and we could see the fireworks from our hostel. (By the way, this hostel was different than the first one. It was still fine but not as nice as the first one we went to. They had a community bathroom and it felt more like a college dorm but fun nonetheless.) We all got beer and celebrated the fourth together in the hostel. When the fireworks went off we stuck out heads out the windows and sung the national anthem which made a German woman across the street quite mad…oh well. Then two random German kids joined us and celebrated the fourth with us.

Beautiful Weimar

Our room

Leaving the Hostel

Writing with feather pens in Schiller's house...PS if anyone wants to get me the best gift in the world it would be a feather pen haha. They are so much fun

The next day we went to Buchenwald, the concentration camp. Of course that was incredibly disturbing but really interesting to see. Our tour guide talked about how when Obama recently visited there he stayed more than three hours which was incredibly amazing to them because most “States Men” as they call them, stay only for a little to make the appearance. I must say it is quite nice to be loved for your president for once. Everywhere I go Germans always say, “Oh and American, ah OBAMA!!!! JAAA!!!”

You can't even grasp something so terrible happened in a place so beautiful

A Buchenwald memorial which is always heat at body temperature

Then on Tuesday, we (Kathleen, Anna, and I) went to another school to present about America. This was a Realschule which is a step below the Gymnasium. The kids in this school are in training to practice a trade. They wont go to a university unless they take night classes to graduate with the same degree as those kids in the Gymnasium. The school also was a lot more run down than Charlotte’s school. The teacher expressed that she wished they would get more money to help the school and that a lot of the kids in the school come from poorer families. She was such a sweet teacher though. She was like one of those teachers from the movies where they go into a school and change the lives of the kids that aren’t as privileged. She had the boys in the class meet us outside the school with flowers it was so nice.

The kids were very interested in our presentation and asked so many questions. They were definitely not as well behaved as Charlotte’s class who sat perfectly still and quiet but they were all characters. After the bell rang, the teacher said that those students who had a free period and wished to sit with us and ask us more questions could. We figured everyone would flee but at least half the class pulled up chairs and flung their hands into the air with questions. One girl sang for us and another kid beat boxed. It was so interesting and such a great experience.

Us and the kids

So, time is really running out. Kathleen is going around to different cities this weekend and Anna is going to visit her family but I decided to stay here for my last weekend. One reason being the limited amount of funds I have left and another being that I want one last weekend to really submerge myself tin German with my family. That is the main reason I came here and I want to absorb the most I can before I leave. Also, there are some other things I still want to do in Berlin before I go. I will be hopefully going out with a group of people from my class this weekend too so that will be fun. Part of me feels that I am ready to return to the US soon and definitely ready to see my family in Munich J but I know that as soon as it is over I am going to miss so many things from here. For example, the coffee. I am going to have to ask them to put foam on top of my coffee and make it extra strong. Before I came here I had trained myself to be a primarily tea girl because I think it is much healthier…buttttt that is no longer the case. I am addicted. There is nothing like a MilschKaffee and bakery good in the morning. Or a tafel of Milka! Small things like strawberry stands and fresh flowers everywhere, I will miss. But I so miss many things about the US and I think we are a fantastic country to live in as well.

Alright that is all for now. I miss you all!!! I hope everyone had a great 4^th of July and rach…..HAPPYYYYYYY BIRRRTTTHHHDAYYYYY (haha belated a little). I miss you!

Picture of my class

Me and Anna after school one day

A beautiful art gallery we went to for our last excursion

Playing the coolest game of chess ever...felt like Harry Potter

Part II

This past Wednesday we had another excursion day with our class. This time we went to a museum called “The Story of Berlin.” It was interesting and had all the history of the city including a huge section on the DDR of course.

After going through the museum though, they took us beneath the museum to one of the bomb bunkers that was built in case of an atomic bomb attack. It was never used but had crazy amounts of beds and these weird bathrooms. Actually, it was extremely creepy down there. I stopped behind the tour to take a picture or one area and my camera wouldn’t work so of course by the time I did get the picture everyone had moved on to a complete other section of the bunker and I was left alone. Let me tell you, I booked it. I looked up a realized there was silence surrounding me and everything was basically dark besides this blue light that lit the place a little. I don’t care whether or not the place was actually used… that place is the exact place where ghosts would love to haunt. So yes, I high tailed it through horror-film looking hallways until I found the group again.

This is the picture I stopped to take. Told you it was creepy

The bathrooms they would have used

Beds

And alas, there was an “I am embarrassed for my country” American on the tour. Yup. This woman, who just fed every American tourist stereotype, was ridiculous. Not only was she rather large wearing socks up to her mid-shin with sneakers, camera around her neck, and sweating as we stood there (it was not hot down there) but obnoxious. Immediately when the tour began, she’s waiving her hands in front of the tour guide’s face and challenging everything she said. When we stopped to look into a window of a room, the focal point of what the tour guide was talking about, she stood in the middle of the doorway and braced herself across it so no one could see into the room. Instead we just stared at her. I can’t even justly describe it. I had to laugh. She continued to interrupt the tour guide and point out things about the bunker that the tour guide was just like “actually no mam’ that is not how it happened…” You know when you watch a show or someone and you feel embarrassed for them? This was one of those times. After the tour, I looked at the kids in my group and they were all said, “and that is why Americans have a stereotype.” But the day was fun all in all.

We went to Schloss Charlottenburg on Friday, which was only like 20 minutes from my apartment. The castle is HUGE so we only toured the “old section” but that took like 2 hours in itself. Most of the upstairs of the castle was destroyed by bombs in WWII, which was really sad. They recreated a lot of it, which I always hate because I don’t feel like I’m looking at the actual thing anymore. But the parts that were preserved were really neat and the garden was beautiful. They wouldn’t allow photography inside so all I have are outside shots. Oh well.

Garden

Don't ask

This weekend was pretty crazy. First, the street I live on had its first Schroderstrasse day. All of the people on the street opened up their apartment building and had cakes, coffee, games, live music, wine, beer, and so on and so on. It was like a giant neighborhood party but in a city so it was even cooler. All of the apartments have courtyards in the middle of their buildings so they all had different things set-up inside. I have been walking by this alley everyday and I catching a glimpse of this really old building when I walked by. I have always been curious to go see it but I felt uncomfortable because it’s next to where people live so I finally got my chance this weekend! It was made in the early 1900’s and there are broken windows and stuff. People live in the building adjacent but almost a part of it. Other than that it is run down and so old I love it. It looks like it would have amazing history inside if someone let us go in. We did get to go into the creepy basement of another building though where a girl had made “art”. I don’t know how she worked down there alone because it was really scary. There was an old phone on the wall from 1904 that still had numbers for the police that dated back til then (Volkspolizei). It was cool.

The building to the right of the red brick church is mine

They do it in Germany too

Kids making massive bubbles

That is the old building. Not to frightening with kids out front but very OLD

Basement art. The sheet flew up and then dropped to the floor over and over again

Old telephone

Then, later in the evening, there was a bunch of bands that played. One was from Austrailia and I bought their sampler CD. Theyre really good. There was this 80 or so year old woman that popped her head out the window and started dancing to the music. She then came out on her balcony to dance too. It was so cute. I have a video Ill see if it lets me post it.

In between scary art basement and dancing granny, we ventured down to the main part of the city because they were celebrating Christopher Street day. It was a gay pride day and over half a million people flooded the streets. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen! There were ridiculous costumes and floats everywhere. Kathleen and I jumped right into the crowd and everyone was dancing and having a good time. I loved it. Ill post some pictures of it. I can’t even imagine what Oktoberfest is like.

At the end of the night, everyone from our apartment buildings sat in the court yard and they projected Mama Mia on the wall of the building. It was a really cute family evening. Germans love American music and all the moms (and Kathleen) were dancing and singing Abba like crazy. Perfect ending to the night.

Oh, also, before the parade, we ran into a group of street performers that were fun to watch. Ill post that video too. Keep watching til the end its when it gets good.

and another one

And this is just a cool door

Oh and I forgot one thing about Hamburg. During our tour, we started hearing people in the distance yelling the same thing again and again and eventually ran into a huge demonstration against the Iranian president. I thought it was interesting because I have never seen a huge protest and I had been following the situation on the news.

This is the end tail of the protest but it went for miles and police we everywhere