I will still update this blog

I have not gotten the time at all since school started. But I will keep this blog updated, as I have so much great memories and photographs to share!

Will update a post tomorrow!

Next up: Museums in Berlin

At Neue Nationalgalerie.

“Then came death and took the butcher.”

Fotos (first two weeks) + more ramble

I was gonna insert these photos into my last post. But then I went for a swim at a public schwimbad in Mitte today, which turned out to be pretty nice (much nice than I expected). However, given that I haven’t seriously swum in like 3 years, I really didn’t last long. I was in the pool for about 50 minutes, constantly swimming more or less. Then at some point I was just like “Okay! Can’t do it anymore. Get the heck out of this pool before you barf!” (I didn’t actually barf of course. Natürlich.)

I apologize for some of the pictures if they look really bad. Well the weather in Berlin hasn’t exactly been welcoming, aka it has been quite unpredictable: mostly cloudy with occasional rain and hail. Yes, it hailed a little last Sunday. (not today though. Today was awesome.) So some unprocessed pictures aren’t great.

Now the fotos! In chronological order, I hope:

Das ist in Kreuzberg.

Again, in Kreuzberg, a quite well-known region of Berlin it seems. A lot of turks live there.

Carnival in Kreuzberg!

Then we went to a War Memorial (for all the wars won against France during Napoleon time, I think).

Checkpoint Charlie, I’m still yet to check out that Wall Museum…Have to go this Friday then. XD

A couple of photography experiments

In Charlottenburg, Berlin having dinner (Thai food! YAY) with Santana~

Then there are some fotos from Dresden. I took like 1000 pictures there so I will have a separate post for those. These are most pictures of people, instead of building. So.

Dresden used to be in East Germany. So I guess there are still some Communist left over from that time?

This man seemed incredibly unhappy to the point that it was almost comedic. XD

Our very intelligent and even more high-energy German history professor Alice. She talks super fast but teaches you a lot of things. Her major research is in East Germany’s Hunger and Food situation and obviously one could learn a lot about that time by studying that (?). She did her undergraduate education at Columbia, majoring in Woman’s History (obviously) and then went to Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (the place where I’m doing my summer school!) to get her Master and eventually a Ph.D from Michigan. So, quite an impressive resume. She’s also fluent in German.

My awesome roommate and his Kodak moment. LOL

Busy busy life in Berlin so far

Hallo von Berlin! Ich bin super münde…und Ich habe zu viel Arbeit!!

That was my desperate attempt to say hello and complain. Hope that was grammatically correct.

The following part I wrote on June 21st, 2011:

I seriously could not believe that I have already been here for more than a week. The past week seemed extremely long at many points. There were moments where I was like “oh my fucking God, why the hell did I do this program?!” Our fun-adventure-and-wound-filled excursion to Dresden, Germany (which was a really great place) certainly did not help with my level of sheer exhaustion from the travelling, the amount of reading that I had to do for the German History class (I am supposed to be reading a secondary source about Hitler and his Nazi Germany right now).

That being said, it had been a lot of fun. There are numerous museums in Berlin: old and new, big and small, grandiose and frugal, interesting (I saw a museum for sex) and boring (I will elaborate on this one), etc.  I enjoyed the private one-and-a-half-hour long Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin tour. It was a quick tour of all 2000-years of German History. 

We also went on a walking tour of the what used to be the Jewish Berlin communities before and during Nazi Germany. So that was the most dull tour so far in the program so far. Honestly, as bad as I feel bad and as much as I learned about the Jews, I am still not interested in Jewish history/culture/whatever.

The following part were written on June 27th, 2011:

Time really flies by. I’ve been here for more than 2 weeks now. I need to keep up with the blog posting!

As usually, I did a lot of thing for the past week but I actually did not learn as much German as I should as our poor German professor got ill for a couple of days last week. In addition, I’m finally done with Alice Weinreb’s class, which is just a very gratifying thing because every class was a mental exhaustion process…Her high energy personality and teacher style, albeit engaging, really drain the last bit of whatever you have out of you.

Our weekend excursion to Eisenhünttenstadt was depressing. As the name of the city tells you, it’s a “city of ironworks.” Eisenhünttenstadt was a former East Germany city under Communist control. It was supposed to be a prime example of a typically planned Communist city. However, after reunification, this place was kind of just left as it is. From my perception, it was a dead city, with merely any young talents living there. Only a few elderlies were still hanging on to the old memories and old lives that they barely have. All in all that tour was just depressing.

Another extremely annoying part of this trip was the people, which really makes me hoping for the second part of this program that involves not just Northwestern students, because this EXTREMELY fragmented (Like during the Weimar Republic. BAM! 现学现用. XD) group of 11 makes me sick to my stomach already. 这段就拿中文写了. 不晓得为啥, 美国人总是这么的爱搞小团体. 以”江青”女Jessica为首的四人帮, 叽叽喳喳永远贴在一起. 让我觉得恶心. 最让我反胃的那次就是我在和四人帮中的某男生说话, 另外那三位立刻就围过来, 把我挤出他们圈外, 然后立刻开始说他们的各种inside jokes. I was just like What The FUCK bitches!

上周那群贱人+各种depressing的活动+各种功课阅读整得我极其郁闷…不过唯一感觉比较好得地方就是, 上周需要自己静静得时候一个人去了Brandenburg Tor/Bundestag, 在Akademie der Künste发现了一些好玩得Art exhibits, 然后跑去Neue Nationalgalerie看了些十九世纪(从一战前到二战后)的许多art work…it was very interesting!

等我去了够多的Museum后写个Museum的专题.

Peace.

(睡觉去了)

Next Post: a work in progress….

I haven’t posted in like 5 days…I kind of feel bad because, for the first time, there are actually people following my blog.

I have been extremely busy with school work (coping with my broken German and learning about German History in like the fastest pace ever) and going on REQUIRED excursions with the group. But I have been writing my travel journal as well. I will upload the completed version as soon as I finish my German History readings on “Aryans” in Nazi Germany and Hitler…

Tschüß~ Wiedersehen!

Peace.

First Days in Berlin

So I’ve been in Berlin for about two and a half days now. I have to say, my first day here wasn’t great. In order to finish the Concise History of Germany book by Fullbrook, I slept for about an hour on the UA flight from Chicago to Brussels (Belgium). We had a 6-hour layover in Brussels Airport and I continued to try to finish the book but I gave up after she started talking about the political and economic situations of East and West Germany.

After we settled into the hotel that we are staying at in Mitte, we ate at a pretty decent restaurant in East Berlin, which looked more like the West (and actually better than the West because the Government is putting so much money into restoring and developing the area). That was really interesting. Where we are staying in Mitte is actually really nice. A lot nicer than I expected.

(Living room of our “apartment”, with our shitz scattered around the room.)

(Pretty spacious kitchen area)

(There is a tiny table in the kitchen. this is turning into my studying area.)

The day after that it was our official “orientation” day where we got our syllabus, textbooks, assignments (ugh…), public transportation pass, museum pass and other stuff to do fun things in the city. The university at which we are taking classes is Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, which is also in the Mitte area right next to some of the most awesome museums in the city. (I went to the Bode Museum today. It was awesome.)

Then it’s the first day of school which was really not that fun and actually quite frustrating. So where do I start? Oh okay. Our history professor, Alice Weinreb, who is a really poppy person and talks super fast, bulleted through the lecture. With the jetlag still hovering around, I could barely catch up to her speed. Our first assignment for the class includes 100 pages of reading already…well I hope I will survive without ruining my GPA again. This is the reader that we have to finish in a month…I gasped so hard when I got it.

(This is our crazy thick German History reader.)

The German class was even more frustrating because the professor did not say a single English word in the class and we started with “Guten Tag”, “Auf Wiedersehen”, and “Ich Heisse David” , and I did not even know those. I did not know where I got the courage to come to Germany without knowing any German. I think all I knew was “Guten Morgen”. However, I’m also surprised by how much I have learned so far in just 2 days already.

Anyways, that was my schpill of the day. Gotta get back to reading about Communism in post WWI Berlin and gender crises in the capital of Germany.

Peace.

A Concise History of Germany

So this is my reading assignment for studying abroad this year…Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it today! XD YEAAHH….Unlikely, but I’ll try.

3 days till my flight to Europe! SO FREAKIN EXCITED!!

I’m going to Berlin!

I am literally counting down by the days till when I will be on a Boeing 767 to Brussel, Belgium, then a propeller plane to Tegel Airport in Berlin, Germany! I did not think that I would be this excited to go there, because I am not a huge football *Hey, in Europe, it is actually called the “football”. Suck it bitches. LOL* fan or anything, but just the idea of going to a country with such a long and interesting history and a weird contemporary culture has motivated me to spend hours on the Internet looking for random shit that I could do while I am there, instead of studying for a final on Wednesday.

Simply cannot wait! 6 days left!!!