Firstly, sorry that it's been so long since my last post, and without any warning. As you can probably imagine, things got quite busy with the end of the Princeton in Munich program and my subsequent travel and adjustment to a new locale, but I've finally started to settle in here and can resume what is now more of a reminiscence than a chronicle.
After two weeks of class we had a long weekend on account of Pentecost - Monday was a national holiday. To take advantage of this we had the opportunity to travel to Berlin for three days, and as has happened again and again, Papa Princeton was able to help us out by paying for our hostel stay, meaning that we only had to pay for the cross-country ticket. We traveled there using the fastest train in Germany, the ICE, and crossed the entire country in only six hours. The ticket cost 160€ - that's about $225, but not bad for crossing the entire country. After all, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
Friday the tenth was the day of our first test in class. Despite having gotten to bed rather later than usual the night before, I was up at 5AM so that I would have enough time for everything before heading off to class, as we were leaving for Berlin in the afternoon and there were several chores (most notably laundry) that needed to be done before that. I had really tried to think ahead by trying to do laundry on Thursday morning, but was foiled by the fact that someone stole the detergent that I had been planning to share with a classmate. I had been warned that the laundry was quite complicated but didn't find the array of buttons, switches and lights TOO terribly bewildering. The only confusing thing was that the display would say something like "24" and one assumed that that was the time left in the wash cycle, when really it was the time left in that PART of the wash cycle. I never figured out how long the entire wash cycle was, I just knew it consisted of many parts and took more than an hour total. I tried to be as efficient with my time as possible and do other necessary things like make my breakfast while my laundry was running, which turned out to be less efficient than I hoped because of the confusion with cycle time remaining. I think someone must have opened the door on one of my loads before it was done the spin cycle because when I finally found it finished, my darks were soaking wet. Not sure how to activate only the spin cycle, I tossed them all in the (equally complicated) dryer regardless and set it for as long as I could figure out, about two hours. Unfortunately because of the thwarted spin cycle even this wasn't enough (when usually 45-60 minutes will suffice, even for jeans...) and I was forced to leave my laundry in the dryer when I left for class. This of course didn't help my anxiety level or test preparedness, and I was understandably nervous for the test because I had no idea what to expect. Sure enough I hadn't studied the right things and had a frightfully difficult time with the vocabulary (which is always the most difficult part for me even with my good memory, just because flashcards, which are my preferred method of vocabulary memorization, are so tedious), but still managed to come out of the test with a A- (barely, I assure you). This sounds quite good until you realize that the scale only goes down to a B- (50% being a B=).
After class I called Hannes and tracked him and Mareike down in a nearby cafe where they had hidden to work on the Berlin schedule. We discussed the possibilities of my travel to and from Clausthal (for example, I wanted to avoid having to book a hostel in Munich the last night if at all possible, and wanted to make sure I didn't get into Clausthal too late) and decided on the best options for me, but he was much too busy to come with me to the Hauptbahnhof to help me buy my ticket. This made me quite nervous as I was sure I would mess something up, but he was confident in my ability and sent me off with a pat on the back and an encouraging smile. Sure enough I stumbled through the transaction and came away with a ticket to and from Clausthal-Zellerfeld as well as a railway discount card that would get me 25% off any ticket for the summer... but still managed to bungle it. I told the lady I would only be staying in Germany for two more months, so she made the discount card valid for two months... the 10th of June until the 9th of August. Unfortunately I'm not leaving Germany until the 21st of August... let's hope this doesn't mess anything up too badly... :P
Returning to the Wohnheim, I packed my carry-on suitcase for Berlin (and even then it wasn't nearly full) and still had plenty of time to catch up on some emails. This was an especially good day for me in this regard as I had received no less than THREE emails from good friends and was ecstatic to read them all several times over to soak in the news and familiar writing styles from home. It really made me miss people, and be thankful for the magic of the internet that lets us be so close, even when we are so far away. The last thing I did before heading off to meet the group was cook my supper of ravioli (pasta has become a common theme in my meals, as it is both easy and cheap).
Getting to the Hauptbahnhof went smoothly and we got there in plenty of time. The only snag came when we actually boarded the train and found that the block of seats that we had reserved were not marked as such by some technical glitch and many already had occupants which Professor Rankin was so kind as to take the responsibility to gently but firmly evict. I ended up with a window seat on the west side of the train, which had the mixed benefit of a beautiful view of the countryside with a permanent glare from the setting sun right in my eyes. I'm still glad I got the window, though. I spent some of the time reading The Case for Christ which I am reading with a couple of friends this summer, but didn't want to read too much since the other people reading the book are too busy to read it much, and we are trying to discuss it via a shared Google doc as we go. Fortunately my seatmate was a very nice acquaintance and we could spend most of the time talking and getting to know each other better (in particular, we spoke about long-distance relationships. He and his girlfriend have been together for over a year now and have attended different schools during the entire duration of the relationship, and I was most curious to hear how they coped with always being so far apart. Their strategy is frequent communication - every day, in fact - something that I'm frankly not capable of or willing to commit to, so we'll see how things work out for me. I'm not too worried :P). Since it was a six-hour train ride (six hours across the entire country! That's how long it takes to drive across MAINE!) and late, I also slept a bit, and so the time passed until our arrival in Berlin. The first thing I noticed about this city is the massiveness - even the central train station was three floors!! Fortunately the hostel was right in the center of town, so a mere one stop with the S-Bahn brought us to our final destination for the night. We had to walk along a canal to get to the hostel and the lights dancing on the water were quite pretty, though I was by this point very tired. We split up at the hostel into several groups - my roommates for the weekend were four girls from my spring German 102-5 class, Greta, Kathy, Olivia, and Claudia. I was quite happy with the arrangement and we traipsed off to bed as soon as possible - even though that meant dragging our luggage up five flights of stairs.
Thanks to my usual sleep schedule, I was up the next morning at 7 whether I liked it or not. I managed to snooze until 8, but still had a solid 90 minutes to get ready before we met for our first day's activities. We all bought our breakfast from a bakery in the train station - unfortunately the pastry I selected looked much better than it tasted, so I consoled myself with an ice cream cone from a shop that was for some reason open at 10AM. We started our day with a tour of the city center. The weather was nice and the buildings were pretty, so it was fairly enjoyable. Then we split up to go to one of several museum choices - I went with Hannes and a large contingent to visit the Deutsche Historische Museum, and couldn't have been happier. The museum had exhibit displays in both German and English which provided a fantastic summary of German history since the first centuries AD, and the artifacts themselves were naturally also fascinating. They had one of the original Gutenberg Bibles, a copy of Martin Luther's theses, several suits of armor for men and horses (one of my favorite aspects) and a wonderful array of artifacts pertaining to daily life in the Germany of the Middle Ages. This has always been the most fascinating time period to me for many reasons, so I was delighted to read more about it and would gladly have spent the entire day at the museum. As it was I was one of the last members of the group to emerge into the museum lobby, and then only reluctantly and after hurrying through the 15th-20th centuries. Perhaps most unfortunately, the exhibits after WWI were in a separate room that I didn't even get to look in, so I missed out completely on this perhaps most interesting period of German history. But we had far too much to do to stay in one museum all day, so we scurried off to meet the other members of the group. If I ever come back to Berlin I may return. Though I am by no means a fan of history in general, I really like the summary that a museum can give, and history museums are some of my favorite museums (behind science museums).
We met the rest of the group in an open-air market, where we ate lunch (I found a cheap pizzeria and was quite content). Most of the stalls sold handiwork, but there was also an area of people who had all kinds of antiques, mostly WWII-era. I made a mental note to come back here souvenir hunting, particularly for my WWII-buff father. After lunch we set off for another part of the city to do yet more exploring: this time we visited the Brandenburg Gate, the site of the former Berlin Wall, and other city-center historical sites. This part of our exploration ended at the Holocaust Memorial, one of the best-done memorials I have ever visited. It covers about the area of a small office building and the memorial consists entirely of cold, upright blocks of granite of gradually increasing height placed in an eerily exact grid on undulating cobblestone ground. It effectively conveyed the sense of being lost, identity-less, cut off and bewildered. Perhaps appropriately, just as we reached the memorial it began to rain. After exploring the above-ground part for awhile, those who wanted visited the information center located underneath. Overall the entire complex is very well done and sobering. The information center had a timeline of Hitler's genocidal rule, biographies on specific Jewish families from all over Europe and their stories of surviving (or not) the war, copies of postcards and letters sent from concentration camps and ghettos to the outside world, and one room where the death count of Jews from each country in Europe was estimated. The entire history of the event - that one man would set out to single-handedly wipe out an entire ethnic group from Europe and eventually the world - is so surreal that more than facts and staggering statistics, it is these individual artifacts of everyday life and people's impressions that are needed to bring home the reality of it all. I am even more curious now to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., to see the similarities and differences between the views of the two societies.
Once I finally emerged from the Information Center, I discovered that I was quite alone - the others had all left quite a while before and our instructions were to find supper before our next meeting point. This was a daunting task for someone of my small-town background and I texted Mareike for advice, but before receiving an answer I found a couple of the members of my group and we managed to scout out a reasonably-priced Chinese restaurant. I was really craving Asian food for some reason, and while what we found wasn't anything special, it was pretty good. The sauce was a little spicy for my tastes (yes, but even medium salsa is a little spicy for my tastes, I'm so completely not spice-tolerant) so to get rid of the burning sensation in my mouth I just had to buy some ice cream ;) We met afterwards at Potsdamer Platz, which used to be the Times Square of Europe in the 20s and 30s, then was destroyed in the war, leveled and deemed "no-mans land" during the time of the Berlin Wall as it divided East and West Germany, and finally revitalized all at once in the 90s in an attempt to bring it back to its former glory. Everything seems a little artificial since all of the buildings are less than 20 years old, but it's a regular tourist hotspot and there's tons to see and buy. Next to the Berlin Wall memorial was a man dressed as a member of the DDR State Security (Stasi) advertising the opportunity to get your passport stamped, as you would have had to to cross from West to East Germany. It was necessary to get 7 different stamps! One from each of the four sectors (American, British, French, and Soviet), as well as one for East Germany and West Germany in general, and the stamp from the particular crossing point you were using. I would have done it, but 10 Euros seemed a little steep for a piece of paper with stamps on it... Once we had all gathered we went over to one of the buildings on Potsdamer Platz and took a remarkably fast elevator up to the 93-meter-high observation deck from which to observe the city (aerial views of major cities seems to be a theme this summer...). Berlin isn't as pretty or as green as Munich, but that's rather to be expected. The pictures were cool anyway, but the wind was blowing strong and we soon got cold on the exposed observation deck. Professor Rankin escorted a couple members of the group back to the hostel, and we saw another group of PiMers on the way (whom I unashamedly stalked ;]). By the time we got back, I was exhausted from being on my feet all day. The grad students were boldly (and probably foolishly) organizing an outing to a bar/club later that night, but my being tired gave me an excuse to skip out on what would undoubtedly not have been a very enjoyable evening. From the stories I heard later, it wasn't very enjoyable for anyone else, either. Let's just say that American college students have a very difficult time engaging in normal, healthy, mediated drinking behavior. Case in point: certain members of the group pre-gamed (drank excessive amounts of alcohol beforehand) the bar. *facepalm* Basically, I didn't miss much.
The next morning was Sunday, and Professor Rankin (unsurprisingly) knew of a church in Berlin that he wanted to attend. Not having been to church in a couple of weeks (the previous Sunday we traveled to Neuschwanstein and the one before that we were flying to/arriving in Germany) I was more than willing to go, since not much else would be happening on a Sunday morning and the last thing I wanted to do was bum around the hostel the entire morning. What surprised me were the other people who also wanted to attend: nearly all of my roommates as well as several other group members. I wanted to make sure I had a good breakfast beforehand as I supposed that the service might go well into the noon hours and I didn't want to be distracted by a growling stomach. Fortunately the hostel offered a breakfast buffet for 5.50 Euros - unfortunately it wasn't very good. I ordered the buffet and even threw in some eggs for extra protein, reasoning that I could eat 7 Euros worth of food, but none of it was all that notable. The eggs looked good but had too much pepper for me, and even after filling up on several pieces of toast with jam and bowls of yogurt with musli I didn't really feel like I had gotten what I paid for. We met at 9 to travel to church and after navigating a combination of S-Bahns and U-Bahns we finally arrived at the church, "Lukas-Gemeinde". It was a non-denominational evangelical church much like Calvary Chapel or Westerly Road (the churches I normally attend while home and at school, respectively), belonging to the association of churches in Germany called "free churches" (which I am assuming has many the same connotations as non-denominational). The dress was relatively casual although most people wore button-down shirts or skirts/dresses, so we fit in perfectly. Professor Rankin even met one of his college roommates at the church, and from what I gathered he knew that his friend attended this church but didn't know whether he would be around this particular Sunday. The service was also much like what I was accustomed to, and I even recognized a couple of the songs - namely, "Open the Eyes of my Heart, Lord", and "Holy, Holy, Holy". Singing along in German is SO much easier than in Russian!! Probably the alphabet thing has something to do with that ;) After a few worship songs one of the elders got up and made some announcements, including a baby dedication and prayer for a specialist doctor in the congregation who was being sent to Afghanistan to perform reconstructive surgery on wounded soldiers and civilians. Then the pastor came up and spoke on I Cor. 3:16-17, where it talks about us being the Temple of the Holy Spirit (due to it being Pentecost weekend). I understood about 70% of the sermon, which was entirely in German of course, but the combination of travel fatigue and my long day on Saturday worked against me and I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. Of course, following along while falling asleep is hard enough in one's mother tongue, forget a foreign language! As a result, I don't remember much about the pastor's point, but it was nice to be back in church anyway. (And I wasn't the only one who spent the whole time fighting sleep - Dan was on one side of me and Sheng on the other and I caught them both nodding off at one point or another.)
After church Professor Rankin, being the wonderfully generous man that he is, treated us all to lunch back at Potsdamer Platz. We went to an Italian restaurant called Vapiano's, where I ordered a Cesar salad that proved to be quite enough for me (especially after intentionally having stuffed myself at breakfast). I shared a slice of cheesecake with Claudia and Dan for dessert, but it was disappointingly bland. Afterwards I was planning to rejoin the main group who had gone to a street festival, but Professor Rankin's suggestion of visiting Gedänkniskirche (the famous ornate church which was destroyed by Allied bombs during the war and retained in its broken state as a memorial) sounded much more interesting and I decided to do that instead. It was quite a disappointment when we reached the site only to discover that the church is currently undergoing renovations (renovating a blown-up building... hmmm...) and the iconic jagged outline is obscured by the scaffolding and temporary structure they have erected around it for the purpose. Nonetheless it was interesting to see the information-memorial inside and the new church that was built beside it, and I bought a postcard with the destroyed church on it so I suppose that will have to suffice. Since we couldn't see much, the visit didn't take us long and we were soon ready to find the group once more for a last bit of guided-tour and museum-visiting. We walked to the nearest S-Bahn stop through the Tierpark, which means "animal park" but is really just the name for the largest park in Berlin. We did pass the zoo and I looked at admission prices, as we had Monday free and I was considering going to the zoo, but the 10-Euro admission price (even for students!) convinced me that my time would be much better spent seeing something else (however, when I later found out that the Berlin Zoo is one of the largest zoological gardens in the WORLD, I had second thoughts about my decision...). The Tierpark in general was nice, but nothing too special - not any prettier than Nymphenberg Park or English Garden in Munich.
We found the rest of the group near the famous East-to-West Germany crossing point, Checkpoint Charlie. (Now, it also happened to be right outside of a Starbucks with free Wi-Fi, which I promptly took advantage of with my iPod touch to check email. ;]) We saw the sign that says "You are now leaving the American Sector" in English, French, and Russian (why did it not need to say it in German? Was it just self-evident to them?) and were going to visit the Checkpoint Charlie Museum until we realized that it cost 6 Euros even for students. Professor Rankin and the grad students were quite upset about such blatant extortionism, since the museum was neither very large nor very good, in their opinion, so we contented ourselves with pictures of the guard booth and sign instead. Then it was time to split up into groups once again to visit museums based on interest - out of the options (Jewish Museum, some cathedrals, the Stasi Museum, and some other random art museums) the Stasi Museum sounded most interesting, but unfortunately it turned out to be little more than an exhibit while the actual museum was under construction. Nonetheless it was somewhat instructive, as far as the exhibits had English descriptions, and having watched the movie "Das Leben der Anderen" ("The Lives of Others") about the DDR, I had a little more background to the subject. The fact that the Stasi (state police) had a file on every single citizen or extended visitor to East Germany was the most mind-boggling thing. Professor Rankin is even pretty sure that they have a file on him somewhere due to a visit of a couple of weeks in East Berlin back around 1986. The size of the exhibit meant that it didn't take very long to see everything and I was soon back on the street wondering what to do next. I returned to the Starbucks to look up possibilities for Monday online and discovered two particular treasures in the DDR museum and the just-opened Computer Game museum, and decided that since it was already getting on towards 6:00 (the time when most museums close) it really wasn't worth it to try and visit another one that day. Instead I decided to do a little souvenir shopping, though I knew that the stores around Checkpoint Charlie were likely to be quite expensive. In particular I wanted something with the iconic East-Germany crossing-light silhouette on it: Der Ampelmann. www.ampelmann.de And they had exactly what I was looking for - bookmarks, pins, earrings, signs, calendars, you name it. Success was achieved for only a small price and I soon strutted victoriously back to the hostel. Our next meeting point was at 7:30 at a pizzeria, but because of my two large meals already that day I planned to skip that and only join them when they went to a Biergarten (an outdoor area where you can bring your own food or buy it there and they specialize in selling - what else - beer) a couple of hours later. This gave me enough time to do my homework reading assignment and take a 1-hour nap before our supposed meeting point, but of course nothing ever goes according to plan. At 9:15 I texted Hannes and asked whether the group was heading to the Biergarten yet - he replied that they were still at the pizzeria (but my impression was that they would leave soon). Armed with only my trusty map and good sense of direction, I found my way to the restaurant only to discover that everyone had only JUST gotten their pizza after an excruciating 90-minute wait. I sat down anyway and was only going to observe, but did partake in a couple of pieces of pizza when it was offered to me. When it became clear that we weren't leaving right away I was even prevailed upon, against my better judgement, to order a plain cheese pizza for myself, since it turned out that Princeton was paying 5 Euros towards everyone's pizza and a plain cheese 10" cost 5,40€. Finally at nearly eleven everyone was ready to pay and go, and my pizza ended up coming just as we were all leaving (I asked for a box and devoured it as quickly as possible). Some brave souls still wanted to brave a Biergarten, but I knew that I wouldn't really enjoy anything this late and I wanted to have as much time as possible in the morning for museum exploration before we had to meet for our train back to Munich. So, I joined the group heading back to the hostel, which we reached via tram this time, and clambered into bed at midnight. The evening wasn't a total loss - I got a pizza nearly for free (nothing special, but I love pizza) and to hang out with the group, which is (nearly) always enjoyable. One of the other members of the group asked me as we were walking back, "Did you come to the pizzeria late?" I answered affirmatively, wondering why he was asking. He said, "I thought so. We had been there for a bit when I thought, 'Where's Erin? I haven't heard her laugh for awhile.' But then I looked down the table and you were sitting there at the end, so I was confused." Well, it looks like it doesn't take long for people to figure me out - this particular individual is someone I hadn't hung out with hardly at all before the program, and already he had learned that I am almost always pinpointable - one only has to be quiet for a moment and listen for my laugh. -_-
Monday. Our last day in Berlin, and finally we are given a bit of free time to do whatever we would like. I had finally decided on the Computer Game museum, the only downside being that it opened at 10 which gave me a couple of solid hours in the morning. I got up at 8, packed my suitcase and stored it downstairs, but even doing it as slowly as possible meant that I checked out at 9. Returning to the train station of the first day I revisited the bakery and purchased both breakfast and lunch for the train (the pastry I chose this time was much better, thankfully). Since it was only about a fifteen minute train ride from this train station to the Computer Game museum, I stopped off about halfway to scope the antiques market, but the sellers were in the middle of setting up their wares, so I decided to return afterwards to buy my souvenirs. Even with all of the dawdling I could manage I ended up at the Computer Game museum about fifteen minutes before it opened, but the wait was worth it. It only opened in January of this year and was quite small, but all of the exhibits had English displays and it was very instructive to read about the history of the computer and video game. In true German spirit many of the displays were interactive and I played some of the original arcade games (Centipede, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong), all of which I remember playing on the Atari that was my first video-game system... but I date myself. There were exhibits on everything from landmark games to creation of a video game to aspects of video game fan culture to video games in the DDR (a highly regulated industry, like all of them). All in all, though, the museum only took me two hours to thoroughly explore everything, which was just the right amount of time to make it back to the antiques market to meet my friends. I found the perfect souvenir for Daddy (the identity of which I won't disclose here to avoid spoiling the surprise ;]) as well as a very pretty pair of earrings for me. There was quite a bit of jewelry there, which naturally made me think of my sister, but I'm so bad at figuring out her tastes that I didn't dare buy her anything until I had spoken with her to get a better idea of what she wanted (not that that would necessarily help). Then it was back to the hostel once again to gather everyone and head out. As always with a group this size (nearly everyone had elected to come to Berlin, so we were about 40) there was a lot of waiting around, but we still made it to the Hauptbahnhof in plenty of time for a "last meal" in Berlin (I found a pizza-pastry at a bakery and - of course - more ice cream ;]). The train arrived exactly on time (it's Germany. Everything's exactly on time) and we clambered on, trying to get in first to avoid the situation of the ride up. The seating situation was better this time and we soon settled in for the long ride back. I had set up a Skype date with my boyfriend for the next morning (Monday, being the 13th, marked 3 months of dating - collective *awww* :P) so I knew I wouldn't get too much sleep Monday night, and in light of this I tried to sleep on the train, but I have a very hard time falling asleep when I can't get horizontal, so it didn't work too well, regardless of whether I tried the window, the table, or my seatmate's shoulder as a support. But the scenery was pretty, and I had my iPod for music, and the pickle-and-egg sandwich that I had bought as lunch wasn't even that bad (really! it wasn't!), so it was an overall pleasant journey. For some reason the S-Bahns weren't in operation when we got back to Munich, so we had to take a bus back to the Wohnheim, but that was all figured out by the grad students and required minimal thinking from us. On the way back we passed a store that seemed to sell exclusively dirndls, which reminded me how badly I wanted one, and I made a note to go dirndl-shopping sometime before I left Munich. At 10pm I finally crawled into bed back in Munich, and for some reason I felt like I was back home. :)
