Herzlich Willkommen

I'm finally going to sit down and make myself do this.  I've found that this whole blogging process has become more of a hassle for me than anything but people keep telling me I haven't written anything lately so here goes.  I guess I can start about 2 weeks ago when I took a day trip to Dresden.  Ever since I planned this Dresden trip I've really started to put the number of weekends I have left here into perspective, and there really aren't that many.  So I left early in the morning on Saturday and it took about 3 hours to get to Dresden.  Although it lies in what was former East Germany, I would have to say Dresden has done a great job recovering from years of Soviet occupation.  The city was clean, cleaner than Berlin I'd like to think, and the architecture of the buildings was absolutely amazing.  Dresden is an older city and is more or less suited for tourists.  I'm sure it's also a very profitable place to do business because of its location on the Elbe river but I'm fairly certain most of its income is from tourism.  I booked one night in a hostel, which wasn't so bad considering the complimentary glass of champagne one receives after checking in.  The hostel wasn't too far from the old city either so everything was within walking distance.  I was in for a shock, however, as I hadn't yet met my roommates until about midnight; when I was coming in for the day and they were just starting to go out.  They were 3 young men from Leipzig visiting a friend for the weekend and needed a place to crash because his house wasn't big enough to accommodate the others. As my good friend Patrick Stutler always said and I believe the phrase nails it right on the head, "boys will be boys".  It would have been annoying that I was woken up three times throughout the night, 1pm, 5am, and 8am when they finally got home, but there's just something about listening to drunken Germans where you can't help but laugh.  All in all, Dresden was a great vacation and if you haven't already, check out the pictures on Facebook to see what I'm talking about.

This will really be a long post because I'm trying to include 3 major events that took place over the last few weekends, but don't be surprised if my stories keep getting shorter and shorter.  This past weekend I made an excursion to Hamburg and I have to say before I left I had high expectations for this city and every one of them were met.  Hamburg is by far one of the coolest cities I have ever visited.  If you're from Michigan, picture a small city on the west side of the state, like Ludington or Traverse, except it's about 6 times bigger than that.  There are boats, tourists, and little shops with sea crap everywhere.  Hamburg just had a much more "homier" feel to it than Berlin and the spirit of the people definitely helped.  It is also a very historic city and the buildings are architecture are absolutely stunning.  There is also the infamous Reeperbahn in the neighborhood of St. Pauli.  This strip became known as the red light district along with its bountiful supply of bars and restaurants.  If you're going to Hamburg, definitely make that a stop on your list.  Also, if you want to get out on a boat and get somewhat a tour of the harbor, DO NOT pay for a Große Rundfahrt for 15 euro.  They have a shuttle service just like the buses, but on a boat, that will take you from stop to stop for a grand total of about 1.70 euro.  Just as good, but cheaper.  If you're not on a budget, then by all means take the big ships.  You can try to see everything in one weekend but of course it's impossible. At least I found where I will retire someday.

Last but not least was move in day and first day for the HU Sommer-Uni students.  I left Hamburg around noon and it takes about 3 hours to get back to Berlin (excluding the detour we had to take because of traffic) but as soon as I arrived I had to book it to the East side to help move in the newbies.  It was actually a great feeling helping them move in because I can remember not too long ago being in the same position myself, except now I actually know where the heck I'm going in Berlin.  I looked really cool answering all their questions and pointing out places they should go and things they should see.  Then there was their first day of classes/registration which honestly I don't remember very well because the whole day went so quickly.  It was  great bonding with the other interns/student teachers and I really started to feel like part of the team, even though my role is very daunting and menial.  Oh yeah, and I am now officially the new HU Sommer-Uni barista until August 12th.  This is my first time actually making coffee so I'm thinking by the end of the summer I'll be pretty damn good at it, considering it's my job for the next 4 weeks.  My boss assured me this is not the only thing I'll be doing for the next 4 weeks and I'm praying she meant that.  Regardless it's still a great way to practice my German and I get free coffee out of it.

HU

I really need to start utilizing this blog a lot more because we have now begun the phase where I have to keep an incidents journal for my James Madison requirement.  I really find it annoying that they would make you write papers or have to keep track of your experience while you're actually doing it.  What do I know, but I think it should be something that comes at the end of your field experience.  O wait, we do. We have an additional 20-25 page paper that is due at the end of our internships as well.  Enough complaining though because that's not the part everyone wants to hear about.

I've successfully completed my first week at Humboldt-Uni and I have to say that I am thoroughly satisfied with my placement.  Even though I've only been given the monotonous tasks of printing, correcting English translations, and researching a German author nobody's probably ever heard of, I have faith that things will pick up next week and the week that the students come.  Now that I know a little more about my job myself I can actually answer your question; "so what are you actually doing over there?".  For starters the department that I work in is called "Deutsch als Fremdsprache" or German as a foreign language.  My boss Frau Beatte Ramin-Getter, is the director of  HU's Summer and Winter Sessions.  There are the four classes that we offer; Intensive German Language, Art, Area Studies, and Germanistik.  There are also 3 other extremely nice interns named Xenia, Fabio, and Nina.  I think the best part of my internship is that it's so relaxed and they literally have tried to make me feel at home as much as possible.  I start work everyday at 10am and work until about 2-2:30pm in the afternoon, which isn't terrible, considering I'm an unpaid intern.  I'm excited for things to pick up though because the student will be arriving on the 16th and 17th of July.  Right now we are working on the welcoming packages and organizing all the materials for the classes.  As my friend put it the other day, basically we are RA's for all the international students coming in (which I find is a little bit ironic considering I'm one of them).  We're just a resource for when they have questions about living here or transportation tickets, etc..  I think one of the most exciting things is that I get to participate in  all of these classes or any trips/events that we have planned for the weekends.

I haven't been doing very much travelling, which is a bit disappointing but I've still been seeing a lot of Berlin.  The main reason is I really haven't found anyone who wants to travel anywhere really but we sat down and planned out a weekend to go to Hamburg and then another weekend when we'll be going to visit our friend in the Black Forest.  I'm also in the process right now of looking at flights to Dublin, Ireland for the weekend.  If you know me well enough then you'd know that I'm terrible at planning events so this has been a struggle for me, haha.  I think we'll be doing quite a bit of travelling when my Dad & brother come over here in late August so I'll need to save some money for that too.

Other than that all has been going great here in Germany.  Sorry if I haven't immediately responded to messages/email.  I don't always check those things as frequently as I ought to.  I think we're going to make attempts to grill hot dogs and hamburgers on Monday so we won't be completely missing out on the Holiday.  That is, after we all get out of work.  Hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend and God bless America!

Sprachenzentrum

Today was my first day of work at Humboldt-Uni and I honestly think I'm going to like this internship.  I was a bit nervous to start my internship because I've heard a lot of horror stories thus far from some of the other interns in this program.  Needless to say a lot of students here are not fans of CDS.  One of the best things I'd have to say about my job is that I start everyday around 10 am and the hours are very flexible.  My boss was always telling me to take breaks when I wanted or to go to lunch whenever and that I don't need to be reporting to her all the time.  There are also two other German interns there who I'll be working with during the Summer University session.  Basically what we do is help the international students coming to Humboldt for a 4 week class in either German Language, Germanistik, Art, and Area Studies (whatever that is).  Some of the courses are offered in English and German and the others are only offered in German, so I guess I'm considered as the English specialist; I'm pretty sure that's the terminology that was used.  The students are not here yet but they'll be coming on the 16th and 17th of July so we are tasked with creating a "welcome package" of information for them.  Not only will we be an informational resource for them but throughout the course of the program we have a series of trips and activities planned as well.   Like one weekend we'll be going to Potsdam, then there's a weekend where we'll be having a barbecue (which they refer to as "grillen"), and there is also a boat tour of Berlin.   Today was a little slow though which was good.  I got a tour of all the buildings where classes will be held and the international student cafe where we'll be hanging out some days with the students. I have to say it was also a little overwhelming to, remembering all the rooms, where to get keys, who to talk to for help, and on top of that everything was in German.  It's great though because rather than just sit in a classroom and learn German all day, I'm actually out practicing my German in a job, applying everything.  It felt a little discouraging, knowing that I couldn't speak as quickly or understand everything they were saying all the time but this is definitely one of the best ways to learn and practice.

KaDeWe und Karneval der Kulturen

Again I haven't been keeping up with the blogging and for that I apologize.  Apparently more people read this than I thought so it's good motivation to keep updating it.  I can't remember the exact dates but last week was pretty eventful with some of the highlights were, as the title of this post, Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) and Karneval der Kulturen.  As I mentioned before we have a pretty dope teacher for our German class and last Friday we took a field trip to KaDeWe.  KaDeWe is essentially a gigantic, 7-story Macy's with everything you can imagine.  If you have the means, I highly suggest you visit it.  Everything was far more expensive than anything worth buying while here in Europe for 3 months so I settled for a bratwurst and looked around for a while.  If  you come to Berlin it's definitely something you should see but I wouldn't spend a whole day there.  So instead of taking the S-Bahn which would have only been about a 30 minute ride, we walked through Tiergarten, which I'm actually glad we did.  Tiergarten is the equivalent of NYC's Central Park and is apparently home to many rabbits, birds, and wild boars.  Berlin actually has a significant amount of wild boars plaguing the foliage and gardens of many Berliners.  It was great we walked because we ended up stopping in a Biergarten on the way and some people ended up going on boats through Tiergarten.  I'm not exactly sure if there was any significant educational value to our trip to KaDeWe but I'm sure there was some somewhere.

This past weekend was also a big festival here in Berlin called Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures).  It's similar to the giant parade called "Karneval" and lasted from about 12:30 in the afternoon until about 9 or 10 at night.  It was interesting to see all of the different cultures here that Berliners associate themselves with.  All of the people in the parade were dressed in some type of costume and everyone had a float or some kind of performance.  The parade was only one part of the festival because Friday & Saturday there were also performance from bands all over the world.  The food was also great because there was a mix of African, Asian, and some German food everywhere.  Not exactly sure what I ate that night but it was good I'm sure.

We also had Monday off because once again the Germans are a very religious people and find it appropriate to take Pentecost off.  I wish we had these holidays in America.

Next week will be our last week of class and I'm pretty sure I'll have been here a full month at that point.  Some days go by faster than others but I really can't believe it's been a month already.  I'm excited to start my internship at Humboldt and I have another meeting with my boss next week Wednesday.  I think I'm also going to start looking for places to travel so if you have any recommendations, let me know.

Bis dann

Long time, no update

I've been sucking at keeping this blog updated so this one will probably be pretty lengthy (sorry Ty & Remi).  I'm now going on my second week of classes and it's been great.  Like I mentioned before, our teacher is absolutely hilarious, not only in the fact that shes always cracking jokes (German jokes which aren't usually very funny), or playing Tabu with us, but the fact that she likes to go outside during our breaks and enjoy a cigarette with the other students in our class.  Normal.  I know it will be a sad day when we "graduate" but I'm looking forward to the Muckefuck party we have scheduled.  The class is not the most challenging but it is a nice refresher course in certain things I've learned ages ago and that seem pretty relevant to what would be useful in everyday situations.  All in all, "school" is great but I'm really looking forward to starting my internship.

If you haven't heard by now, and if you haven't then you've been living under a rock for the past 3 weeks, there is an e. coli outbreak here in Europe mostly concentrated in Northern Germany.  Perfect.  The German Health authorities have not quite pinpointed the source, but there have been quite a few accusations as to its point of origin which has actually started to piss a number of people off.  Considering I'm not a huge green vegetable eater this hasn't affected me as much but I'm still very cautious about what I'm eating.  My host mom says it's a bunch of crap and that the media is just trying to influence the public with their endless propaganda for the government, so I'm having a hard time either 1) buying into this e. coli thing or 2) thinking she's a crazy liberal, vowing to prove the corruption of government and influence through media.  Either way this shits kind of scary but I've survived it in America so I should have no problem here.

The weekends have been by far the most exciting times here in Germany and no I'm not saying that just because we go out and drink 95.5% of the time.   There are actually a billion things, sights to see, and people to meet here in Berlin and I feel like I won't have the opportunity to see everything but I'm going to damn well try.  The crew from State and I have gotten into this habit of going to local "Fests" and I've got to say they've been some of the more fun things we've done while in Germany.  Not to mention they serve as great pre-game events before heading out to the clubs.  One fest in particular that we went to was called Havelfest which was kind of like a street fair where you could buy local arts & craft?,  and naturally beer and brats.  I'm not sure if I'll ever tire from the brats and at 2 euro a piece it makes them hard to resist, especially when you need something to complement the mug of beer you just bought.  My house mom keeps making jokes that I'm  always trying to eat German food and why I wouldn't seems somewhat rhetorical.  At Havelfest I'd say we experienced our first instance of anti-Americanism from the Germans which was a lot more frustrating then I thought it would be.  The looks that we got from some of them were like we had just landed a space shuttle in the middle of their damn Biergarten and we were going to snatch all the wurst and run.  Then another gentleman proceeded to show us his freshly done tattoo (hopefully it was fake) of a blue cross with a German flag in the middle, saying 'we are german' blah blah blah.  Typical anti-american behavior.  It got better though because we actually did run into some courteous, polite people and now I regret not recycling that glass bottle   I threw away in my fit of rage.  I also witnessed my first German sporting event of watching the qualifying match against Germany v. Austria on TV and man do they get fired up.  It's interesting being in a country that likes watching soccer just as much as I do and it's unfortunate that their season ended right before we got here.  Thankfully Germany ended up winning in the last minute or I don't know what would have happened.

I won't bore you with every little single detail of what we did over the weekend but I am having a blast here in Germany.  It's only been about 3 weeks so I'm excited to see what else there is to do here in Berlin and I'm also thinking about scheduling something outside of Germany, but we'll see.  Thank you for everyones support with my Grandmother passing and supporting me in general.  Miss everyone like crazy back in the States and hopefully everyones' summer is going as great as mine.

Bis dann,

Picasa Web Albums

I've been uploading some of my pictures as I go but these aren't all of them.  Anyway here's the link to my Picasa Web Albums, let me know if you can see them or not...

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos

Back to school

By popular demand I will shorten the length of my blogs.  Apparently my adventures are too tiresome and boring to read in a longer format so I will keep it simple.  Yesterday was our first day of class at the Carl Duisburg Centrum.  It's basically just a small school for international students looking to better their German and what do you know, that's me.  There are about 8 or 9 of us in the class and most are American students with a couple from Spain and Korea.  My teacher is hilarious because she actually has an American sense of humor which is surprising for a German.  The first day of class we learned about 5 different German swearwords and not the little baby ones like, "shit" and "damn".

Today went a lot better and quicker.  It's becoming a lot easier and I'm more comfortable with the people in the class.  The biggest thing when learning a language is to feel comfortable when using it and I struggle with that a lot of the time so hopefully I'm moving past that.  We just received a list today of activities sponsored by CDC (the language school I'm at) and they are going to the Reichstag tomorrow.  The Reichstag is the building where the German Parliament convenes, so I'm actually pretty excited to do that.  I haven't made any travel plans yet but I'm looking forward to doing something soon, so if you're in Europe and want to meet up let me know.