Februrary Hightlights or Why I Miss Berlin

Sooo after hearing some grumbling about my complete failure to update my blog- and it the interest of preserving my memories while I still can- I've decided to try and catch up the blog as best I can. Here's a crash course in how great my February was in Berlin...

Flohmarkt am Mauerpark- One of my favorite Berlin finds. There are apparently tons of flea markets in the city- I only made it to one, and that was the only one I needed! It was a hippie haven, in the northeast part of the city called Pranzlauer Berg (the "coolest" area of the city- think Uptown Minneapolis). I bought an awesome screen printed T-Shirt with Herman Hesse's Liebeslied (Love Song) poem on it. Brooke bought a board game called Traumtelefon (Dream Phone!) There were 1 euro waffles with Nutella. Adorable hippie children, handmade voodoo dolls, old East Germany memorabilia, and the usual mounds and mounds of junk. It was really quite overwhelming. And wonderful.Superbowl! Of course I had to watch the Superbowl, so we scouted out a bar that was going to play it. We rolled into Kilkenny Irish Pub on Hackescher Markt near the Goethe Institut at about midnight when the game started. Oh gotta love a 7 hour time difference. It started out me, Brooke, and few other program kids and 2 guys from the Goethe Institut. But at half time they decided to leave so they could get up and go to school the next morning. Brooke and I decided that was lame, so we stayed to watch the whole thing. Good thing we did! The second half was a-MAZE-ing! We moved from the table we'd been sitting at with our group to sit with a group of American guys studying in London and visiting Berlin for the weekend. It was really fun to hang out with boys and watch some kick-ass football. The only thing missing: the commercials. The commentary for the game was the regular American live feed, but for the commericals they would switch back to the British broadcasting room- Sky One I think the channel is called, for some commentary (haha football commentators with British accents) and then a few commercials. Not only were the commercials way less witty and funny as the normal Super Bowl ones- they would simply have never been shown in the US, much less during the Super Bowl. Perfect example: a Pierce Brosnan ad for men's facial cream. Soooo un-manly.

Brooke and me and the guys (with the victorious Plaxico Burress in the background)Berlin Zoo: We of course had to go see Knut- the darling polar bear cub that caused such an international craze based on his ridiculous cute-ness. We immediately noticed that we certainly weren't in an American zoo due to the fact that we were so close to the animals! The rhino were the first large animals near the entrance and it was actually a little concerning how little of a barrier you felt between yourself and the giant animal with a huge horn. The Europeans certainly aren't as liability-crazed as the Americans are! Another highlight was certainly the hippos. We had great timing and went into the building right at feeding time. There were pieces are bread flying from seemingly the heavens, and it appeared as if the trainer was having target practice with the hippo's giant mouths. It was great- there were so many of them and they were huge! One had crazy teeth, and they were some younger ones that were real cute.
Glanzlichter der Revue: At Friedrichstadtpalast Theater, "Europe's revue theater." I'm pretty sure this performance defies description, but I'll try for the sake of posterity. Well first of all our very sweet "Gastgeberin" (the lady living in house we rented rooms ≈ landlady, I can't speak English anymore) knew that I'm a dancer, and told us that one of her daughters worked at a theater and sometimes got cheap tickets to performances. So when she asked us if we were interested we of course said yes. So a while later she gives us 3 tickets (we dragged Erin along). Haha- turns out "dance" performance was a very loose/broad term because what we saw I certainly would not call a dance performance. It was oh so much more. The title translates literally to "Shiny Lights the Revue" or the dictionary tells me "Spectacular Highlights the Revue" which is actually a pretty appropriate title. It was certainly shiny and definitely spectacular. The performance was in "revue" or sort of vaudeville style. There was singing in 3 languages (German, English, and French), big showy costume numbers, some with pseudo-Vegas style can-can dancers, some with real Moulin Rouge-style can-can-ers. The stage could rotate, elevate, and at intermission switched to have a giant functioning water fountain. There were acrobats, a mini zeppelin came flying in, and pirates descended from the ceiling. I am not making this up. I certainly gasped more than once, and gave Erin and Hannah looks of disbelief that what I was seeing was actually happening.Wannsee: As you can probably tell by now we were real busy in Berlin. I didn't even realize it till looking back at the pictures! There is just sooo much to do in Berlin! That meant that I only ended doing one day trip out of the city, although I had originally wanted to do more. Hannah, Brooke, Natasha, and I went to Wannsee- a nice little town on the outskirts of Berlin on a lake (See means lake auf deutsch). But like a lot of Germany, this pretty town has a Nazi past. We mainly went to see the Wannsee Conference house, the site of the infamous meeting of top Nazi officials to plan the "Final Solution" of the Jews. The villa was lovely, as were the gardens- and the museum exhibit was one of the better ones I've seen. Besides the downer history, it was lovely getaway from the hectic city.
Valentine's Day (Berlinale, Bode Museum, Deutsches Essen)
Valentine's in Berlin. Well first of all a big event in Berlin in February was Berlinale (the Berlin Internatioal Film Festival). The whole of the city was a-buzz in the weeks leading up, as were the people at the Goethe Institut. The program finally came out, and rumors flew around that is was just impossible to get tickets. The turned out to be very untrue, so one after noon Brooke, Hannah, Natasha, Carlye, and I spent at least an hour perusing the enormous catalog (and that was just for 3 days out of the week long festival!) and we came up with a few hot prospects. "Corazones de Mujer" (Hearts of Woman) was our #1 pick. It was in Italian, Arabic, Spanish and pretty great. The other tickets we scored were for "Hey, Hey It's Esther Blueburger" an Australian film with Keisha Castle-Hughes and Toni Collette about a Jewish 13-year-old and her adventures trying to fit in at a preppy private school and a public school at same the time. That film we saw on Valentine's Day, Brooke was my Valentine, and Hannah and Natasha were "valentines." The theater was gorgeous, with a big red curtain in front of the screen. And the director (/writer?) was there and she was real cute and answered questions. It was really impressive to see the translator translating right on the spot and doing a pretty good job. At one point she was searching for the last part of an answer, and all four of us yelled out the answer to help her out.
Then we went to the Bode Museum (mostly sculpture) to take in our weekly (/daily) dose of art, and then to super yummy real German food at a little pub type place on Friedrichstraße.

Adventures with Friends (Playground(s), Shisha, Kauf dich Glücklich, Giant See-saws)
Unfortunately it wasn't until the later half of our time that we started bonding with some great friends in Berlin-- why can't that sort of stuff happen immediately when you arrive?! Well, anyways, I'm not even exactly sure anymore how we met Mark and Andrzej (pronounced on-jay) (it probably involved Stammtisch- "table reserved for regular guests" basically every Wednesday the basement floor of Café Zosch was semi-reserved for Goethe Institut students, and great-if smoky (despite the recently enacted smoking ban in Berlin)- place to meet people.) (Enough parentheses?) Anyways, where was I? Oh right, meeting Mark and Andrzej. Well they are great guys. Mark was born in Mexico, but grew up in Nevada. His mom is German and his dad (Mexican?-)American. Which means he has pretty much the best name ever= Mark Hernandez Reinshagen. Most Mexican-German name ever. And then there's Andrzej Matykiewicz, who has probably the most Polish name ever, but is in fact British. We had some great adventures with these guys at numerous locations, including a playground (Berlin's full of 'em) that reminded Mark of a pirate ship, and had a sweet zip-line.

(Andrzej and Mark)

Caitlyn Cohen (one of Hannah's) friends came to visit, so we had great fun hanging out with her- and she came with us to the 2nd Berlinale film (Women's Hearts). One great find that she clued us in one was "Kauf dich Glücklich"- an amazing café/waffle restaurant/shop. Everything in the place was for sale, including cool vintage toys, jewelry hanging on the walls, the 50's style furniture, and the most amazing waffles. It's in Prenzlauer Berg, near the flea market, so we went there post-market-ing one morning. (Hannah and I successfully made it back a few times.) We also showed her one of the most random things in the city, a set of 4 (5?) giant see-saws a few blocks behind Potsdamer Platz. Hannah and I stumbled upon them one day when we were lost trying the find the Gemäldegalerie (Old Master's Picture Gallery). I noticed the ground was sort of squishy, like a playground, and then we realized the huge metal tubes were actually teeter-totters! So of course we had to bring her there. They were all occupied when we got there- but this guy and his son moved to one end, in an obvious move to free up one end. So Brooke, Hannah, and Caitlyn climbed on the other end and see-sawed with this guy and his crazy son who yelled the whole time. Never did make out what he was yelling, but it was pretty funny.Ok, well I think all of February at once is just too ambitious, and I want to publish what I've got so it doesn't take hours to read one post. Hope this little update is fun, and I promise to keep working on it!
Love, Alice

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Lange Nacht (und Tag) der Museen

Museums Museums Museums! Berlin has tons of them and they're pretty great. Especially when its cold and you don't want to be outside. Berlin likes its museums so much they have this amazing thing every year called "Lange Nacht der Museen" (Long Night of the Museums) where tons of cool things all around the city happen the whole night, not only museums are open with special things, but also the planetariums, zoo, concerts, film screenings, workshops, and etc. We were overwhelmed by the options, but picked a few of the coolest sounding ones of course. We first tried to go to a planetarium to see a laser light show, but it was so packed we didn't make it in. So then we went to the Aquarium, which was pretty cool. Especially the real creeper prehistoric looking mammoth of a fish:


And the jellyfish:Our next stop was an exhibit of Pop-Art at the Automobil Forum Unter den Linden, which showcases cars, and also art (?) I was especially excited about the oddly numerous Minnesota connections. There was a Guthrie Theater poster and a 50th Anniversary poster for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on display.Our next stop was to trek back to the planetarium. The show was supposed to be about man's connection/fascination with the sky, which sounded pretty cool--- well it was still pretty cool, but not quite what we expected... especially when the periodic table was projected on the ceiling.

The other great thing Berlin does is make all their state-run museums free on Thursdays, so needless to say pretty much every Thursday we went to one of them. Hamburger Bahnhof is one of them, a super cool modern art museum in an old train station. The main exhibit going on showed really cool modern art and juxtaposed them with more classical inspirations. Like Lichtenstein and Picasso.

Erin looking at some Warhols:That same day we went to the Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery) which is a gorgeous building on Museum Island, although pretty much the whole island is under construction, so they should call it ginormous crane island. Its called the "Old" National Gallery because during the time Berlin was separated the Museum Island was on the East German side, so the Westerners built a new one to house all their cool stuff. The museum, like everything else in Berlin, was heavily damaged during World War II, and they purposefully left one room unrenovated to show the damaged. But other than that the whole building is very lovely and luxurious.

To see more pictures check out my facebook album:
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Ghosts of the Past

I started this description as part of the last post- but I decided it should have its own. It has a much more somber tone then fashion shows and art museums.

A few weeks ago on a Sunday Hannah Rebecca and I went on tour of Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp northwest of the city. It was cold and wet and miserable, probably a fitting atmosphere for such a visit. My rain boots and 1 euro umbrella were pretty much the only reason I was able to stay there as long we we did- like 4-5 hours. Our guide was this sweet old man, but unfortunately he was pretty slow. The most interesting part was hearing little snippets of his personal story that would come up. He survived the Holocaust as a kid in a mobile children's forced work group. I would've liked to have someone else lead the tour, and just have him give a talk about his own experiences... but either way I'm glad I went. I've had an interest in stories of the Holocaust for a long time, read many books about it, took a class about it in high school, and of course learned about it as German major-- but for a long time really had no desire to visit a concentration camp. For some reason that changed, and I am glad I went. It was a very different feeling then I've had visiting other types of memorials. Last summer visiting Anne Frank's house was a very surreal emotional experience. To actually see the hidden bookcase door, see her room, her writing on the wall, and the diary was a very impacting experience- a strange intersection of the ideas and images you've built up in your head and coming face to face with the real place. I could feel the history of the place, imagine what had occurred there.

A different experience was visiting the Jewish Museum , as I wrote about earlier. While that museum wasn't exclusively about the Holocaust, rather Jewish people through out the ages- the most impressive parts of the museum had to do with that. The large empty space called the "Holocaust Turm" (or Holocaust Tower) is a corner of the building that's relatively small but reaches up all 4 or so stories, that is completely bare and unfinished, with the only lighting coming from a small slit high up in the corner. The feeling standing there in that silent, cold, and dark room is hard to describe- but somehow gave the impression of the vast magnitude of loss and absence, a very quiet sorrow and reflection. I was surprised to find that actually visiting the concentration camp gave my less of a direct feeling. While it was completely horrifying to see everything, at times I felt distanced, always held back a bit and numbed to what I was seeing. But similar to visiting Anne Frank's house, you could feel the ghosts of the past- just under the surface. It was a very haunting place. Tired, wet, hungry, cold, and sore matched the mood.

The gate. "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free)

Lions and the Catwalk

So.... I got really really behind in the past few weeks, but I have to catch up before I get more behind. My attempt to do a post last weekend was hindered by getting sick, lame. I'm definitely on the mend now; I only missed one day of class, the only one so far (which is a stunning record compared to most others.) So I'll try and cover the highlights since my last post, and hopefully keep more on top of it in the future (because goodness knows my memory doesn't last much past a week.) :-)

Really quick, mostly pictorial, update:

We (me and Hannah) went to the Pergamon Museum with the Kulturbüro (Culture Office), through which the Goethe Institut has activities such as museum visits, lectures, walking tours, and other fun things for us to do. The two highlights of the museum are the Ishtar Gate and the Pargamon Altar, both fully reconstructed from their original excavated locations- so basically they're huge and old and impressive looking. You can tell which parts are reconstructions, and what is original based on if it looks real old or not.


Next adventure was a walking tour of the former Berlin Wall and its history. All though out the city are markers and brick lines that show its former location. This one is right next to Potsdamer Platz where the no-man's land between the two sections was especially wide.

Then we (Hannah and Erin and Carlye and Tara and I) went to the Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery) which had amazing, gorgeous, famous paintings... Like this Botticelli painting, which was a study for the "Birth of Venus."

Then Adam and I decided to go on a random adventure to a advertisement set as an extra. The Goethe Inistitut apparently is frequently hit up for extras. This time it was for a commercial advertising an upcoming fashion designer competition. You can see the finished commercial by clicking on this link http://www.goethe.de/uun/prj/cre/vid/enindex.htm. If you pause at the 15 second mark you can see me in the middle of the frame clapping. Here's a picture I took on set.




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Week 1: Wir sind jetzt alle zusammen!

Hey y'all. Check in #2. I successfully survived my first full week in Berlin and started class at the Goethe Institut. I got placed in level C1.1A (yeah it didn't mean much to me either). Basically I'm pretty happy with it, 4 of the 12 us are in that level and we're the highest group (kind of wishing I had played dumb or something, our homework has definitely been the hardest ;-) It was fun to finally all meet up as a group. We met at our professor's hotel and then had a nice swanky dinner paid for by the lovely Mac German Dept. Here's a picture of my expensive and super delicious chocolate mousse... The next day we had our first day of class and then all met up afterwards to take a tour of the Reichstag (Congress) an the surrounding area of interesting things. Our tour guide was pretty hilarious and awkward and spoke in a funny dialect (in German) but it was pretty fun. We started out at the Hotel Adlon (most swanky-est hotel in Berlin, also famous because its the place where Micheal Jackson hung his baby out the window), and then went to the Brandenburger Tor and the lobby of this bank next door that had a sweet huge Frank Gehry (did the fish in the sculpture garden greenhouse) sculpture taking up basically the whole first floor.
We then went into their Congress building, saw the assembly room, and a part of the building where they're maintained original graffiti from Russian soldiers when they occupied the building during/after the end of World War 2.
After that we took an elevator up to the cupola (a big glass open air dome on top of the building)

Then our professor Gisela left us the next day and we won't see here till she picks us up at the Vienna train station in March! Left to our devices in Berlin...

Here's a pretty picture I took I the way to school in the morning. It's a gorgeous sunrise, which made it slightly less awful to be up so early (class starts at 8:30am and we have a 40 min commute).

Hannah and I took advantage of the extensive "Kulturprogramm" that the Goethe Institut offers (basically trips, tours, workshops, and lectures) and took a walking tour of Berlin "Mitte" the center of the city, and the oldest section. The history of Berlin is fascinating, it looks like no other European city I've been to. Throughout it's history Berlin has constantly changed and evolved, and the weird mixture of architecture and memorials and near complete lack of old buildings make the history oddly tangible. The complete decimation of the city during the WW2 wiped out most of the historic buildings. So there is very little left of buildings from the Middle Ages, or pretty much anything pre-world wars. Then the rebuilding of the city separated into 2 countries produced interesting divides and completely different aesthetics. The buildings in the former East are most interesting. This is a picture of Marienkirche, the oldest standing church in Mitte, next to the Fernseh Turm (TV Tower). Its an interesting juxtaposition of an old (religious) symbol, next to the secular socialist power symbol (copied from the one in Moscow, but only allowed to be slightly shorter than that one.)

Another stop on our walking tour featured another East German remnant. A giant sculpture of Marx and Engels.

So yeah... I think those were the highlights of Week 1. On the weekend, Erin and Hannah and I met up with Laura to see Berlin am Meer, a fabulous about cool young people doing cool young people things in Berlin (as Erin put it.) We all enjoyed it, but it left us sort of bummer we hadn't found this amazing underground scene in Berlin, and Laura and I were especially jealous of the Liebesgeschichte (love story). But it was definitely fun to watch the movie and say "oh, we're there right now!" While waiting for the movie to start we noticed a nearby H&M, and so returned the next day to do some einkaufen (shopping!) It was very successful. Then we returned for some Skype action, had a yummy soup dinner at home, and then proceeded to Adam and Gavin's apartment (how they scored that, I'm not quite sure.) Somehow pretty much the entire group ended up there one way or another, plus some other Mac kids who were in the city (reunions seem to happen spontaneously and often here.) The next day we slept in and then made a short excursion to Zoologischer Garten. Although we didn't actually make it into the zoo, we scoped out the location, and had fun browsing a book store and the "1 Euro Store" or as Erin called it, the "$1.50 Store." I scored some black duct tape and envelopes and a purple umbrella, and Hannah got hot pink sunglasses, partially to spite Erin, and I was jealous.

Stay tuned... Coming up next time: overdue pictures of my room/house and the Goethe Institut, and trips to the Pergamonmuseum and Sachsenhausen (concentration camp.)

Love you all!!!
(PS Send me mail! I will be very exited and return the favor!)
Alice Gerard
c/o Geothe Institut Berlin
Neue Schoenhauser Str. 20
D-10178 Berlin/Mitte
Germany

Arrival minus one bag

Hello Everyone!

My first blog post to update you all on my first few days in Berlin:
Day 1/Many hours to get to Berlin:
I flew to Chicago and met up with another Macalester girl going on my program, Hannah Kinney, and we flew together to Berlin via Milan. Our plane wasn't necessarily ghetto and old, but definitely didn't have the personal tv screens I've been used to, and entertainment is crucial for a 8+ hour flight. They had one big projection screen at the front of our section and played some random stuff, and episode of the tv show "Numb3rs" and then "Stardust" and then we were hoping for "Ratatouille" because we had overheard a flight attendant mention those were the two movies. But instead some random Italian thing came on with subtitles (we were flying Alitalia) and at first we thought it was a soap opera episode, because we were definitely missing something, but when it got to the end and credits scrolled, we realized they had shown us the last 30 mins of a movie. Weird. Anyways we arrived in Milan, and were herded into a long and grueling mass of people which then narrowed into a single file then to go through security. This made no sense to us. We finally got to our gate, but were then delayed due to snow (we think so, no one actually told us) and then got on the plane and waiting some more. There was lots of waiting. Finally made it to Berlin, were greeting by walking out of the plane down a staircase in the freezing cold and into a bus to drive about 25 ft to the door. We got Hannah's bags... then one of mine came... and then one of mine didn't. So we had to go to the lost people place thingy and fill out a report. Finally we made it to our bus, which took us the the U-Bahn (subway), which we took to our hostel.

Heart of Gold. What a great name. Even more hilarious was the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" theme. After we were checked in by our "pilot" and found out which "cabin" we were staying in, we found out we already had a message from someone who had called for us. So popular I know. It turned out to be from Molly, another Mac girl who is studying in London this year and was visiting a German friend in Berlin for a few days, who we planned to see. Our first order of business was to contact our host, so we sought out to find a place to add more pre-paid minutes to a cell phone I'm borrowing from Catherine, a friend who went on the trip last year. Once we successfully figured that out (I'm still surprised the people at the Vodafone store could understand what I wanted) we called Karin and figured out when to move in the next day. We then went out with Molly to an Indian food restaurant a few blocks away, and then headed back to the hostel and the two other Mac girls also on our program who were already in Berlin, Katie and Tara, met us at the hostel to hang out. (ie LONG DAY)


Day 2:
So the next day we moved out of our hostel and set off on our way to our new home for the next 2 months. We ran into a slight snag at the U-Bahn station trying to decided if we wanted to buy a full price month-long tranist pass, or try and wait till we got our Berlin student IDs and try and swing for a discount. We ended up going for a 2 day tourist past to buy time to decide. Then we got on the train made our way to Tempelhof Station, got out, and dragged our bags down cut cobblestone-y sidewalks (which made me sort of glad I didn't have that other bag). Our house is super cute and so is Karin, our host. She's very sweet and sociable, her and husband have 4 grown kids, and 3 grandkids. She showed us our rooms, and have the 3 floor to ourselves. She told us there's a small room and a big one, and we saw the first room and both assumed it was the big one, then say the next one and realized there's a big room and a huge room. I gave Hannah the bigger one, because I knew whe would both hang out there regardless
and my room seemed to be calling to me with pink sheets and a poster of Klimt's "The Kiss" painting. Other great perks, our own shared bathroom, and wireless internet! (Hence this post is way longer and probably more information then any of you really wanted to know. I promise I'll try and edit in the future). We got a little settled in, and had a nice little talk with Karin. Then we met up with Tara and Katie and went to the DRR Museum (East Germany). It was pretty small, but packed with tons of funny stuff. Including a "Trabbie", pretty much the only car you could get in East Germany, a "potty bench" where kindergarteners would take "collective potty breaks" (oh those communists) and great replicas of nude beaches, because apparently all the East Germans liked to hang out nude (this was never adequately explained). Then we went out to Asian food, super yummy and cheap.
Day 3:
Grocery shopping! Hananh and I woke up and went to Aldi (love it!) and spent a whopping 11 euro (oh Aldi, saving me money on multiple continents). Had a bite to eat and we were on our way out, but had to pause to meet the adorable Enkelkinder (grandkids) Matteo, Louisa, and Phillipe. Way cute. We met up with the girls again and spent a crazy 5+ hours in the Jewish Museum. The building itself is just as much, if not more, of an attraction than the exhibit.

It was very interesting, but we were certainly tired by the end. Headed out to dinner (again, I know) to a Turkish restaurant, as the museum is in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, also known as "Little Instanbul." Then made it home and caught up on the latest Project Runway episode. (Why didn't they send Victorya home?!) And now I'm all caught up! Miss you all and stay tuned for more!