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