"Berlin ist arm, aber sexy."

"Berlin is poor, but sexy." Someone (I think it was Kelsey) mentioned this quote while we were in Berlin but according to Kelsey, it is now just sexy. It's safe to say that I fell in love with Berlin during the six or so days we spent there, and I'm looking into possibly going to Humboldt University of Berlin starting this fall. Where I am in Germany at the moment provides so many opportunities because I speak French, and being that we're about 15 minutes away from the French border and 45 minutes away from the Swiss, it's easy to see the influences these two countries have on Freiburg and the surrounding area. Following this trend, when you go to Berlin/East Germany, one can see the huge influence Eastern Europe and Russia have had and thus I wasn't expecting to feel so connected to Berlin as I did. Berlin is really like no other city, with everything packed into one: big city life pairs itself with an incredible amount of history. It seems like everywhere you look in Berlin, there is a monument or a story that goes with it. Everyone in our group agrees that it was an amazing trip and we can't wait to go back.

We did so many things so it's hard to sum it up in one entry, but I'll try.

Alex, Jake, Grace and I arrived by train in the Berlin Ostbahnhof at 1:30pm and Huggs, Ryan Kelly and some other people were there waiting for us. The atmosphere when we got to the hostel was amazing -- everyone was so excited to see the rest of the group again, and Huggs and I ran and screamed for Chris, my favorite gypsy. Soon after we got there, we had our introductory seminar with Ronnie our historian/tour guide, Hartwig, Cole, Jason from the States, and a few of the area reps who had come. We then had dinner all together downstairs in the hostel kitchen and got to catch up. I think it was the first night (Sunday night) that some of us went to Checkpoint Charlie and then we went out with some people and walked the Berlin Wall across the street from the Ost Bahnhof. It was so surreal to be walking where East German territory used to be, and and amazing way to spend my first night in Berlin.

In the following days we had a schedule: breakfast was from 8:00 to 8:45ish, the Powerpoint presentations with Ronnie (over German history) started at 9:00 in the seminar room, went for a couple hours and then we would have about fifteen minutes to go back to our rooms and get our things ready for an excursion. The funniest thing was the lunch packets... after breakfast, we would all make sandwiches for ourselves and get a plastic bag filled with food for the coming day (fruit, granola bar, etc). The catch to this was that some really strange items of food were also included, such as hard boiled eggs or a fourth of a cucumber. Obviously this started jokes like "I am looking for the egg in my sac!", and a Borat accent was mandatory with that, which Chris and I took care of. The Powerpoints taught us a lot, like when and where exactly anti-Judaism/Semitism started, how the Nazi regime was run, and the history of the wall. Ronnie was our personal Jewish Brit who is famous for creating monuments in Berlin (http://rgolz.de) and he gave us a lot of background history to have us understand why exactly everything happened how it did. Our excursions included a tour of the former Stasi prison (where Bree got these amazing prison keys from our tour guide), a visit to the Jewish Memorial and Museum, a short walk around the Olympics Stadium where the Nazis held the Olympic Games, a visit to Checkpoint Charlie where we went on our own so we could see things at our own pace, a bus tour where we got to see many important sites to give us an overview of Berlin, a tour of the Reichstag and the dome and several others. We got to the dome just as the sun was setting, making it an amazing view of Berlin. That week we also had our short interviews which were basically designed to check up on each of us and see how we were doing. Hartwig gave me some great leads for me to research on staying here and going to university.

It sounds like a packed week (which it was), but it wasn't all work and no play. We managed to get out and do quite a bit on our own, and once we got a hang of the many transportation systems available, it was easy to get around. My little Freiburg mind was overwhelmed by the number of systems of transportaton: regional train, S-Bahn, U-Bahn, bus... the list just went on and on. Our other activities included cooking in our floor's living room/kitchen, six pack beer swap, shaving T-Mac's beard and cutting his hair, making a snowman in front of the Olympics Stadium (the video will be up as soon as Mr. President uploads it), clubbing, going to KaDeWe, walking around the city, getting food from the Italian Schnell Imbiss next door, looking for a "fucking cat" for Christoph's (Chris' area rep) mom, getting Döner and I also got to see Olivia two nights in a row! All of that made for the best several days I've had in a while. The first night (Wednesday) I hung out with Olivia, we basically just stayed at the hostel, had a bit of Kelsey's orgasmic pasta sauce and spaghetti and got some pizza from the people next door. The next night (Thursday), we got out and went to walk the wall for a bit and then took the U-Bahn to Ku'udam, a famous shopping district and also a very pretty street. After walking around, we went on the search for "Kaffee und Kuchen" and after coming to the disappointing realization that for some reason nothing was open in that part of Berlin, we came upon a Kamps Bäckerei and Nathalie and Olivia Krrrropf finally had their Kaffee und Kuchen together.

That's basically our trip in a very minuscule nutshell. We left on Friday at around 2:30 in the afternoon and arrived back in Freiburg at around 9:00 that night.